GARIZIM (Arabic Gebel et-Tôr). — Mountain (868 m.) of central Palestine, dominating to the north the biblical city of Shechem (near present-day Nablus), opposite Mount Hebal (938 m.), where, according to Moses’ command (Deut. 11:30), the Israelites held the solemn ceremony of the curses and blessings (Ios. 8:30–32).
Exegetical considerations—the mention of Galgala in Deut. 11:30—and environmental ones, namely the impossibility of the two choirs hearing one another on the mountains, which are too far apart, led Byzantine topographers to transfer the ceremony to two hills near Galgala in the plain of Jericho, where the Madaba map marks the mountains Garizim and Hebal. These considerations have not prevailed, since the two natural amphitheatres opening on the slopes of the two mountains of Samaria are suited to the scene recounted by Joshua (8:30–32), and a locality named Galgala (Gulefeji) exists southeast of Shechem.
Mount G. acquired a sacred character only after the schism of the Samaritans. Ethnologically descended from colonists of the Assyrian Empire who immigrated after the destruction of Samaria in 721 (II Reg. 17:25–41), they were always regarded with suspicion by the Jews; but the separation took place between 423 and 405, when Nehemiah (Neh. 13:28) expelled from Jerusalem the son of the high priest Eliasib for having married the daughter of Sanaballat, satrap of Samaria. Favoured by his father, the priest Manasseh then built on Mount G. a rival temple to that of Jerusalem, and thus the hatred and antagonism between the two peoples increased and became permanent (Ezd. 4:1–23; cf. Io. 4:9).
Pursuing his policy of Hellenization, Antico Epifane dedicated the temple of G. in 167 to Zeus Xenios (Pl. Giuseppe, Antiq. Ind., XII, 1); it was devastated in 728 by John Hyrcanus (id., op. cit., XIII, 4, 1; Bell. Ind., I, 2, 6).
In A.D. 36 Pilate massacred there a great number of Samaritans who had gathered at the summons of an impostor (id., Antiq. Ind., XVIII, 4, 1–2), and many more were killed during the rebellion of 66 by Caresale, general of Vespasian (id., Bell. Ind., III, 7, 37). The emperor Hadrian erected on one of the summits a temple to Zeus Hypnisti, approached by a long staircase represented on the coins of Flavia Neapolis.
After the savage attack by the Samaritans on the Christians in 484, the emperor Zeno had a church to the Theotokos erected on the site of the Samaritan temple; it was later enclosed within strong walls by the emperor Justinian. This enclosure still exists, and within the extensive quadrilateral the foundations of the octagonal church erected by Zeno were uncovered in 1928 and 1934. Every year the few surviving Samaritans celebrate the Passover festivals on Mount G.