Mount Tabor

Mount Tabor
	Mount Tabor
height	588 m
location	Israel
Coordinates	32 ° 41 '12 " N , 35 ° 23' 25" E Coordinates: 32 ° 41 '12 " N , 35 ° 23' 25" E

The Mount Tabor ( Hebrew הר תבור, Har Tavor, Latin: Atabyrion ) is a mountain on the eastern edge of the Jezreel plain in Galilee in northern Israel .

It was once a famous pre-Christian place of worship in antiquity and, according to Christian tradition, is said to have been the place of the transfiguration of Jesus Christ . Its isolated location and its height of 588 meters are very distinctive; the summit is several hundred meters above the surrounding landscape and is still a destination for Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox pilgrims and tourists.

geology

The mountain is an island mountain , an isolated hill or small mountain that stands in the gently sloping plain of the surrounding country. It is not of volcanic origin. Despite its proximity to the mountains of Nazareth , it is a separate geological form.

history

In the 2nd millennium BC The Canaanites worshiped the god Ba'al on Mount Tabor . The mountain is also mentioned as a place of worship in the Old Testament . In 55 BC An army of 30,000 rebels led by Alexander - the son of the Hasmonean Aristobulus II - against Roman rule in the Middle East is defeated on Mount Tabor by Aulus Gabinius , the Roman governor of the province of Syria .

At the time of the crusades from around 1100 there was a monastery of the Benedictines on the mountain , from which they were expelled by the Muslim Ayyubids after the battle of Hattin in 1187 . Between 1211 and 1213 the Ayyubid Sultan al-Adil I had a hilltop castle built around the strategically located monastery building, with a massive surrounding wall 1750 meters long and ten towers. In December 1217 this castle on Mount Tabor was besieged unsuccessfully by the army of the Fifth Crusade under King Andrew II of Hungary . Since they were cut off from supplies due to constant attacks by the Knights Templar on the area around the castle, the Muslims destroyed the facility in 1218 and withdrew. In 1241 at the latest, the area came under the rule of the Crusaders again and Christian monks settled on Mount Tabor again. In 1255 Pope Alexander IV transferred the complex on behalf of the local monks to the Hospitaller Order . Ordinarily the knights of the order would have re-fortified the Muslim castle complex, but apparently they only occupied the existing monastery building in the southeast corner of the castle complex and relied on their protected position on the mountain top, surrounded by steep slopes. In 1263 the complex was conquered by the Mamluk sultan Baibars I.

An approaching Ottoman relief army under Jezzar Ahmet Pasha was put to flight during the siege of Acre on April 16, 1799 in the battle of Mount Tabor by the clearly outnumbered French during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign .

View of Mount Tabor (around 1850)

Transfiguration Basilica on Mount Tabor

State 1933

From 1631 the Franciscans settled on the mountain. Its Roman Catholic Church (Transfiguration Basilica), built between 1921 and 1924, is still the prominent point on the eastern side of the mountain plateau, the northern part is occupied by an Elias Church and a Greek Orthodox monastery. There are also remains of the ancient and medieval fortifications.

In 1901 Kfar Tabor was founded, at the foot of the mountain and named after him.

Mythology and Religious Sources

In the Tanach , Mount Tabor occurs in the following contexts:

Tabor lies on the border of the tribal areas Zebulun, Issachar, Naftali (Jos 19:12, 22:34; 1Chr 6:62); that Tabor is given to the Levites is only attested in 1Chr 6:62, but not in the parallel report Jos 21.
Barak moves against Sisera to Mount Tabor and from there down with 10,000 soldiers (Judg 4, 6, 12, 14).
Sebach and Zalumna killed men on or in Tabor (Judges 8:18) - here it is unclear whether the mountain or the place is meant.
At the Tabor Terebinth Saul meets three men who are moving to Bet-El , from whom he is supplied with two breads ( 1 Samuel 10 EU ); However, the places mentioned in the context do not give the impression that there is a reference to Mount Tabor (Bet-El, Gibea, Rachel's grave in Bethlehem are each located in the Benjamin area or its vicinity; that is, much further south than that Mount Tabor).
Tabor and Hermon cheer over God's name (Ps 89:13).
The height of God is compared with the height of Tabor compared to other mountains (Jer 46:18); besides that, Tabor only appears in prophetic literature in Hos 5,1.

In the biblical tradition, Mount Tabor is the world mountain : Hebrew tabbur means "navel (of the world)". Christians associate the Lord's transfiguration with him. Jesus appeared to his disciples in divine form on the "Mount of Transfiguration" . ( Matthew 17 EU , Mark 9 EU , Luke 9 EU ). The light they saw is called the Tabor light ; it played a major role in the hesychasm debates in the 14th century.

After numerous mountain fortresses of the Middle Ages were Tabor called, often locations of fortified churches .

The town of Montabaur in Rhineland-Palatinate was named after this mountain in 1217 and in 1421 at the time of the Hussite Wars in Bohemia the town of Tábor was named as the "settlement of the transfigured". There is a Mont Thabor in the French Alps.

literature

Immanuel Benzinger : Atabyrion 2 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Sp. 1888.

Web links

Commons : Berg Tabor - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Monika Müller: Tabor. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific biblical lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff., Accessed on February 25, 2009.

Individual evidence

↑ See Kristian Molin: Unknown Crusader Castles. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001. Pages 18, 70, 81 (English)
↑ Monika Müller: Tabor. In: Wibilex. Retrieved October 15, 2018 .
↑ The term Transfiguration Mountain . This Mont Thabor is mentioned, for example, in: Franz Georg Willeit: Kreuz und Kreuzigungsdarstellung im Wandel der Zeit , a master's thesis of the Catholic theological faculty of the University of Innsbruck from 1992, p. 11 with the text quote on its religious transfiguration: "On the one hand it was forbidden To portray God, on the other hand, Jesus could not be portrayed either, since his human appearance was so outshone by his divinity during his lifetime that even the disciples could not bear to look at him on the Mount of Transfiguration. "

[1] See Kristian Molin: Unknown Crusader Castles. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001. Pages 18, 70, 81 (English)

[2] Monika Müller: Tabor. In: Wibilex. Retrieved October 15, 2018 .

[3] The term Transfiguration Mountain . This Mont Thabor is mentioned, for example, in: Franz Georg Willeit: Kreuz und Kreuzigungsdarstellung im Wandel der Zeit , a master's thesis of the Catholic theological faculty of the University of Innsbruck from 1992, p. 11 with the text quote on its religious transfiguration: "On the one hand it was forbidden To portray God, on the other hand, Jesus could not be portrayed either, since his human appearance was so outshone by his divinity during his lifetime that even the disciples could not bear to look at him on the Mount of Transfiguration. "