57 It is not clear whether imprisonment or surveillance is meant. 58 On the spirit of Belial (ruling over Israel) see Jubilees 1 20. 59 “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,” 1 Sam. 15 23. 60 In contrast to the Samaritans. 61 In 8 18 ff., after saying, “Such will be the judgment of every one who despises the commandments of God, and he forsook them and they turned away in the stubbornness of their heart,” A adds: “This is the word which Jeremiah spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah and Elisha to his servant Gehazi,” referring probably to otherwise unknown apocryphal books. Johanneh and his brother, whom Belial raised up against Moses, are familiar figures of Jewish legend. 62 The simplest explanation of the form would be to take it as an abstract noun of the type _fa‘l_, like _sáḥu_; “swimming” or _fi‘l, fu‘l,_ like _séku_ (n. pr.), _tóhu_, _bóhu_, etc., from the verb _hagah_ (root _hagw_), “reflect, give thought to something,” also “read” (aloud), so that the noun might literally mean “study,” equivalent to _midrash_, or perhaps “reading.”—If the opinion which connects the sect with the Dositheans were tenable (see below, p. 360 ff.), another explanation of the name might be suggested by a passage in Abul-Fath’s account of the origin of the Dositheans. He narrates that a son of the Samaritan high priest, named Zar’ah, a man preëminent for learning in his time, having been expelled from the community for immorality, betook himself to Dositheus, who made him the chief of his sect. This man “wrote a book in which he vituperated all the Samaritan religious heads and set forth heresies.” The words are, _haja fīhī kul al’ a’immetin wa’abda’a fīhī_. Inasmuch as the Arabic _hajwun_ formally corresponds to the Hebrew _hagu_, the Book of _Hagu_ in our texts might be identified with this controversial writing of Zar’ah, the disciple of Dositheus. The Hebrew verb _hagah_ is thought by Kohut (Aruch Completum, III, 177) to occur in Echa Rabbathi on Lam. 1 4 and 3 33 in the sense “contemn, deride,” equivalent to the Arabic _haja_, “lampoon, vituperate.” It might then be conjectured that Abul-Fath had heard of a Dosithean book of _hagu_ (in Hebrew) and, taking the word in its Arabic meaning, evolved his description of the character of the work from this etymology. 63 Some Karaite authorities, also, transferring to the synagogue the holiness of the temple, forbade a man in a state of uncleanness to enter the inner room of the synagogue (Nissi; see Winter und Wünsche, Die jüdische Litteratur, vol. ii, p. 74).