Mount Tabor
A mountain at the eastern end of the Jezreel valley in Galilee, where Barak gathered his army against Sisera. Since at least the fourth century Christians have named it as the mountain of the transfiguration.
Mount Tabor rises at the eastern end of the Jezreel valley in Lower Galilee, about 18 kilometres west of the Sea of Galilee. Joshua names it on the border of the tribe of Issachar (Joshua 19:22). Deborah told Barak to gather ten thousand men on it, and from it he went down against Sisera’s chariots (Judges 4:6, 12–14). A psalm and Jeremiah use it as a landmark, beside Hermon and Carmel (Psalm 89:12) (Jeremiah 46:18).
The Gospels say only that Jesus was transfigured on “a high mountain” (Matthew 17:1–2). Cyril of Jerusalem, about AD 350, speaks of the “Transfiguration on Mount Tabor” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 12.16). The identification rests on tradition of this kind. The New Testament does not name the place.
What happened here
- c. 1375 or c. 1200 – c. 1050 BC, traditional dateThe Age of the Judges
After Joshua, Israel lives in its tribes without a king. The book of Judges tells of a repeated turn to other gods, foreign oppression, and rescue by leaders called judges, among them Deborah, Gideon and Samson.
- c. AD 29 or 32, estimated dateThe Transfiguration
Mark, Matthew and Luke tell how three disciples on a high mountain see Jesus changed in appearance, his clothes shining white, with Moses and Elijah beside him, and hear a voice from a cloud call him “my beloved Son”. The Gospels do not name the mountain.