Where Should the Temple Stand: In Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim?

Abstract

The conversation in John 4 between the Samaritan woman and Jesus on the correct place of worship is here followed back into earlier texts from both sides, Samaritan and Jewish texts. The commandment to build an altar on Mount Gerizim was added to the Samaritan Pentateuch around the turn of the era or slightly later. It has precedents in the inscriptions from the second century bce found on Mount Gerizim. In the Pentateuch, the ‘centralization command’ in Deuteronomy does not include a specific location, but comes in two different versions: “the place that the Lord will choose”, MT, and “the place that the Lord has chosen”, SP. Each version entails a location: Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim. That the place was Jerusalem is said in Nehemiah and many other Hebrew Bible books. The Samaritans made their understanding clear in the inscriptions on Mount Gerizim and in the tenth commandment of the Decalogue. The ‘centralization command’ corrected the altar law in Exodus 20 by limiting worship to one place only, and the SP also corrected the altar law’s wording to the same effect. All this is ancient thinking, different from ours. But it also is an ancient way of identity formation.