Where was Endor, the home of the witch of Endor?

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Accepted Answer

Endor was a village at the eastern end of the valley of Jezreel, on the northern slope of the hill of Moreh, in Lower Galilee in today's Israel. It is most often placed at Khirbet es-Safsafa, near the old Arab village of Indur that kept the name; the map's point stands there, about 4.7 km south of Mount Tabor, 6.7 km north-east of Shunem and about 98 km north of Jerusalem in a straight line. Indur itself and Tell el-Ajjul are other candidates, and a few look to the western end of the valley near Taanach. History Globe has an article on En-dor; this answer keeps to where it was. Its place explains the story. Before the battle of Gilboa “the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem: and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa”, across the valley to the south. When the Lord did not answer him, Saul said, “Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit… And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor.” To reach her “Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night”: from Israel's camp by the spring in Jezreel, about 11 km in a straight line, past the Philistine camp at Shunem and round the hill of Moreh, behind the enemy lines. Joshua lists Endor among the Canaanite towns that Manasseh held within Issachar and Asher, beside Beth-shean, Taanach and Megiddo, and Psalm 83 (82 in the Synodal numbering) recalls the enemies of Deborah's day “which perished at Endor”. The map dates Saul's night visit and his death on Gilboa the next day to about 1010 BC, a conventional point. Eusebius placed Endor four miles south of Tabor; Indur was abandoned in 1948, and the kibbutz Ein Dor nearby takes its name from the ancient town.