GARIZIM (Arabic Gebel et-Tôr). - Mountain (868 m.) of central Palestine, dominating to the north the biblical city of Shechem (near present-day Nablus), facing Mount Ebal (938 m.), where the Israelites, according to Moses' command (Deut. 11:30), held the solemn ceremony of curses and blessings (Josh. 8:30-32).
The exegetical considerations — the mention of Gilgal in Deut. 11:30 — and environmental ones, the impossibility of hearing the two choirs on mountains too far from each other, which led the Byzantine topographers to move the ceremony to two hills near Gilgal in the plain of Jericho, where the Madaba map marks the mountains Garizim and Ebal, have not prevailed, since the two natural amphitheaters opened in the flanks of the two mountains of Samaria lend themselves to the scene recounted by Joshua (8:30-32) and a locality with the name of Gilgal (Gulefeji) exists to the 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 Kings 17:25-41), they were always regarded with distrust by the Jews, but the separation occurred between 423-405 when Nehemiah (Neh. 13:28) expelled from Jerusalem the son of the high priest Eliashib for having married the daughter of Sanballat, satrap of Samaria. Favored by his father, the priest Manasseh then built on Mount G. a temple rivaling that of Jerusalem, and thus the hatred and antagonism between the two peoples increased and perpetuated itself (Ezra 4:1-23; cf. John 4:9).
Following his policy of Hellenization, Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 dedicated the temple of G. to Zeus Xenios (Josephus, Antiq. Jud., XII, 1), devastated in 728 by John Hyrcanus (ibid., op. cit., XIII, 4, 1; Bell. Jud., I, 2, 6).
In 36 A.D. Pilate massacred there a great number of Samaritans gathered by an impostor (ibid., Antiq. Jud., XVIII, 4, 1-2) and many more were killed, in the rebellion of 66, by Cerealis, general of Vespasian (ibid., Bell. Jud., III, 7, 37). The emperor Hadrian erected on one of the peaks a temple to Zeus Hypsistos, which was reached by a long staircase represented on the coins of Flavia Neapolis.
After the savage aggression of the Samaritans against the Christians in 484, the emperor Zeno had a church dedicated to the Theotokos erected on the site of the Samaritan temple, later enclosed with strong walls by the emperor Justinian. This enclosure still exists and within the vast quadrilateral the foundations of the octagonal church erected by Zeno were brought to light again in 1928 and 1934. Every year the few surviving Samaritans celebrate the Passover feasts on Mount G.
Bibliography2 works
Donato Baldi