Did God Have a Wife? by William G. Dever;

Author:William G. Dever;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: INscribe Digital
Published: 2005-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Plan of Temples 1, 2 at Shechem; 12th and 8th cents. B.C.

Stager 2003, p. 30

Wright’s views were met with suspicion in most circles, and with derision among European biblicists: here was “biblical archaeology” at its worst. Nevertheless, as one who has vigorously opposed old-fashioned “prove the Bible archaeology” for 30 years, and as an archaeologist who is familiar with Shechem firsthand, I have few objections. The Shechem “Migdal Temple” certainly could have served as an early Israelite public sanctuary—especially in the light of all that we have learned since the 1960s about continuities with Canaanite religion (Chapter VIII). There is such a thing as being too skeptical, dispensing with common sense too quickly. The biblical writers remembered this temple as genuinely “Israelite,” and they tolerated its existence because it was pre-Solomonic and therefore not expected to conform to the Deuteronomistic ideal.

(2) The only known full-fledged Israelite temple of the monarchic period is the one excavated at Arad, east of Beersheba, by Yohanan Aharoni in the 1960s. This building was controversial from the moment of its discovery. Some scholars argued that it could not have been a “temple”: there weren’t supposed to be any. Others thought it simply a desert “tabernacle.” Still others assumed that it might have been a temple of sorts, but surely not “Israelite.” And estimates of the date ranged all the way from the 10th century B.C. to the 7th century B.C.

No final publication ever appeared, but several recent reexaminations of the excavated material have clarified matters considerably, especially the question of date (Herzog 2001). All now agree that it must be 8th century B.C., that is, post-Solomonic by some two centuries. The temple was thus in use not through four or five strata, but only in Str. 10-9. The revised chronology has major implications for relating the Arad temple to biblical history.

Iron Age Arad was a small fort east of Beersheba, on the Judean border with the Negev desert. The complex is roughly square, with thick offsets-insets walls. The temple occupies almost one-quarter of the interior space, located in the northwest corner. It is the only well-preserved element within the fort. The use of the other spaces is uncertain, but they were probably the living and storage areas for the troops of the garrison, which must have been quite small. Some light is thrown on the size and function of the fort by the more than 100 ostraca found, documents written in ink on pieces of broken pottery. Most have to do with provisions, but some of them mention names that are known from priestly families in the Bible. One (no. 18) refers to the “temple of Yahweh,” which I interpret not as the Jerusalem Temple, but as the local temple at Arad (contra Aharoni and some others).

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