Bells, Pendants, Snakes & Stones

According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, the Samaritan leader Sanballat promised to build a temple on Gerizim, the Samaritan’s holy mountain, in imitation of the Jerusalem temple. This, Josephus tells us, occurred at the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Land of Israel (332 B.C.E.).

Did Josephus get it right? Was the Samaritan temple ever built? If so, could we find it? Can we confirm Josephus’s date? Did it really copy the plan of the Jerusalem temple?

The prospect of finding this Samaritan temple led to our excavation of the site, an excavation that I have now led for more than a quarter century. It is one of the largest, longest and most exciting excavations in the Land of Israel.¹

The Samaritans broke off from mainstream Jewish tradition, becoming a Hebrew sect of their own, in about the fifth century B.C.E. To appreciate the centrality of Mt. Gerizim in Samaritan tradition, we need to look at the Samaritans’ Holy Scriptures and how they differ from the Jewish version. The Samaritan Bible consists only of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. Moreover, the Samaritan Pentateuch (or SP, as it is abbreviated in scholarly literature) differs from the standard Hebrew Pentateuch (or MT, for Masoretic Text) in several of important details.

In the MT, upon entering the Holy Land the Israelites are commanded to build an altar on Mt. Ebal (Deuteronomy 27:4), opposite Mt. Gerizim; in the SP, the altar is to be built on Mt. Gerizim. In Samaritan tradition, the Israelites’ Tent of Meeting (or Tabernacle) was set up on Mt. Gerizim. In the MT, it is set up in Shiloh (Joshua 18:1). More importantly, wherever the MT has “the place the Lord (Yahweh) will choose” (envisioning Jerusalem, which had not yet been conquered), the SP has “the place the Lord has chosen,” (referring to Gerizim).² The SP even has an additional commandment to worship on Mt. Gerizim.

The SP makes no claim, however, that a temple was built on Mt. Gerizim. That happened only centuries later. The occasion, according to Josephus, involves a love affair. One Manasseh, the brother of the high priest in Jerusalem, who shared the high priest’s duties, married the daughter of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria. The elders of Jerusalem complained of this marriage because they regarded Manasseh’s Samaritan wife as a gentile. Either Manasseh had to divorce his wife or “not approach the altar.” Manasseh went to his Samaritan father-in-law and told him that, while he loved his wife, he did not wish to be deprived of the priesthood. Sanballat replied that he would make him high priest of a temple fashioned after the Jerusalem temple and that he would build it on Mt. Gerizim. On this basis, Manasseh decided to stay with his beloved.³

Mt. Gerizim rises more than 2,900 feet above sea level, just south of the ancient city of Shechem (today Nablus). Together with Mt. Ebal, which soars to a height of 3,000 feet above sea level, these are the two highest peaks in Samaria.

We can now confirm that a Samaritan temple was indeed built on Mt. Gerizim, just as Josephus suggests. We can say this despite the fact that we have not found the temple itself. It has been thoroughly destroyed. But there is enough evidence—historical, inscriptional and archaeological—to confirm its existence.

Although we have not found the temple itself, we have found the sacred precinct or compound in which the temple was located. It is a nearly square compound (321 x 315 ft) that sits on the highest point on the mountain. The walls are more than 3 feet thick. Two sides of the enclosure (northern and western) are preserved for their entire length, sometimes to a height of nearly 7 feet.

Three of the four walls of the sacred precinct had impressive gates. The best preserved is in the center of the northern wall. All three are six-chambered gates (three chambers on each side of the gate). The path through each gate was nearly 50 feet long, and the gate with its chambers was almost as wide. There was no gate in the western wall, however, despite the fact that the site was easily accessible from this side. The reason for this is no doubt because the back of the Samaritan temple with its “holy of holies” faced this wall.

Similar six-chambered gates were common in the First Temple period (discovered at such places as Gezer, Hazor and Megiddo).^a The six-chambered gate, still almost complete, in the northern wall of the sacred precinct at Gerizim is also identical to the gates of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, as envisioned by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 42:1–9), as well as in the temple envisioned in the Temple Scroll among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This First Temple period style apparently extended into later periods as well.

While Josephus was correct in reporting the existence of a Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim, he was wrong about the date. The incident he described, he says, occurred at the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the East (332 B.C.E.).⁴ Our excavations have revealed that actually the Samaritan temple was built more than a century earlier—in the time of Nehemiah (mid-fifth century B.C.E.). Indeed, the Book of Nehemiah tends to confirm this: It records the very marriage that Josephus says led to the building of the temple at Gerizim (Nehemiah 13:28). Both descriptions mention Sanballat as ruler of the Samaritans. But Josephus got the wrong Sanballat, which is a generic name that can be applied to any Samaritan governor.

The earlier date also fits much better with what was going on at the time. The Persians had succeeded to hegemony of the east after defeating the Babylonians. In the Persian period the Jews were permitted to return from exile in Babylonia. One of the most drastic measures imposed by the new Jewish government in Jerusalem, led by Ezra, was the prohibition of intermarriage with gentiles (Nehemiah 13:23–27), and Samaritans were regarded as gentiles, despite their Jewish roots. Hence the concern over Manasseh’s Samaritan wife.

Although the Samaritan temple is no longer there, there can be no doubt that the compound we have excavated is a sacred precinct.

In all we have recovered more than 400,000 bone fragments of sacrificed animals! Not all of them are from the Persian period, but most are. Moreover, most of the animals were less than a year old when they were sacrificed. The bones are from sheep, goats, cows and pigeons, mainly found in ash layers and usually mixed with pottery sherds, which, of course, enable us to date the levels (and therefore the bones)—dates confirmed by carbon-14 tests on the bones. We also found 68 coins from the Persian period (out of a total of 16,000). The earliest coin is dated 480 B.C.E.

East of the north gate of the compound in the Persian period was a building with a courtyard surrounded by rooms and a cistern in the center of the building. The rooms and the courtyard were covered with a thick layer of ash and bones. One of the rooms apparently held a reddish clay altar also covered with a thick layer of ash and bones. The remains of the sacrifices not completely burnt on the altar were apparently deposited here. This may have been the maqom ha-deshen, “the place of the ashes,” mentioned in Leviticus 1:16 as part of the temple. The area around this building was full of animal bones.

The sacred nature of the compound is further confirmed by several large cisterns used for purification and washing of the sacrificial animals.

We also found dozens of hard white limestone ashlars (rectangular building blocks) with delicate comb dressing, unlike other masonry found in either private or public construction elsewhere on Mt. Gerizim. Some of these ashlar blocks bore mason’s marks. They were probably scavenged from the temple.

Similar mason’s marks were found on wide-diameter column drums as well—no doubt coming from columns of the temple.

Two proto-Aeolic capitals (and remnants of a third) also must have come from the Samaritan temple. The proto-Aeolic capitals were common in temples in the First Temple period. That they are found here in Gerizim in the Persian period suggests their continued use in later times. More significantly, we know almost nothing about the architecture of the small Second Temple built in Jerusalem by the returning exiles. The use of proto-Aeolic capitals in the Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim indicates that the Second Temple built by the returning exiles in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah also had proto-Aeolic capitals.

Small finds, too, reflect the sacred nature of the precinct. A small gold bell with a silver clapper must have belonged to the ephod of the Samaritan high priest, decorating the hem of his skirt. The Bible mandates that the skirt of Aaron’s ephod shall be decorated with alternating pomegranates and “bells of gold” (Exodus 28:33–34). The sound of the bells secured Aaron when he entered the sanctuary: “Aaron shall wear it while officiating, so that the sound of it is heard when he comes into the sanctuary before the Lord and when he goes out—that he may not die” (Exodus 28:35).

Another find suggesting the existence of the temple is a 1.7-inch-long copper serpent. In the Bible, Moses fashioned a copper serpent mounted on a standard that saved the Israelites from a plague of serpents (Numbers 21:4–9). Hezekiah later destroyed Moses’ serpent (2 Kings 18:4). While we cannot date the copper serpent from Gerizim stratigraphically, we know that in the Hellenistic period no animal images were found in Samaria (nor in the broader Jewish community). So we assume that this copper serpent functioned in some role in the Persian-period temple.

An additional find indirectly linked to the Samaritan temple is a gold amphora-shaped pendant. The temple vessels in which oil and wine, used for ritual purposes, were stored might have resembled this amphora, which a Samaritan woman wore around her neck as a pendant.

The sacred precinct of the Persian period served the Samaritans for more than 250 years.

In the Hellenistic period (more precisely, in the early second century B.C.E), a new sacred precinct replaced what had been there in the Persian period. Although the old sacred precinct remained the nucleus of the new one, it was expanded on the east and south so that the Hellenistic sacred precinct was almost twice as large. A monumental staircase was constructed on the east with a gatehouse at the bottom that is preserved almost in its entirety. North and south of this monumental staircase, courtyards supported by huge retaining walls were built for the thousands of pilgrims who thronged to the temple.

A large two-story fortress was constructed at the new southeast corner of the sacred precinct. On the west was a courtyard with a gate and another wide staircase. In front of the gate was a strong defensive tower to protect this entrance to the sacred precinct. And on the south were a number of large public buildings that housed the religious and civic administration of the city and Samaria as a whole.

The walls of the sacred precinct in the Hellenistic period were unusually thick, 6.5 feet, and constructed of well-hewn, but undressed, quarried stones, thus necessitating coating inside and out with two layers of plaster. This was probably coated with whitewash. This same treatment was given to the adjacent private houses. This surely gave an impressive shimmering white appearance to both the sacred precinct and the city as a whole.

In this period, doctrinal disputes between the Jews and Samaritans became intense, each claiming divine sanctions for its beliefs. For the Jews the Temple in Jerusalem was the divine choice. For the Samaritans it was Mt. Gerizim. The Jews held that Jerusalem’s Temple Mount was Mt. Moriah where Abraham had offered to sacrifice his son before divine intervention stayed his hand (see 2 Chronicles 3:1). For the Samaritans, this happened on Gerizim.

At a moment when the Seleucid empire (of which both Judea and Samaria were a part) was weakened, the Judean governor John Hyrcanus I took advantage of the situation and campaigned militarily to expand his rule. On a march into Samaria, he captured Gerizim and destroyed the temple and the city. The city was completely consumed by fire. We found a thick conflagration stratum everywhere we dug. John Hyrcanus’s soldiers apparently left nothing in their wake. The many weapons—arrowheads, a sword, lead projectiles, spearheads and daggers—along with coins of John Hyrcanus, reflect the brutal battle that must have been waged here. The temple at Gerizim was never rebuilt. It remained a mound of ruins until our excavation.

In 484 C.E. the Roman emperor Zeno constructed an octagonal church to Mary Theotokos, Mary Mother of God, in the center of the former Samaritan sacred precinct. The construction of the church and related buildings thoroughly destroyed what may have been left of earlier buildings in the sacred precinct, including the temple. Its octagonal construction marks it as a martyrium, a memorial church, like the Kathisma church, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the church over the house of Peter in Capernaum.^b

Approximately 400 inscriptions were recovered in our excavation at Gerizim. Some of them provide strong evidence for the existence of the Samaritan temple. For example, several of them contain the expression “for good remembrance before God in this place,” a clear reference to the temple. Moreover, the Biblical phrase “before God” always refers to God’s physical presence, that is, a temple or holy site.

The personal name of the Israelite God is Yahweh, written YHWH, the so-called tetragrammaton. We found a stone inscribed with the tetragrammaton. It is written in paleo-Hebrew script, the script used before the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. This script was rarely used thereafter, mostly to invoke the sanctity of the inscription and a time long ago. In this case it was apparently part of the phrase “House of YHWH.” We also found the tetragrammaton on a silver finger ring.

Another inscription with an obvious reference to the Samaritan temple reads “Joseph [son of X] offered [for] his [wi]fe and for his sons [before the Lo]rd in the temple.” The Gerizim inscriptions are mostly in Aramaic and Greek. This one, however, is in Hebrew.

An inscription in Aramaic refers to the “House of Sacrifice.” In 2 Chronicles 7:12, Solomon’s temple is referred to as the “House of Sacrifice.”

As the inscriptions are in Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew, so are they in different scripts. We have already mentioned paleo-Hebrew. More inscriptions are in the square Aramaic script used after the Babylonian exile (and still used today). Still others, similar to paleo-Hebrew, are in the Samaritan script (which is also still used today by the small communities of Samaritans living in Holon, Israel, as well as near Gerizim). The Greek inscriptions are, of course, in the Greek script.

Many of the inscriptions contain the names and titles of the priests (cohen and levi), suggesting their duties as officiants at the temple.

Some of the Hellenistic-period inscriptions include the phrase “that which is offered,” referring to a sacrifice. The remains of these sacrifices are found in the hundreds of thousands of burnt animal bones (which we have only just begun to analyze scientifically).

The Greek inscriptions come primarily from two different periods. In the Hellenistic period they are the product of Greek-speaking Samaritans, mostly from Egypt and Greece. Other Greek inscriptions come from the fourth century C.E., when the Samaritans returned to the site and apparently built a synagogue (which has yet to be found). They were driven away by the Christians in the Byzantine period, when they built the Church of Mary Theotokos. But the Samaritans returned to the site again in the Crusader period.

An inscription from the fourth century C.E. records the donation of gold coins to the sacred site. A sundial from the Hellenistic period includes a Greek inscription that refers to “God Most High.”

Thus, the historical sources (especially Josephus), the architectural remains, the burnt bones, the small finds and the inscriptions all unequivocally demonstrate the existence of a Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim built in imitation of the Temple in Jerusalem.

According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, the Samaritan leader Sanballat promised to build a temple on Gerizim, the Samaritan’s holy mountain, in imitation of the Jerusalem temple. This, Josephus tells us, occurred at the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Land of Israel (332 B.C.E.).