Reconsidering the Identity of Pseudo-Eupolemus: Mount Gerizim and Cult Centralization in Hellenistic Palestine

The Greek fragments conventionally known as Pseudo-Eupolemus, preserved by Eusebius via Alexander Polyhistor, offer a striking Hellenistic rewriting of the Abraham traditions, weaving together biblical narrative, mythographic genealogy, antediluvian wisdom, and accounts of the transmission of culture. Since Freudenthal, these fragments have generally been ascribed to a Samaritan author, primarily because one fragment includes an account of Abraham’s encounter with Melchizedek on Mount Gerizim. The present article reassesses this attribution in light of recent work on Hellenistic Palestine, Samaritan origins, Mount Gerizim, and the pre-Samaritan textual tradition. It argues that the criteria customarily invoked in support of Samaritan identification—syncretism, “Phoenician patriotism”, the form Ἀργαριζίν, and the favorable reference to Mount Gerizim—are less decisive than has commonly been assumed. Read against the fluid Yahwistic landscape of pre-Hasmonean Palestine, these features need not presuppose a hardened Judean–Samaritan divide. The article accordingly contends that a Judean-Hellenistic author, distinct from Eupolemus himself, should be considered as a serious historical possibility.