Valaam, one of the islands of the archipelago of the same name, is located in the northern part of Lake Ladoga. The Orthodox monastery that has existed here for many centuries could not but influence the toponymy of its surroundings. Otherwise, where could the city of Olives, Zion, Tabor, the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and the Garden of Gethsemane have come from?

With the arrival of the monastic population to Balaam, many geographical features received new names, which were transferred to Balaam from the map of Palestine and are associated with biblical legends.

In the western part of Valaam, in the area of Bolshaya Nikonovskaya Bay, the Resurrection Skete is located. The construction of the skete church was started in 1902. Created by analogy with the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, it became known as the New Jerusalem. The church has two churches. The lower one-in the name of the Apostle Andrew the First-Called-is located in the basement of the building and is also called the Cave Temple. The gloomy dark interior of the church was supposed to remind pilgrims of the cave in which, according to biblical legend, the body of Jesus Christ was located after the crucifixion. In front of the marble crypt, in the chapel of the angel, stood a cube-shaped stone, similar to the one that was rolled up to the entrance to the cave of the Holy Sepulchre. It contained a piece of" genuine stone " from Jerusalem. The upper church of the temple, bright and solemn, in the name of the Resurrection of the Lord, later gave the name to the temple and the resulting skete. Mount Nikon, on the top of which the skete is built, is sometimes called, by analogy with Jerusalem, Mount Zion. Although this name is a microtoponym, it is very rarely used in the speech of the local population.

From Bolshaya Nikonovskaya Bay, from New Jerusalem, the main monastery road leads to Malaya Nikonovskaya Bay and when approaching the next skete passes over a bridge over a small ditch - Kedron: "Having said these things, Jesus went out with His disciples beyond the brook Kedron, where there was a garden, into which He and His disciples entered" (The Gospel of St. John the Baptist). St. John's. 18, 1).

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In 1911, the Gethsemane Skete, consisting of a church, two chapels and two houses, was founded in Balaam, behind the Kedron. Built in a low place, surrounded by mighty pines and firs, the small wooden hermitage looks warm and cozy. It is extremely nice here both in winter and summer. All the buildings of the Gethsemane skete are painted yellow. The surrounding area of the skete also has biblical names. As we know from the legend, on the fortieth day after the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ appeared to the disciples, led them out of the city to the Mount of Olives (Mount of Olives) and, raising his hands, blessed, and when he blessed, began to ascend to heaven. Mount Balaam, at the foot of which stands the Gethsemane Skete, is called the Mount of Olives in honor of this event, and the chapel on its top is called Voznesenskaya.

At the foot of Mount Olivet in Balaam is an area called the Garden of Gethsemane. It is known from the Bible that after the dormition of the Mother of God, her body was buried in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the cave where the bodies of her parents and the righteous Joseph were buried. Therefore, the church of the Gethsemane skete on Valaam was named Assumption.

Even before the Dormition of the Mother of God, after the Last Supper, Jesus Christ was in the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed fervently, was betrayed by Judas and taken by soldiers. Prayer for the Chalice - this is the name of a small wooden chapel in the Gethsemane garden of Balaam.

The twinkle of distant stars is indifferent

A bend in the road was illuminated.

The road went around the Mount of Olives,

The Kidron River flowed beneath it.

The night distance now seemed like an edge

Annihilation and non-existence.

The expanse of the universe was uninhabited,

Only the garden was a place to live.

And looking into those black holes,

Empty, with no beginning or end,

May this cup of death pass away,

In a bloody sweat, he prayed to his father...

Parsnips. Gethsemane Garden.

Beyond the gates of the skete of Gethsemane, the road continues through the field of Nicon, also called the Valley of Jehoshaphat: "Let the nations arise and come down to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all nations on every side" (Joel. 3, 12).

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The next object with the biblical name Dead Sea is one of the inner lakes of Valaam - Leshchevoe. One of the biblical legends says that when Jesus was thirty years old, he came to the Jordan River to John to be "baptized by him." In Balaam, the Jordan is an artificial channel connecting the inner lakes Leshchevoe and Sredneostrovskoe, the original name of which is Kirpichnaya Kanava or Kirpichny Kanal. In Palestine, the Jordan River connects the Dead Sea with Lake Gennesaret. By analogy, since Lake Leshchevoe is called the Dead Sea in Valaam, Lake Sredneostrovskoye should also have a second name - Lake Gennisaretskoye. But this name is not found anywhere: neither among the local population, nor in the literature about Balaam. Thus, we see that there is only a partial borrowing of several biblical names on Balaam.

From Leshchevoe Lake, the road passes through the forest and soon turns to the left, to Monastyrskaya Bay, where the Transfiguration Cathedral of the monastery of the same name rises on the mountain. The mountain has an unofficial name-Tabor. According to the Bible, shortly before his sufferings, Jesus Christ took three disciples, Peter, James, and John, and went up with them to Mount Tabor to pray. While he was praying, the disciples fell asleep from exhaustion. When they awoke, they saw that Jesus Christ had been transformed: his face shone like the sun, and his clothes were white as snow, that is, the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ took place on Mount Tabor.

However, despite the fact that some geographical features of Balaam have biblical names, the Balaam monks still failed to copy the exact plan of Jerusalem. So, for example, in Palestine, the Kidron does not originate in the area of Gethsemane, as we see in Balaam, but flows from Mount Zion, near the Mount of Olives, through the Kidron Valley, the Judean desert and flows into the Dead Sea. If such names as New Jerusalem, Gethsemane Skete, Kedron, and Olivet are officially established in Balaam and are found in various sources, then the names of Mount Tabor, Zion, the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and the Valley of Jehoshaphat are microtoponyms that are common in the stories of guides, monks, and local residents.

Petrozavodsk

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