He is believed to have lived during the late third and early fourth centuries; Jeffrey Cohen puts his birth at 288 and his death at 328.
[1] The son of High Priest Nethanel III, Baba Rabba was probably born in Kiryat Hagga, now Hajjah, Palestine in the West Bank.
[citation needed] In the early common era, Byzantine rule in Palestine experienced periods of religious fanaticism.
Samaritans were generally ambivalent to Jews, and historically their relationship with their sister Israelites was rough, and occasionally hostile.
Uneager to join the various revolts, they were therefore spared of the Romans' wrath, and following the successive defeats of the Jewish rebellions and the progressive extinction of Jews in Palestine, a vacuum opened in the land that the Samaritans, as well as Ghassanid Arabs, were happy to fill.
In the fourth century CE, Baba Rabba, as the son of the high priest, succeeded his father upon the latter's death and became the de facto leader of the Samaritan community.
He divided Samarian lands into districts, which he then awarded to aristocratic families, executed several reforms, installed state institutions, and codified much of the liturgy Samaritans continue to use today.
And it came to pass, when they had made an end of speaking in the house of Egypt, that the children of Ephraim revolted against the king and his officials, and that they began to serve their gods openly and without mercy; And Baba and his brethren stood up with all the seven ministers and commissioners with their men and their heroes and stood against them and made them a great slain and the rest fled to their souls, and let there be peace in Samaria and her daughters!
In light of these uprisings, the Samaritans and their religion were placed under a harsh scrutiny which they had long eluded, in essence becoming "outlawed."
[citation needed] According to Yitzhak Magen[4] the tradition surrounding Baba Rabba should be seen as an allusion to the "religious renaissance" of the Samaritan community in the 4th century.