Jews and Samaritans was a gradual historical process extending over several centuries rather than a single schism at a given point in time. Hellenistic period Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Hellenization Antiochus IV Epiphanes was on the throne of the Seleucid Empire from 175 to 163 BCE. His policy was to Hellenize his entire kingdom and standardize religious observance. According to 1 Maccabees 1:41-50 he proclaimed himself the incarnation of the Greek god Zeus and mandated death to anyone who refused to worship him. In the 2nd century BCE, a series of events led to a revolution by a faction of Judeans against Antiochus IV. The universal peril led the Samaritans, eager for safety, to repudiate all connection and kinship with the Jews. The request was granted. This was put forth as the final breach between the two groups. The breach was described at a much later date in the Christian Bible (John 4:9), "For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." Anderson notes that during the reign of Antiochus IV (175–164 BCE): Josephus Book 12, Chapter 5 quotes the Samaritans as saying: Destruction of the temple During the Hellenistic period, Samaria was largely divided between a Hellenizing faction based in Samaria (Sebastia) and a pious faction in Shechem and surrounding rural areas, led by the High Priest. Samaria was a largely autonomous state nominally dependent on the Seleucid Empire until around 110 BCE, when the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus destroyed the Samaritan temple and devastated Samaria. Only a few stone remnants of the temple exist today. Roman period Early Roman era Under the Roman Empire, Samaria became a part of the Herodian Tetrarchy, and with the deposition of the Herodian ethnarch Herod Archelaus in the early 1st century CE, Samaria became a part of the province of Judaea. Samaritans appear briefly in the Christian gospels, most notably in the account of the Samaritan woman at the well and the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the former, it is noted that a substantial number of Samaritans accepted Jesus through the woman's testimony to them, and Jesus stayed in Samaria for two days before returning to Cana. In the latter, it is only the Samaritan who helped the man stripped of clothing, beaten, and left on the road half dead, his Abrahamic covenantal circumcision implicitly evident. The priest and Levite walked past. But the Samaritan helped the naked man regardless of his