Boid on the Samaritan claims about the top of mount Gerizim

In some messages about the Asât.îr I have said there is an assumption of the restoration of the missing fifteen cubits (22½’) of the top of the mountain. This is utterly wrong. I had reached the wrong conclusion from an obscurity in the text.

My translation in my monograph A Pair of Ancient Samaritan Eschatologies is still right, and my printed comments on the words are still right.

The concepts of the mountaintop being the Gate of Heaven and the place where Adam and Eve entered this level of existence by going down a flight of steps, combined with the concept of the distance being fifteen cubits, imply that at the End of Days when the dissociation of the expulsion of everything from the Garden is remedied, either the distance will be bridged, or else the levels of existence will be fused and the mountain won’t be needed. You could see this as implici in what the Asât.îr says, and it gets closer to saying it than any other text, but the words actually written don’t go that far.

As for the distance being fifteen cubits, I take this from one traditional Samaritan exegesis of the Flood story. It says in Genesis the waters were fifteen cubits above the highest mountains, and that means fifteen cubits above Mt. Gerizim. (But as you’d expect, there is a second line of exegesis saying the mountain was the only place not covered by water).