The people who did most to bring about this confusion in regard to the
sacred sites were the Crusaders. Knights and priests of the twelfth
century, arriving in Palestine, were strangers in the country, and
although enthusiastic they were ignorant and illiterate. They used to
land at Athlit, and journey thence to Nazareth or to Jerusalem, fixing
as many places _en route_ as they could. Athlit itself they regarded
as the ancient Tyre! Meon, the home of Nabal, they fixed close by,
because Mount Carmel was not far off, and Abigail came from Carmel.
They did not recognise that the Carmel of Abigail and Nabal was a city
in the south of Judah. Knowing that Capernaum was a fishing town, they
placed it on the Mediterranean coast and identified it with a fortress
of their day, now the village called Kefr Lam. These three places,
which were shown to the religious devotee as soon as he landed, are in
reality many days’ journey apart. Caipha (Haifa) was shown as a place
where Simon Peter used to fish. Shiloh was south of Bethel, and was
in fact the mountain now called Nebi Samwil. Sychar and Shechem were
one and the same place. “The Quarantania or Kuruntul mountain” (says
Conder) “has, from the twelfth century down, been shown as the place
where our Lord retired for the forty days of fasting in the desert.
Near to it the Crusaders also looked for the ‘exceeding high mountain’
whence the Tempter showed our Lord ‘all the kingdoms of the world and
the glory of them’ (Matt. iv. 8). Saewulf tells us that the site of
this mountain was 3 miles from Jericho. Fetellus places it north of
that town and 2 miles from Quarantania. The measurements bring us to
the remarkable cone called the Raven’s Nest. The story is wonderfully
descriptive of the simplicity of men’s minds in the twelfth century,
for the summit of the ‘exceeding high mountain,’ whence all the
kingdoms of the world were to have been seen, is actually lower than
the surface of the Mediterranean, and it is surrounded on every side by
mountains more than double its height.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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