Where was Jesus tempted?

Question

Accepted Answer

In the wilderness, the Gospels say, without naming the spot: “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil”, straight after his baptism in the Jordan. Since the Crusader period the place has been shown on Jebel Quruntul, the cliff that rises steeply over Jericho on the west, where the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Temptation clings to the rock; the map point stands at Jericho below it, about 22 km east of Jerusalem and about 11 km from the traditional place of the baptism in a straight line. Scholars treat the mountain as a tradition, not a record: the wilderness of Judea, the bare slope that falls from the hills to the Jordan rift, is all the text gives. Luke says Jesus “returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness”; Mark that “he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts”. Two of the three temptations move elsewhere: the devil “taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple”, and “into an exceeding high mountain”, from which he shows all the kingdoms of the world; Luke puts the mountain second and the temple last. The wilderness meant is the one John preached in, the desert of Judea between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, a day's walk from the ford where John baptized; the forty days answer Israel's forty years in the wilderness, and Jesus answers each temptation from Deuteronomy. The monks came first, the tradition later. About 340 Chariton founded the laura of Douka on Quruntul, and Byzantine cells and chapels filled its caves; but the link with the forty days is recorded only from the twelfth century, when the Crusaders called the cliff Mons Quarantana, the mount of the forty days, and built one church in a cave halfway up and another on the summit; the present monastery, built around the cave chapel, dates from 1895. The Gospels name no mountain, so the identification rests on medieval tradition alone. The “pinnacle of the temple” is usually taken to be a corner of Herod's platform, most often the south-eastern above the Kidron; Josephus says that to look down from the royal portico on the southern side made the head swim.