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Archaeology

Mt Hermon and Banias

Mt Hermon and Banias

The mountain where 1 Enoch's Watchers descended, and the cave-spring at its foot where Peter, much later, would call Jesus the Messiah.

The mountain

Mount Hermon — Hebrew Ḥermon, Arabic Jabal al-Shaykh — is the southern end of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range. The summit ridge is 2,814 meters high, with three peaks running north–south along the spine of the range. Snow covers it most of the year, which is unusual in this part of the world; from the lowlands of northern Israel, Hermon is visible as a white cap on the horizon for nine or ten months out of twelve.

Today the mountain sits on the seam of three modern countries: Israel (the southern slopes), Lebanon (the northern and western slopes), Syria (the eastern slopes). In antiquity the same mountain marked the northern boundary of the land of Israel as described in Deut 3:8.

A mountain covered in temples

What's archaeologically remarkable about Hermon is the sheer density of ancient temples on its slopes. The French archaeologist Julien Aliquot, in his comprehensive 2009 study, catalogued more than 30 temples and shrines documented across the mountain's southern, western, and eastern flanks — most dating from the late Hellenistic and Roman periods, but many built on top of earlier Iron Age or even Bronze Age cult sites.

The highest of them all is Qaṣr ʿAntar, at roughly 2,800 meters near the summit ridge. This is, as far as we know, the highest known sanctuary in the ancient world. A Greek inscription found there, dated to the Hellenistic period, reads (in translation): "According to the order of the greatest holy god, those who swear an oath proceed from here."

The mountain where oaths were sworn — at the place where heaven and earth touch. Read 1 Enoch 6:6 again with that fact in mind:

"And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it."

The author of 1 Enoch knew his geography. The mountain he chose for the Watchers' oath was already a known site for oath-swearing.

Banias / Caesarea Philippi — the southern foot

At the southern foot of Hermon, where the spring emerges that becomes one of the three headwaters of the Jordan, sits a place called by many names: Banias in Arabic, Panias / Paneas in Greek, Baniyas in modern Hebrew, and historically Caesarea Philippi under Roman rule.

The site is dominated by a huge cave at the base of a cliff. Water poured out of the cave in antiquity (today the spring emerges from below the cave mouth, due to seismic shifts). From the Hellenistic period onward, the cave was a sanctuary of Pan — the Greek god of wild places, of music, of unsettling solitude. The Greek name Paneion (later corrupted to Banias) means "the place of Pan."

Around the cave, the Herod the Great built a temple to Augustus in the 1st century BCE. After Herod's death, his son Philip the Tetrarch rebuilt the town and renamed it Caesarea Philippi — "Caesar's city, the one belonging to Philip" — to distinguish it from the coastal Caesarea his father had built. Philip made it the capital of his small inland tetrarchy. Coins were minted here. The Roman administration ran through here.

This is the place the Gospel of Matthew names as the setting for one of the most famous scenes in the New Testament:

"When Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that the Son of Man is?" — Matt 16:13

Most scholars treat that geographic detail as significant. The Gospels usually don't bother to locate dialogues precisely. When they do, it's worth asking why.

One reading — argued by Adela Yarbro Collins and others — is that the location is theologically loaded. The conversation about Jesus's identity, specifically the question of whether he is the Son of Man (Daniel 7's title, the title that 1 En 46–71 had attached to an enthroned divine figure), is being staged at the precise location where, in the older Jewish narrative tradition, divine beings had once swarmed down to corrupt humanity. The shadow of the Watchers' mountain falls across Peter's confession.

What's there today

  • The Banias archaeological park in northern Israel includes the Pan sanctuary cave, the Herodian temple platform, the Roman city, and a Crusader-era fortress higher up the slope. It's a major Israeli National Park.
  • The summit of Mt Hermon itself is a closed military zone on the Israeli side, with a ski resort on the southern slopes (the only ski resort in Israel).
  • Most of the 30-plus ancient temples Aliquot catalogued are on the Lebanese side of the mountain. Some have been excavated; most haven't.

Cross-references

Further reading

  • J. Aliquot, La vie religieuse au Liban sous l'Empire romain (IFPO, 2009) — the comprehensive catalog of Mt Hermon's ancient cult sites.
  • A. Berlin, "The archaeology of ritual: the sanctuary of Pan at Banias/Caesarea Philippi," BASOR 315 (1999): 27–45.
  • V. Tzaferis & S. Israeli, Paneas: The Roman to Early Islamic Periods (IAA, 2008) — the main excavation report.
  • E. Lipiński, On the Skirts of Canaan in the Iron Age (Peeters, 2006).
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