The Samaritan Understanding of a Heavenly Paradise

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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Secret Alias
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The Samaritan Understanding of a Heavenly Paradise

Post by Secret Alias »

I was told in this forum that the Samaritan idea of Gerizim 'the high mountain' = Paradise being in heaven (where the mountain top is now in heaven) is utterly implausible as an 'original concept from the authors of the Torah' and subsequently handed down to generations of Samaritan high priests. But I started to think the other day about these words:
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin[d] and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush.[e] 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
The word for 'garden' in the LXX (which as we know from Gmirkin is close to the original text) is a Greek reproduction of the Persian pardes.

Secondly Philo generally arranges his answers where the initial explanation is discountable. In Questions and Answers on Genesis he strongly implies that this paradise is in heaven:
For some say that the tree of life is the earth, for it causes all things to grow for the life of both man and all other things. Wherefore He apportioned a central place to this plant; and the centre of all is the earth. And some say that the tree of life is a name for the seven circlese which are in heaven. And some say it is the sun because it is, in a sense, in the midst of the planets and is the cause of the seasons, by which all things are produced. And some have said that the tree of life is the government of the soul.
His next words seem to be inspired by the Samaritan understanding. I cite in full:
What is the river that went out from Eden, by which Paradise is watered; and four rivers separated, the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates For the sources of the Tigris (Arm. Dktat‘) and Euphrates (Arm. Aracani) are said to rise in the Armenian mountains. And in that place there is no Paradise, nor are there the two other sources of the river. Unless perhaps Paradise is in some distant place far from our inhabited world, and has a river flowing under the earth, which waters many great veins so that these rising send (water) to other recipient veins, and so become diffused. And as these are forced by the rush of water, the force which is in them makes its way out to the surface, both in the Armenian mountains and elsewhere.


So the understanding is clearly that the sources of rivers are mountain tops. Of course he avoids explaining what is the ultimate source of all four rivers mentioned but clearly whether Gerizim or another mountain his discussion confirms the Samaritan idea that Paradise is located on a mountain top and from that Paradise the source of all four rivers are to be found.

The point of the thread was to say that with rivers starting in Ethiopia, Egypt and Mesopotamia there are really only two possibilities for the ultimate source (a) underground or (b) above ground.
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ConfusedEnoch
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Re: The Samaritan Understanding of a Heavenly Paradise

Post by ConfusedEnoch »

Northern Israelites appropriated myths from the worshippers of Mount Hermon. Leviathan is the Litani river that splits below Mount Hermon.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The Samaritan Understanding of a Heavenly Paradise

Post by MrMacSon »

ConfusedEnoch wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 11:36 am Northern Israelites appropriated myths from the worshippers of Mount Hermon.
When? What time period/years?
Did they have a name?
rgprice
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Re: The Samaritan Understanding of a Heavenly Paradise

Post by rgprice »

#1 The concept certainly seems plausible to me. Especially since this basically matches the description of Mt Olympus of the Greeks.

However:

#2 This reading does not plainly exist in the text at all. This interpretation relies on many, many inferences.

I would add that the very beginning of Genesis also supports this concept however, IMO.

6 Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. 8 God called the expanse heaven.
...
14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
...
20 Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.

Clearly, "heaven" is simply the sky. According to this cosmology, the sky that we see forms a layer between the earth and waters above the heavens, in which presumably nothing resides, not even gods. God, or gods, do not live in some magically undetectable invisible "heaven", they live in the sky.

Again, when we read Greek accounts of origins, including Plato, as Gmirkin has pointed out, the gods lived on earth initially, but then when the flood came they retreated "up to heaven", by ascending to the top of Mount Olympus, where they resided "in the heavens". So this understanding seems to fall directly in line with that, and is certainly a way to understand Genesis 2-11, where we begin with the Garden of Eden in a river valley where the gods live, but then there is a flood and the gods clearly have retreated up to heaven, which is why the people of Babylon attempt to build a tower to reach the gods, so they can again be near, as they were prior to the flood. But Yahweh knows that intermingling between gods and people is what caused the problems that lead his father El Elyon/Elohim to almost destroy all life, so he had to intervene to show "tough love" to mortals and cut them off from direct access to the gods, so that the antediluvian errors would not be repeated.

This very much falls in line with Greek concepts of the primordial world.
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