THABOR, or TABOR, (anc. geog.) a mountain of Galilee, situated in a plain, and equally terminated or defined on every side; lying in the middle between the Campus Magnus or Great Plain, and Scythopolis. This mountain was the boundary of Issachar to the north, on the borders of Zabulon; and, according to Lightfoot, was distant about 10 miles to the north-west of Capernaum; which agrees with the relations of travellers. The most beautiful mountain in the world, both
in itself, and in the prospect it affords. Seen on the east and west sides, it exactly resembles a sugar-loaf; on the north and south sides, it appears of an oval round, with a deep valley running about it, so as to lie detached from, though near to, the other mountains, which it overtops. To the north-east, the east, and south-east, it has the plain of Galilee lying before it, and to the south and south-west the incomparably beautiful plain of Esdrelon; quite round, it rises equally high and steep, and appears green on every side, (Korte). A-top, it has an oval plain about three miles in compass. Over the plain of Esdrelon there is a view of the mountains of Gilboa; to the south and to the south-west, that of Mount Carmel; to the west, a prospect of the mountains of Nazareth, and over them of the Mediterranean; and to the north that of the beginning of Lebanon, and then that of Bashan, (Ibid.) At this mountain Barak collected the army he raised against Sisera, and in the plain below fought with him. Whether this was the high mountain on which our Saviour's transfiguration happened, mentioned by the evangelists, though affirmed by the generality, is however questioned by some. Ancient tradition is for it: whereas Lightfoot will have it to be a mountain near Cæsarea Philippi; probably that very high one which, according to Josephus, hangs over the springs of the Jordan, and at the foot of which stood Cæsarea.