Mount of Temptation

Coordinates: 31°52′29″N 35°25′50″E / 31.87472°N 35.43056°E / 31.87472; 35.43056
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jebel Quruntul
Mount of Temptation
Mount Quarantine
Arabic)
Geography
Jebel Quruntul in the 1941 Survey of Palestine
LocationIsraeli-Occupied West Bank
Country State of Palestine
GovernorateJericho
MunicipalityJericho
Parent rangeJudaean Mountains
BiomeJudaean Desert
Geology
OrogenyJerusalem Formation[5]
Age of rockTuronian[5]
Type of rockLimestone[5]

Mount of Temptation, in

Arabic: جبل لقرنطل), is a mountain over the city of Jericho in the West Bank, in the State of Palestine; ancient Christian tradition identifies it as the location of the temptation of Jesus described in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in which it is said that, from "a high place", the Devil
offered Jesus rule over all the kingdoms of the world.

Since at least the 4th century, Christian tradition has specifically associated the forty days of Jesus's fasting that preceded his temptation with a cave on Jebel Quruntul. Eventually, it came to be associated with the high mountain in the Gospel's description of temptation.

The city of Jericho lies at the feet east of Mount Quruntul, at 258 m (846 ft) below sea level, with the nearby Jordan River and the Dead Sea at even lower elevations, further to the east and southeast. The Mount has around 400 m (1,300 ft) of prominence over Jericho, which translates to an elevation of 138 m (453 ft) above sea level, and offers a commanding view of its fabled surroundings to the east.

Quruntul had previously been the location of a Seleucid and Maccabean fortress known as Dok (also Doq and Dagon), which was the site of the assassination of Simon Maccabeus and two of his sons in 134 BC.

Centuries after the death of Jesus, the Mount became the site of a

World Heritage status as part of religious traditions of El-Bariyah, the Judaean Desert
.

Names

Related to the Gospels

The standard Koine Greek texts of the New Testament state that, after his baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus went into a "solitary" or "desolate place" (Greek: εἰς τὴν ἔρημον, eis tḕn érēmon,[6][7] or ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, en tē̂ erḗmō).[8] All three passages where this is mentioned are traditionally translated into English as "the wilderness", although the same term is variously rendered in other locations in the Bible as a "secluded place", a "solitary place", or "the desert".[9] As the second temptation in Luke and the third in Matthew, from "a high mountain" (εἰς ὄρος ὑψηλὸν, eis óros hypsēlòn), the Devil offered Jesus "all the kingdoms of the world" (πάσας τὰς βασιλείας τοῦ κόσμου, pásas tàs basileías toû kósmou,[10] or τῆς οἰκουμένης, tē̂s oikouménēs).[11] On the Crusader-period Uppsala Map of Jerusalem, it appears as "mons excelsus",[12] literally "high mountain" (see here, top right quadrant).

When this passage was connected to a specific hill in

Latin: mons Quarantana,[13][14] Quarantena,[15] Quarennia,[16] Quarantania,[17] Querentius,[18] etc), after the 40-day period mentioned in the biblical accounts, quarranta being a Late Latin form of classical
quadraginta ("forty").

This was preserved in Arabic[19] as Mount Quruntul (جبل لقرنطل, Jebel el-Qurunṭul),[20] also transliterated Jabal al-Qurunṭul,[12] Jebel Kuruntul,[14] Jebel Kŭrŭntŭl,[19] Jabal al-Quruntul,[21] and Jabal al Qarantal,[1][2] and eventually properly translated as Jebel el-Arba'in (جبل الأربعين, Jabal al-Arba'in, 'Mount of the Forty').[12]

The name Mountain of Temptation, later Mount of Temptation, was first attested in English in 1654.[22]

In modern times, the name has been calqued into Arabic as Jebel et-Tajriba (جبل التجربـة), literally 'Mount of the Temptation'.[23]

Related to the ancient fortress

The Hebrew name of the Maccabean fortress on this hill is not separately recorded but was transliterated into Greek as Dōk (

Josephus.[25][26] The same name was preserved as Douka (Δουκα) as late as the early monasteries founded in the 4th century and two small settlements near the springs at the base of the mountain continue to bear the name Duyūk (ديوك). In Modern Hebrew, it is called Qarantal (קרנטל)[citation needed
], after the Arabic name.

Christian traditions

Main article: Temptation of Christ
Christ in a 12th-century mosaic in St Mark's
, Venice

In the

Luke is essentially the same, but the order of the last two temptations is reversed.[28]

A separate tradition recorded in

John Phocas's Ecphrasis, a 12th-century pilgrimage report, was that one of the tells at the base of the mount once held a temple commemorating the location where Joshua supposedly saw the archangel Michael (KJV).[30]

History

The precinct walls of an abandoned Russian monastery project at the summit, 2017
Jebel Quruntul overlooking the Plain of Jericho, 1931
Mt Quruntul, 1931
Jebel Quruntul, 1910
The monastery in 1913
The Jericho Cable Car (Sultan Téléphérique), 2019
See also: Monastery of the Temptation

Bronze Age to Hellenistic period

Jebel Quruntul is a

Macedonians, or the Diadochi.[35]

Maccabean Revolt

By the time of the

tyrant of Philadelphia (now Amman, Jordan).[25][26]

Late Roman and Byzantine periods

At some point in

conquest of Palestine in 635 and 636.[43]

Early Muslim and Crusader periods

Relatively peaceful coexistence of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the area

Queen Melisende of Jerusalem.[44]

Around the same time,

Itinerary considered it genuine.[16]

The area was lost to the Christians shortly after their 1187 defeat at Hattin to the Ayyubid sultan Saladin and largely depopulated.[43]

Ottoman period

Exposed to continual

safe passage, after which pilgrims were again permitted to climb to the grotto and the top of the mountain with a local guide. Isolated travelers were sometimes robbed along the route but, in the case of a servant of a French ambassador to the area, the mutasarrif of Jerusalem personally intervened to force the area's village leaders to restore everything that had been stolen. Van Egmond noted the Fathers of the Holy Sepulchre he traveled with continued to believe the ruined chapel at the Grotto of the Temptation had been personally established by St Helena but its construction did not seem nearly so ancient to his eyes.[46]

Modern times

Amid the

Chalcolithic to the Islamic Age[dubious – discuss].[3]

In 1998,

World Heritage status in 2012[52] and were included in the Jericho Oasis Archaeological Park established with Italian help in 2014.[53][54]

Mt Quruntul from the Jericho Plain, 2012. Part of 'Ushsh el-Ghurab is visible to the right.

Legacy

An account of

Christ's Temptation under the name "Mount Quarantania" forms part of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Christus: A Mystery.[55]

Alternative locations of biblical site

The "high mountain" of the biblical narrative has sometimes been identified with other locations in

chronicle placed the Devil's offer of dominion over the kingdoms of the world at Mount Precipice just south of Nazareth, where Jesus was separately said to have disappeared from a crowd[58] during one of his rejections by the Jewish community of his time.[21]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b CIA (1994), p. 18.
  2. ^ a b CIA (2008).
  3. ^ a b c d Jericho (2015).
  4. Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies
    . p. 69. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
  5. ^ a b c Khayat et al. (2019).
  6. ^ Matt. 4:1 Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine (Nestle Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine)
  7. ^ Mark 1:12 Archived 19 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine (Nestle Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine)
  8. ^ Luke 4:1 Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine (Nestle Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine)
  9. ^ See the relevant selections of the "Englishman's Concordance" at "2048. erémos Archived 2022-05-09 at the Wayback Machine" on Biblehub.com Archived 6 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine.
  10. ^ Matt. 4:8 Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine (Nestle Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine)
  11. ^ Luke 4:5 Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine (Nestle Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine)
  12. ^ a b c Boas, Adrian J. (5 November 2020). "On the Forsaken Desert". adrianjboas.com. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
  13. ^ a b c Pringle (1994), p. 152.
  14. ^ a b Saunders (1881), p. 167.
  15. ^ a b Pringle (2016), p. 281.
  16. ^ a b Pringle (2016), p. 94.
  17. ^ Easton (1897).
  18. ^ Pringle (2016), p. 116.
  19. ^ a b Palmer (1881), p. 344.
  20. ^ Nigro et al. (2015), p. 218.
  21. ^ a b Pringle (2016), p. 138.
  22. ^ Baxter (1654), p. 91.
  23. ^ "جبل الأربعين في أريحا: على قمته صام المسيح وتعبّد". حفريات (in Arabic). 6 December 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2022.
  24. ^ 1 Macc. 16:15 Archived 19 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine (LXX Archived 9 June 2022 at the Wayback Machine)
  25. ^
    Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIII, Ch. viii, §1. Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine
  26. ^
    Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War, Book I, Ch. ii, §3. Archived 9 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine
  27. ^ a b KJV
  28. ^ a b KJV
  29. ^ a b Mark 1
  30. ^ Conder et al. (1882), p. 401.
  31. ^ Gigot (1912).
  32. ^ Mazar (1996), p. 193.
  33. ^ Izzo et al. (2022).
  34. ^ Heenan (1994), p. 367.
  35. ^ a b Heenan (1994), p. 368.
  36. ^ a b Pringle (1994), p. 153.
  37. ^ 1 Maccabees 16:11–24
  38. ^ KJV
  39. ^ a b Heenan (1994), p. 369.
  40. ^ a b c d Mason (2017), p. 23.
  41. ^ Valdes (1998), p. 44.
  42. ^ a b c d Ali (2020).
  43. ^ a b c d e f g h Heenan (1994), p. 370.
  44. ^ a b c Pringle (1994), p. 150.
  45. ^ Pringle (1994), p. 151.
  46. ^ Van Egmont et al. (1759), p. 329–330.
  47. ^ Heenan (1994), p. 371.
  48. ^ Official site (archived), Jericho: Jericho Cable Car, 2011, archived from the original on 24 August 2011.
  49. ^ Nigro et al. (2015), p. 216.
  50. ^ Maltz (2021).
  51. ^ The Mount of Temptation from Jericho, Kehl: Arte Geie, 6 April 2012, archived from the original on 18 April 2013, retrieved 16 September 2023. (German)
  52. ^ WHO (2012).
  53. ^ Nigro et al. (2015), p. 215.
  54. ^ De Marco (2015).
  55. ^ Longfellow (1872), p. 13.
  56. ^ Conder et al. (1883), p. 185.
  57. ^ Saunders (1881), pp. 87 & 166.
  58. ^ Luke 4:29–30.

Bibliography

Further reading

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