[7] Having accomplished this, Simeon recalled from Alexandria, Egypt the Pharisees who had been compelled to seek refuge there during the reign of Alexander Jannæus, among these fugitives being Joshua ben Perachya, the former Nasi.
[10] About this time certain Parthian envoys came to Alexander's court and were invited to the king's table, where they noticed the absence of Simeon, by whose wisdom they had profited at previous visits.
"[11] During Simeon ben Shetach's tenure as head of the Sanhedrin, the court ceased to exact fines in monetary suits (Hebrew: dinei mamonot) as prescribed in the Law of Moses.
Together with his colleague, Judah ben Tabbai, Simeon began to supersede the Sadducean teachings and to re-establish the authority of the Pharisaic interpretation of the Torah.
[16] Inasmuch as a husband of small means could ill afford to withdraw a sum of money from his business, Simeon's ruling tended to check hasty divorces.
Simeon ordered that yeshivot be established in the larger cities in which the young might receive instruction in the Holy Scriptures as well as in the traditional knowledge of the Law.
[17] In a significant case of an early witch-hunt, on a single day Simeon ben Shetach's court sentenced to death eighty women in Ashkelon who had been charged with sorcery.
[18] The relatives of these women, filled with a desire for revenge, brought false witnesses against Simeon's son, whom they accused of a crime which involved capital punishment; and as a result of this charge he was sentenced to death.
Simeon's son protested that, according to the Law, a witness must not be believed when he withdraws a former statement, and he said to his father, "If you seek to bring about salvation, then consider me as a threshold [towards that goal].