Гора Геризим: Священная гора самаритян и библейские корни.

Mountain in the West Bank

Mount Gerizim ('/ɡ//ɛ//r//ᵻ/,/z//ɪ//m/; Samaritan Hebrew: ʾĀ̊rgā̊rīzem; Hebrew: הַר גְּרִזִים Har Gərīzīm; جَبَل جَرِزِيم Jabal Jarizīm or جَبَلُ ٱلطُّورِ Jabal at Ṭūr) is one of two mountains in the immediate vicinity of the Palestinian city of Nablus and the biblical city of Shechem. It forms the southern side of the valley in which Nablus is situated, the northern side being formed by Mount Ebal. The mountain is one of the highest peaks in the West Bank and rises to above sea level, lower than Mount Ebal. The mountain is particularly steep on the northern side, is sparsely covered at the top with shrubbery, and lower down there is a spring with a high yield of fresh water. For the Samaritan people, most of whom live around it, Mount Gerizim is considered the holiest place on Earth. The mountain is mentioned in the Bible as the place where, upon first entering the Promised Land after the Exodus, the Israelites performed ceremonies of blessings, as they had been instructed by Moses. Mount Gerizim is sacred to the Samaritans, who regard it, rather than Jerusalem's Temple Mount, as the location chosen by God for a holy temple. In Samaritan tradition, it is the oldest and most central mountain in the world, towering above the Great Flood and providing the first land for Noah’s disembarkation. It is also the location where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac. Today, about half of the remaining Samaritans live in close proximity to Gerizim, mostly in the small village of Kiryat Luza. The Samaritan village of Kiryat Luza and an Israeli settlement, Har Brakha, are situated on the ridge of Mount Gerizim.

Excavations at the site were initiated in 1983 and continued until 2006 and yielded tens of thousands of finds. Remnants found there identified that a Samaritan temple existed atop Mount Gerizim by the mid 5th century BC, and that it was eventually destroyed and rebuilt in the early 2nd century BC, only to be destroyed again in 111–110 BCE by Jewish forces under the orders of the Hasmonean leader John Hyrcanus. The archeological finds have shown that the precincts of the Samaritan temple, not including its gates, measured 96 meters × 98 meters. Inside this perimeter, thousands of pottery vessels and burned bones of animal sacrifices – sheep, goats, cattle and doves – were found, as well as many stones with inscriptions containing the Tetragrammaton (the name of God). In 475 CE, a Christian church was built on the Mount's summit. As a result of the fortified church and the previous Samaritan temple, extensive ruins still exist at the somewhat plateau like top of Gerizim. The line of the wall around the church can easily be seen, Underneath these remains were found a large stone structure built on top of the bedrock. This structure, now known as "Structure B", nearly half cubic (21 m by 20 m in width and length, and 8.5m high), consists almost entirely of unhewn limestone slabs, fitted together without any binding material, and has no internal rooms or dividing walls. scholars have suggested that the Joshua story about the site derives from a covenant made there in Canaanite times. In the narrative of Judges, the "pillar that was in Shechem" is seemingly significant enough to have given its name to a nearby plain , and this pillar is thought to be likely to have been a baetylus of El Berith; the Joshua story, of a stone being set up as a witness, simply being an attempt to provide an etiology in accordance with later Israelite theology.