Where was the Transfiguration?

Question

Accepted Answer

The Gospels do not name the mountain. Two have been proposed: Mount Tabor, the rounded hill that rises alone from the plain of Jezreel about 9 km east of Nazareth, the traditional site, named by Origen in the third century and by Cyril of Jerusalem and Jerome in the fourth, and the one the map shows, and Mount Hermon, the great snow-capped mountain north of Galilee, which many modern scholars prefer; Mount Meron in Upper Galilee has also been suggested. Matthew says that “after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart”, and there he “was transfigured before them”. The six days follow the confession of Peter “into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi”, at the foot of Hermon: the Hermon point on the map is about 22 km from Caesarea Philippi, Tabor about 68 km. Hermon's advocates add that it is by far the higher and best answers to “an high mountain”. Second Peter speaks only of “the holy mount”. Tabor's case is tradition. Origen is the first known to name it; Cyril of Jerusalem and Jerome follow in the fourth century, and Byzantine churches were built on the summit; Jerome's friend Paula climbed it. Against it, Josephus says that in the first century people lived on the summit and that he himself walled it against the Romans, which some find hard to square with a retreat “apart”, and no first-century witness ties the Transfiguration to any mountain by name. Neither mountain can be called certain, so the map shows the traditional one and notes the other.