The Stella Maris Monastery is a Catholic Christian monastery for Discalced Carmelite monks , located on the slopes of Mount Carmel in Haifa , Israel .
64-658: The main church inside the Stella Maris Monastery is said to contain the Cave of Elijah , a grotto associated with the Biblical prophet Elijah . For centuries, it has been a destination for Christian , Muslim and Druze pilgrims. It is also known as the Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel for monks , to distinguish it from the nearby Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel for nuns , located higher up on Mount Carmel. In
128-603: A destination for Jewish , Christian , Muslim and Druze pilgrims. The Cave of Elijah in Allenby Road is divided into twos sections for praying, one for men and one for women; the cave is behind a velvet curtain. The Cave is also known as el- Khader in Arabic . The Druze regard it as holy, and many among them identify Elijah as "el- Khidr ", the green prophet who symbolizes water and life. The cave has been considered by some as miracle-working. Sick people are said to be brought to
192-678: A few decades, when the capital of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem , Acre , fell in 1291 to the Mamluks , these monastic hermits were forced to leave the Holy Land . The Carmelite order spread throughout Europe, where, from 1238 onwards, the Order had begun to found houses -- at the end of Saint Louis ' first crusade to the Holy Land in 1254 , he had taken six Carmelites back to France with him. In 1631
256-623: A period of centuries. Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections: the first five books or Pentateuch (which corresponds to the Jewish Torah ); the history books telling the history of the Israelites, from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon ; the poetic and " Wisdom books " dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world; and
320-456: A professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh , identifies the Old Testament as "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing." He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. By about the 5th century BC, Jews saw the five books of
384-592: A school known as biblical minimalism rejected the historical value of the Hebrew Bible for the study of ancient Israel during the Iron Age, "but this extreme approach was rejected by mainstream scholarship." The first five books— Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , book of Numbers and Deuteronomy —reached their present form in the Persian period (538–332 BC) , and their authors were the elite of exilic returnees who controlled
448-610: A separate section called Apocrypha . The Old Testament contains 39 (Protestant), 46 (Catholic), or more (Orthodox and other) books, divided, very broadly, into the Pentateuch (Torah) , the historical books , the "wisdom" books and the prophets. The table below uses the spellings and names present in modern editions of the Christian Bible, such as the Catholic New American Bible Revised Edition and
512-521: A set period and be followed by the other-worldly age or World to Come . Some thought the Messiah was already present, but unrecognised due to Israel's sins; some thought that the Messiah would be announced by a forerunner, probably Elijah (as promised by the prophet Malachi , whose book now ends the Old Testament and precedes Mark 's account of John the Baptist ). However, no view of the Messiah as based on
576-543: Is ... part folklore and part record. History is ... written by the victors, and the Israelis , when they burst through [ Jericho ( c. 1400 BC )], became the carriers of history." In 2007, a historian of ancient Judaism Lester L. Grabbe explained that earlier biblical scholars such as Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) could be described as 'maximalist', accepting biblical text unless it has been disproven. Continuing in this tradition, both "the 'substantial historicity' of
640-669: Is based on the belief that the historical Jesus is also the Christ , as in the Confession of Peter . This belief is in turn based on Jewish understandings of the meaning of the Hebrew term Messiah , which, like the Greek "Christ", means "anointed". In the Hebrew Scriptures, it describes a king anointed with oil on his accession to the throne: he becomes "The L ORD 's anointed" or Yahweh's Anointed. By
704-589: Is believed to have prayed at a grotto before challenging the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel ( 1 Kings 18 ), and to have hidden in either the same or in another nearby grotto from the wrath of Jezebel ( 1 Kings 19:1–3 ). Two grottoes on Mount Carmel, in Haifa , have been historically referred to as "the Cave of Elijah". The main shrine known as the "Cave of Elijah" is located on Haifa's Allenby Road, on Mount Carmel , approximately 40 m above sea level. For centuries, it has been
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#1732845285533768-585: Is directly above a grotto where the prophet Elijah is said to have lived . Here they built a large church and monastery, first clearing the site of the ruins of a medieval Greek church, known as "the Abbey of St. Margaret " and a chapel, thought to date back to the time of the Byzantine Empire . This new church was seriously damaged in Napoleon 's 1799 campaign . Sick and wounded French soldiers were accommodated in
832-518: Is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus , these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles. There is no evidence among the canons of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on
896-594: Is neither read nor held among the Hebrews, but does not explicitly call it apocryphal or "not in the canon". The Synod of Hippo (in 393), followed by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419) , may be the first council that explicitly accepted the first canon which includes the books that did not appear in the Hebrew Bible ; the councils were under significant influence of Augustine of Hippo , who regarded
960-583: Is the patroness of the Carmelites, and as such is known as " Our Lady of Mount Carmel ". New embossments dedicated to Carmelite figures are hoisted on all four corners of the central hall. On the western wall of the church is a large organ that is played during religious ceremonies and at special church music concerts. During the First World War , the statue of Our Lady of the Scapular, holding Baby Jesus and
1024-622: Is the first division of the Christian biblical canon , which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible , or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites . The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament , written in Koine Greek . The Old Testament consists of many distinct books by various authors produced over
1088-697: Is to be read." They are present in a few historic Protestant versions; the German Luther Bible included such books, as did the English 1611 King James Version. Empty table cells indicate that a book is absent from that canon. Several of the books in the Eastern Orthodox canon are also found in the appendix to the Latin Vulgate , formerly the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Some of
1152-423: Is to worship , or the one "true God", that only Yahweh (or YHWH ) is Almighty. The Old Testament stresses the special relationship between God and his chosen people , Israel, but includes instructions for proselytes as well. This relationship is expressed in the biblical covenant (contract) between the two, received by Moses . The law codes in books such as Exodus and especially Deuteronomy are
1216-582: The Septuagint (Latin for 'Seventy') from the supposed number of translators involved (hence its abbreviation " LXX "). This Septuagint remains the basis of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox Church . It varies in many places from the Masoretic Text and includes numerous books no longer considered canonical in some traditions: 1 Esdras , Judith , Tobit , the books of Maccabees ,
1280-476: The Babylonian exile ) upon his people. The theme is played out, with many variations, in books as different as the histories of Kings and Chronicles, the prophets like Ezekiel and Jeremiah , and in the wisdom books like Job and Ecclesiastes. The process by which scriptures became canons and Bibles was a long one, and its complexities account for the many different Old Testaments which exist today. Timothy H. Lim,
1344-661: The Biblical apocrypha , a term that is sometimes used specifically to describe the books in the Catholic and Orthodox canons that are absent from the Jewish Masoretic Text and most modern Protestant Bibles. Catholics, following the Canon of Trent (1546), describe these books as deuterocanonical, while Greek Orthodox Christians, following the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) , use the traditional name of anagignoskomena , meaning "that which
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#17328452855331408-561: The Book of Wisdom , Sirach , and Baruch . Early modern biblical criticism typically explained these variations as intentional or ignorant corruptions by the Alexandrian scholars, but most recent scholarship holds it is simply based on early source texts differing from those later used by the Masoretes in their work. The Septuagint was originally used by Hellenized Jews whose knowledge of Greek
1472-504: The Hellenistic time (332–198 BC), though containing much older material as well; Job was completed by the 6th century BC; Ecclesiastes by the 3rd century BC. Throughout the Old Testament, God is consistently depicted as the one who created the world. Although the God of the Old Testament is not consistently presented as the only god who exists , he is always depicted as the only God whom Israel
1536-674: The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem , Albert Avogadro , to provide the group with a written rule of life, which he did . This was the originating act of the Order, who took the name 'Order of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel' or Carmelites . An oratory was dedicated to the Virgin Mary in her aspect of Our Lady, Star of the Sea , the latter part of which translates in Latin to Stella Maris . Within
1600-565: The Temple at that time. The books of Joshua , Judges , Samuel and Kings follow, forming a history of Israel from the Conquest of Canaan to the Siege of Jerusalem c. 587 BC . There is a broad consensus among scholars that these originated as a single work (the so-called " Deuteronomistic History ") during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC. The two Books of Chronicles cover much
1664-832: The Torah (the Old Testament Pentateuch) as having authoritative status; by the 2nd century BC, the Prophets had a similar status, although without quite the same level of respect as the Torah; beyond that, the Jewish scriptures were fluid, with different groups seeing authority in different books. Hebrew texts began to be translated into Greek in Alexandria in about 280 BC and continued until about 130 BC. These early Greek translations – supposedly commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus – were called
1728-600: The protocanonicals . The Talmud (the Jewish commentary on the scriptures) in Bava Batra 14b gives a different order for the books in Nevi'im and Ketuvim . This order is also cited in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sefer Torah 7:15. The order of the books of the Torah is universal through all denominations of Judaism and Christianity. The disputed books, included in most canons but not in others, are often called
1792-497: The 12th century, during the Kingdom of Jerusalem rule of the region, groups of religious hermits began to inhabit the caves of this area in imitation of Elijah the Prophet . In the early 13th century, their leader and prior (referred to in the rule only as 'Brother B', although sometimes claimed despite an absence of supporting evidence to be either Saint Brocard or Saint Bertold ) asked
1856-720: The 24 books of the Tanakh , with some differences of order, and there are some differences in text. The greater count of books reflects the splitting of several texts ( Samuel , Kings , Chronicles , Ezra–Nehemiah , and the Twelve Minor Prophets ) into separate books in Christian Bibles. The books that are part of the Christian Old Testament but that are not part of the Hebrew canon are sometimes described as deuterocanonical books . These books are ultimately derived from
1920-584: The Cave in hope that they will be cured. A second grotto, also associated with Elijah, is located nearby, under the altar of the main church of the Stella Maris Monastery , also on Mount Carmel. In the Bible , in the First Books of Kings 19:9, prophet Elijah takes shelter in a cave on Mount Horeb after traveling for 40 days and 40 nights. Upon awakening, he is spoken to by God. Before an assembly on
1984-541: The Discalced branch of the Order returned to the Holy Land, led by the Venerable Father Prosper. He had a small monastery constructed on the promontory at Mount Carmel, close to the lighthouse , and the friars lived there until 1761, when Zahir al-Umar , the then effectively independent ruler of Galilee, ordered them to vacate the site and demolish the monastery. The Order then moved to the present location, which
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2048-706: The Hebrew Masoretic Text . For the Orthodox canon, Septuagint titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. For the Catholic canon, the Douaic titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. Likewise, the King James Version references some of these books by the traditional spelling when referring to them in the New Testament, such as "Esaias" (for Isaiah ). In
2112-703: The Hebrew, Greek and Latin versions of the Hebrew Bible are the best known Old Testaments, there were others. At much the same time as the Septuagint was being produced, translations were being made into Aramaic, the language of Jews living in Palestine and the Near East and likely the language of Jesus : these are called the Aramaic Targums , from a word meaning "translation", and were used to help Jewish congregations understand their scriptures. For Aramaic Christians, there
2176-405: The Old Testament predicted a Messiah who would suffer and die for the sins of all people. The story of Jesus' death, therefore, involved a profound shift in meaning from the Old Testament tradition. The name "Old Testament" reflects Christianity's understanding of itself as the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy of a New Covenant (which is similar to "testament" and often conflated) to replace
2240-400: The Old Testament. Of the remainder, the books of the various prophets— Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel , and the twelve " minor prophets "—were written between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, with the exceptions of Jonah and Daniel , which were written much later. The "wisdom" books— Job , Proverbs , Ecclesiastes , Psalms , Song of Songs —have various dates: Proverbs possibly was completed by
2304-446: The Protestant Revised Standard Version and English Standard Version . The spelling and names in both the 1609–F10 Douay Old Testament (and in the 1582 Rheims New Testament ) and the 1749 revision by Bishop Challoner (the edition currently in print used by many Catholics, and the source of traditional Catholic spellings in English) and in the Septuagint differ from those spellings and names used in modern editions which are derived from
2368-451: The Septuagint ( 3 Ezra and 3 and 4 Maccabees are excluded); the Anglicans after the English Civil War adopted a compromise position, restoring the 39 Articles and keeping the extra books that were excluded by the Westminster Confession of Faith , both for private study and for reading in churches but not for establishing any doctrine, while Lutherans kept them for private study, gathered in an appendix as biblical apocrypha . While
2432-459: The Septuagint's, and Theodotion's. The so-called "fifth" and "sixth editions" were two other Greek translations supposedly miraculously discovered by students outside the towns of Jericho and Nicopolis : these were added to Origen's Octapla. In 331, Constantine I commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople . Athanasius recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans . Little else
2496-419: The Western Church, specifically as the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate , while the Churches in the East continued, and continue, to use the Septuagint. Jerome, however, in the Vulgate's prologues , describes some portions of books in the Septuagint not found in the Hebrew Bible as being non- canonical (he called them apocrypha ); for Baruch , he mentions by name in his Prologue to Jeremiah and notes that it
2560-503: The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God. The books that compose the Old Testament canon and their order and names differ between various branches of Christianity . The canons of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches comprise up to 49 books; the Catholic canon comprises 46 books; and the most common of the Protestant canons comprises 39 books. There are 39 books common to essentially all Christian canons. They correspond to
2624-417: The canon as already closed. In the 16th century, the Protestant reformers sided with Jerome; yet although most Protestant Bibles now have only those books that appear in the Hebrew Bible, the order is that of the Greek Bible. Rome then officially adopted a canon, the Canon of Trent , which is seen as following Augustine's Carthaginian Councils or the Council of Rome , and includes most, but not all, of
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2688-417: The canon. However, Jerome (347–420), in his Prologue to Judith , claims that the Book of Judith was "found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures". In Western Christianity or Christianity in the Western half of the Roman Empire , Latin had displaced Greek as the common language of the early Christians, and in 382 AD Pope Damasus I commissioned Jerome ,
2752-476: The church guests. As a result, the monastery's ground floor is built out of thick walls with few and small openings covered by bars. The monastery's main church resembles the shape of a cross. Its dome is decorated by colorful paintings based on motifs from both the Old and New Testament : Elijah rising to heaven, David stringing his harp, the prophet Isaiah , the Holy Family and the Four Evangelists . Latin inscriptions of biblical verses are written around
2816-434: The dome. The altar stands on an elevated platform situated above a small cave associated with Elijah. The cave can be reached from the nave by descending a few steps and holds a stone altar with a small statue of Prophet Elijah. The altar above the cave is dominated by a statue of the Virgin Mary carrying Jesus in her lap and holding the Scapular in her right hand, known as Our Lady of the Scapular . The Blessed Virgin Mary
2880-399: The earlier Septuagint , the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and are also Jewish in origin. Some are also contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls . In general, Catholic and Orthodox churches include the deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament. Most Protestant Bibles do not include them in their canon, but some versions of Anglican and Lutheran Bibles place such books in
2944-414: The leading scholar of the day, to produce an updated Latin Bible to replace the Vetus Latina , which was a Latin translation of the Septuagint. Jerome's work, called the Vulgate , was a direct translation from Hebrew, since he argued for the superiority of the Hebrew texts in correcting the Septuagint on both philological and theological grounds. His Vulgate Old Testament became the standard Bible used in
3008-451: The monastery, and when Napoleon withdrew, the Turks slaughtered them and drove out the friars. In 1821, Abdullah Pasha of Acre ordered the ruined church to be totally destroyed, so that it could not serve as a fort for his enemies, while he attacked Jerusalem . The masonry was used to build Abdullah Pasha's summer palace and a lighthouse , which were sold back to the Carmelite order in 1846. The current church and monastery, built under
3072-483: The orders of Brother Cassini of the Order, was opened in 1836. Three years later Pope Gregory XVI bestowed the title of Minor Basilica on the sanctuary, and it is now known as "Stella Maris", meaning Star of the Sea. The monastery serves as a centre of Carmelite spirituality throughout the world. The symbol of the Order is mounted right above the entrance door. During the erection of the church, friars were assaulted by their neighbors and had to defend their property and
3136-402: The patriarchs" and "the unified conquest of the land" were widely accepted in the United States until about the 1970s. Contrarily, Grabbe says that those in his field now "are all minimalists – at least, when it comes to the patriarchal period and the settlement. ... [V]ery few are willing to operate [as maximalists]." In 2022, archaeologist Avraham Faust wrote that in the 1990s
3200-418: The prayer hall of the cave, and that the site was venerated by Christians, Jews and Muslims, and that it was visited on Elijah's birthday. Pococke indicated that visiting the cave on the Saturday after Sabbath of Consolation had become a custom. 32°49′47″N 34°58′11″E / 32.829816°N 34.969588°E / 32.829816; 34.969588 Old Testament The Old Testament ( OT )
3264-413: The same material as the Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic history and probably date from the 4th century BC. Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah , was probably finished during the 3rd century BC. Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments contain two (Catholic Old Testament) to four (Orthodox) Books of the Maccabees , written in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. These history books make up around half the total content of
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#17328452855333328-410: The scapular, was removed from the church and placed in a safer place in Haifa. After the war, in 1919, it was brought back to its place in a small procession. Since then, every first Sunday after Easter, on the same date as in 1919, what has become the second largest Catholic procession of the Holy Land after the Palm Sunday procession in Jerusalem, takes place between downtown Haifa and Stella Maris, up
3392-468: The sea, there is the cave of the Prophet Elijah, …" . A Jewish pilgrim who supposedly visited the cave during the period between 1270 and 1291 wrote: "There on the slopes of Mt. Carmel is a cave, and there the synagogue dedicated to Elijah, be he remembered for good. Above the cave, on the top of the mountain, there is Elisha 's Cave." English prelate and traveller, Richard Pococke , wrote in his notes in 1738 that Elijah had lived and worshipped in
3456-482: The spirit of ecumenism , more recent Catholic translations (e.g. the New American Bible , Jerusalem Bible , and ecumenical translations used by Catholics, such as the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition ) use the same "standardized" (King James Version) spellings and names as Protestant Bibles (e.g. 1 Chronicles as opposed to the Douaic 1 Paralipomenon, 1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings instead of 1–4 Kings) in those books which are universally considered canonical:
3520-452: The stories of the Pentateuch may derive from older sources. Scholars such as Andrew R. George point out the similarity of the Genesis flood narrative and the Gilgamesh flood myth . Similarities between the origin story of Moses and that of Sargon of Akkad were noted by psychoanalyst Otto Rank in 1909 and popularized by 20th-century writers, such as H. G. Wells and Joseph Campbell . Jacob Bronowski writes that, "the Bible
3584-424: The summit of Mount Carmel, Elijah challenges on the Canaanite priests to seek fire from their god Baal to light a sacrifice. When Baal fails to respond to their pleading, Elijah rebuilds the ruined altar of the Lord and offers his own sacrifice. Immediately, fire from heaven consumes the offering, even though it had been soaked in water. "The Cave of Elijah" has been presented primarily as part of Mount Carmel in
3648-544: The term to refer to a pledge. Further themes in the Old Testament include salvation , redemption , divine judgment , obedience and disobedience, faith and faithfulness, among others. Throughout there is a strong emphasis on ethics and ritual purity , both of which God demands, although some of the prophets and wisdom writers seem to question this, arguing that God demands social justice above purity, and perhaps does not even care about purity at all. The Old Testament's moral code enjoins fairness, intervention on behalf of
3712-442: The terms of the contract: Israel swears faithfulness to God, and God swears to be Israel's special protector and supporter. However, The Jewish Study Bible denies that the word covenant ( brit in Hebrew) means "contract"; in the ancient Near East, a covenant would have been sworn before the gods, who would be its enforcers. As God is part of the agreement, and not merely witnessing it, The Jewish Study Bible instead interprets
3776-435: The time of Jesus, some Jews expected that a flesh-and-blood descendant of David (the " Son of David ") would come to establish a real Jewish kingdom in Jerusalem, instead of the Roman province of Judaea. Others stressed the Son of Man , a distinctly other-worldly figure who would appear as a judge at the end of time . Some expounded a synthesised view of both positions, where a messianic kingdom of this world would last for
3840-457: The vulnerable, and the duty of those in power to administer justice righteously. It forbids murder, bribery and corruption, deceitful trading, and many sexual misdemeanours . All morality is traced back to God, who is the source of all goodness. The problem of evil plays a large part in the Old Testament. The problem the Old Testament authors faced was that a good God must have had just reason for bringing disaster (meaning notably, but not only,
3904-480: The western slope of the Carmel. Large crowds of Catholic Christians, including such of eastern rites, are led by the Latin Patriarch and other Church leaders in accompanying the statue on its way. [REDACTED] Media related to Stella Maris Monastery at Wikimedia Commons Cave of Elijah Cave of Elijah is the name used for two grottoes on Mount Carmel , in Haifa , Israel , associated with Biblical prophet Elijah . According to tradition, Elijah
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#17328452855333968-407: The works of travelers, historians , pilgrims and other visitors. The Pilgrim of Bordeaux who visited Mount Carmel didn't mention the cave in his notes about, only writing that "there is Mount Carmel, there Elijah sacrificed …" . Ioannes Phokas, a pilgrim who supposedly went to the cave in 1185, writes: "After these (places) there is Mt. Carmel, (…) At the end of the ridge of Mt. Carmel facing
4032-402: Was a Syriac translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Peshitta , as well as versions in Coptic (the everyday language of Egypt in the first Christian centuries, descended from ancient Egyptian ), Ethiopic (for use in the Ethiopian church , one of the oldest Christian churches), Armenian (Armenia was the first to adopt Christianity as its official religion), and Arabic . Christianity
4096-482: Was better than Hebrew. However, the texts came to be used predominantly by gentile converts to Christianity and by the early Church as its scripture, Greek being the lingua franca of the early Church. The three most acclaimed early interpreters were Aquila of Sinope , Symmachus the Ebionite , and Theodotion ; in his Hexapla , Origen placed his edition of the Hebrew text beside its transcription in Greek letters and four parallel translations: Aquila's, Symmachus's,
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