CARMEL, MOUNT

Mountain range stretching from Haifa, Israel, south-eastward for about 15 miles and reaching a height of 1,800 feet above sea level. It separates the Plain of Saron (Sharon) on the south from the Plain of Aser on the north. The lofty headland of Carmel, with its church and Carmelite monastery, juts into the Mediterranean and can be seen for miles from a ship approaching the port of Haifa. Its Hebrew name karmel ordinarily means orchard, but here connotes a pleasant woodland. The range, which is still heavily wooded, but now mostly with scrub growth, was noted in antiquity for its magnificent forest (Am 1.2; Is 33.9; 35.2), symbolic of a land blessed by God (Jer 50.19).

Since antiquity Carmel has been regarded as a holy mountain. In the middle of the 2d millennium b.c. the geographical lists at Karnak called Carmel "the sacred cape"; Iamblichus (De vita Pythagorica 3.15) wrote that it was "the most holy of all mountains and forbidden of access to many," and Tacitus (Hist. 2.78) related that Vespasian, after offering sacrifice at Carmel's open–air altar, received the favorable oracle that hinted he would become emperor (see also Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars 8.5). This sacred mountain was chosen by Elijah as the site for the altar in the contest between him and the prophets of baal (1 Kgs 18.17–46). Tradition locates the place of Elijah's sacrifice on the rocky plateau of el–Muḥraqa on the southeast flank of the range. Carmel is now known in Arabic as Jebel Mâr Elyâs (Mountain of Lord Elijah).

Bibliography: Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible 324–325. f. m. abel, Géographie de la Palestine 1:350–353. d. baly, The Geography of the Bible (New York 1957) 136–137. m. du buit, Géographie de la Terre Sainte (Paris 1958) 65–66, 107. m. avi-yonah, "Mount Carmel and the God of Baalbek," Israel Exploration Journal 2 (1952) 118–124.

[c. mcgough]