The Samaritan chronicler Abu al-Fatḥ of the fourteenth century, who used reliable native sources, places the origin of the Dosithean sect in the time before Alexander the Great. The rabbinical sources also contain obscure references to Dositheos and Sabbæus as the two founders respectively of the Samaritan sects of the Dositheans and Sabuæans. These have been identified with the Samaritans Sabbæeus and Theodosius, of whom Josephus relates that they defended before the Egyptian king Ptolemæus Philometor, against Andronicus, the advocate of the Jews, the sanctity of Mt. Gerizim.