The Quarantal – from “quarantena” meaning forty – takes its name from the forty days and nights.
Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism in the Jordan River.
The Monastery of the Temptation at Quarantal overlooks the town of Jericho in the Judean Desert.
Built onto the sheer face of the mountain, it stands over the cave tradition recognizes as the place Jesus spent those days in fasting and meditation. The grotto is now a small chapel called the Chapel of the First Temptation.
Its altar was erected over the stone where Jesus is said to have sat while he fasted.
The traditional way to the monastery is on foot up the narrow winding path, but recently a comfortable new cable car was installed allowing access to visitors of all ages who wish to see the beautiful monastery and the site of the temptation of Christ.
The present monastery is Greek Orthodox, built in the 19th century over the ruins of an earlier church. The monastic way of life has been followed here for millennia, but records of the tradition of climbing Mount Quarantal date back only as far as the Crusader period, to the 12th and 13th centuries.
At the walled summit over 550 feet high (170m), by the ruins of a Byzantine and Medieval church, is the Chapel of the Third Temptation. This marks the high place where the devil offered to give Jesus
*And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command
this stone that it be made of bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. Luke 4:1-4
This page is part of the book The Holy Land of Jesus
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