Regions
The Levant
Also Known As Levant Short form. The atlas files this entry under a longer name and readers reach for the shorter one. · Levantine
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The eastern Mediterranean coast and its hinterland, covering modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and western Syria. Judaism, Christianity, Samaritanism, the Druze Faith and Canaanite Religion are placed here, which makes it the densest region in the scheme. The Canaanite entry is the reason it matters: the Hebrew Bible's polemic against Baal is a quarrel between neighbours who shared a language and much of a pantheon, and the archaeological record has made the continuity harder to deny than it once was. Islam is filed to Arabia instead, though its formative expansion happened largely here.
Facts
Geography
LatitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim. LongitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim. Modern AreaIsrael, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria 1 Traditions
Principal Religious Traditions Principal Religious Traditions Principal Religious Traditions Sacred and Liturgical LanguagesHebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic 3 Learn More
The Most Contested Holy Ground on Earth
The Levant, the eastern Mediterranean coast and its hinterland, is the single densest and most contested piece of sacred geography in the world, because it is the birthplace of the three great Abrahamic monotheisms and holds sites central to all of them. It was here, in ancient Canaan and Israel, that Judaism emerged, with Jerusalem as the site of the Temple and the focus of Jewish longing and prayer ever since; here that Christianity began, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, making Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Galilee the Holy Land of Christian pilgrimage; and here that Jerusalem became, as the site of the Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey and Ascension, the third holiest city of Islam after Mecca and Medina. The result is a landscape where the same ground, the Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall, the tombs of the patriarchs at Hebron, carries overlapping and competing sacred claims of the deepest kind, a concentration of holiness that has made the region both a place of profound devotion and a focus of enduring conflict.
The Older Gods, and the Living Minorities
Beneath and around the Abrahamic faiths, the Levant preserves older and smaller religious worlds. Long before Israel, the region was the land of Canaanite religion, whose gods, the high god El, the storm god Baal, the goddesses Asherah and Anat, are known from the cuneiform tablets of Ugarit and form the polytheistic background against which, and in reaction to which, the monotheism of the Hebrew Bible defined itself; the biblical prophets' polemics against Baal are a direct record of that struggle.
The Levant also remains home to living religious minorities of great antiquity and distinctiveness: the Samaritans, an ancient offshoot of Israelite religion who still keep the Passover sacrifice on Mount Gerizim and now number only a few hundred; and the Druze, whose secretive, esoteric faith emerged from Ismaili Islam in the eleventh century and whose communities endure in the mountains of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. The region thus holds not only the shared holy places of half the world's believers but also the archaeological memory of the Canaanite gods and the enduring presence of some of the smallest and oldest surviving religious communities on earth.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names The Levant directly: "from Armenia through Asia Minor and the Levant during the forty-five-year reign of Artaxerxes II, 405 to 358 BCE."
This source names The Levant directly: "and the other principal cities of the Levant within two years."
Palmyra stood in the Syrian desert, at the edge of the Levant.
The alphabet was invented within this branch, in the Levant and Sinai.
This source names The Levant directly: "Armenia through Asia Minor and into the Levant."
Attested Here
Biblical Hebrew is documented in use as a written language in The Levant. The claim is where the language is documented in use as a written, literary or liturgical language. It is not a claim about the full extent of its speakers, and it is not a claim about where the language originated.
The scapegoat of Leviticus 16, driven out carrying what the community puts on it.
Hebrew is documented in use as a written language in The Levant. The claim is where the language is documented in use as a written, literary or liturgical language. It is not a claim about the full extent of its speakers, and it is not a claim about where the language originated.
The lion of Judah, and the lions of Daniel.
Sodom, Cities The narrative places the cities of the plain in the Levant, and no closer location is established.
The priestly source's tahor/tamei classification, set out in Leviticus 11 with a parallel list in Deuteronomy 14, matching the already-live Goat and Lion rows attested to The Levant on the same biblical association.
An artefact of translation: the re'em of the Hebrew Bible rendered monoceros in the Septuagint.
The great fish of Jonah, which the text does not call a whale.
Contains
Caesarea stands on the Levantine coast.
Canaan is the ancient name for the southern Levant.
Galilee is the northern part of the Levant.
Judea, Regions Judea is the southern highland of the Levant.
Moab, Regions Moab lies on the eastern edge of the Levant, across the Dead Sea.
The traditional identification places it above Petra, in southern Jordan.
Samaria is the central hill country of the Levant.
The West Bank lies within the Levant.
Originated Here
The sanctuaries of Israel and Judah, and from the monarchic period the Jerusalem Temple.
The Second Temple stood in Jerusalem in the Levant, the center of Second Temple Jewish religious life.
Plants Native Here
Cedar, Plants Cedrus libani, the cedar of Lebanon, is native to the mountains of the Levant. It is one of several unrelated aromatic woods the word cedar has covered.
Plants Used in Ritual Here
Principal Tradition Of
Related To
The Holy Land is a devotional name for part of the Levant.
The Levant is the Mediterranean coastal strip of the Near East and is catalogued separately.
Societies Attested Here
The Seleucid successor kingdom ruled much of the Levant through the Hellenistic Period, until Roman and Hasmonean power displaced it.
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024s.v. regional geographyView the Source 2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005The geography of religionsQuote, The geography of religions
General reference for the extent of each region and for the traditions placed within it.
3. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997s.v. regional traditionsView the Source The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source Ugaritic Narrative Poetry
Simon B. Parker (ed.); Mark S. Smith and others (trans.), Society of Biblical Literature, 1997Canaanite religion at UgaritView the Source Leviticus 1-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
Jacob Milgrom, Doubleday, 1991Attested Here: The Clean and Unclean Animals of Levitical LawView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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