Category:Sanballats (subject)

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The Sanballats were an influential Samaritan family that played an important political and economic role in the Persian Period.

This page is edited by Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan

Overview

The Persian Period

Among those who tried to "intimidate" Nehemiah and sabotage the reconstruction of the walls of Jerusalem, Sanballat the Horonite is mentioned along with Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian. They were the heads of the families that had arose to power in the Land of Israel during the Babylonian Exile and therefore those who felt more directly threteaned by the rise of the Zadokite power.

In the Persian Period, Sanballat served as an official of the Achaemenid Empire and the governor of Samaria. His major goal was to maintain his dominant position in the region and to prevent the emergence of a rival power in Jerusalem. The authority of the Sanballat family extended to religious matters. When the Jewish Temple of Elephantine was damaged or destroyed by rioters, the Jewish colonists asked specifically for the help of Sanballat's sons.

Sanballar was unsuccessful in his attempt to stop Nehemiah from reconstructing the walls of Jerusalem and imposing the Zadokite order in Judea. He was able however to keep Samaria independent and strong and when all his efforts to gain control of the Jerusalem Temple failed, he managed to establish an alternative Temple of Mount Gerizim with a legitimate "Zadokite" priesthood. A member of the Zadokite family married a daughters of his and moved to Samaria. The Samaritan Schism separated definitively the Jewish and the Samaritan community, united in the belief of the same God and the acceptance of the Mosaic Torah, but organized around competitive temples.

Members of the Sanballat family are recorded as governors of Samaria until the end of the Persian Period.