Mount Tabor, a rounded, isolated hill rising sharply from the Jezreel valley in lower Galilee, is held by Christian tradition to be the mountain of the Transfiguration.
A landmark before the Gospels
Tabor was a landmark and a place of cult long before the Christian association. It is named in the Hebrew Bible as a tribal boundary and as the mustering point from which the prophetess Deborah and the general Barak descended to battle, and its distinctive dome-like shape made it a natural sacred height in a broad valley.
The Transfiguration
Christian tradition identifies Tabor as the "high mountain" of the Gospels where Jesus was transfigured before three of his disciples, shining with light and appearing between Moses and Elijah, an event understood as a revelation of his divine glory. The Gospels do not name the mountain, and the identification is a tradition of later centuries, but it has been firmly held since the Byzantine period and has made Tabor a place of pilgrimage.
Two churches on the summit
The summit, reached by a steep switchback road, carries two churches marking the event from separate traditions: a Franciscan Roman Catholic basilica, built in the twentieth century over Byzantine and Crusader remains, and a Greek Orthodox church. The feast of the Transfiguration is celebrated there. The site remains an active place of Christian pilgrimage, and the summit gives one of the widest views in Galilee.