Possible Locations

Scholars also debate the exact location of the En-Dor site. The small village of Indur on the northern slope of Mount Moreh has been suggested because it preserves the name, and Eusebius noted in his Onomasticon: “Now En-dor is a very large village near Mount Tabor to the south about four miles” (150; Notley and Safrai, 37). However, there are several complicating factors to this theory. For example, Eusebius later said the following in regard to Nain: “It is now 12 miles south of Tabor near En-dor” (748; Notley and Safrai, 132). Furthermore, there are no archaeological remains at Indur.

As a result, four other possible locations have been suggested:

1. North of the Jezreel Valley:

a. Khirbet es-Safsafeh, 2.5 miles south of Mount Tabor (Aharoni, The Land of the Bible, 434)

b. Tell el-Ajjul.

2. South of the Jezreel Valley:

a. Khirbet Jadurah (fits the geographical textual indicators but there is no spring there today; see Edelman, “En-dor,” 499–501)

b. Tell Qedesh, which has continuous occupation from Middle Bronze to Roman periods, indicating it was a significant site.

Edelman, who proposes a southern location for En-Dor, later concludes that 1 Sam 28 was a fictionalized account from the Deuteronomistic historian. Thus, according to Edelman, all references to En-Dor probably come from the 10th to 8th centuries, so it would not be necessary to look for and find artifacts from the Iron Age I period of the judges (Edelman, “En-dor,” 499–501).