Description:
A history of Israelite religion, driven by an enduring question: Where is God?
Locating God explores ancient Israelite religion through the lens of sacred space and divine presence. The book traces a long and unresolved struggle over a central question: Where does God dwell? Drawing together biblical texts, archaeology, inscriptions, and material culture, William Schniedewind examines how ancient Israelites and Judeans located divine presence in temples, household shrines, high places, and sacred landscapes, and eventually in texts and communities themselves.
Beginning with the religious world of Late Bronze Age Canaan and early Yahwism, the study follows the rise of Jerusalem as a sacred center and the repeated attempts by kings, priests, and scribes to concentrate worship in one authorized place. At the same time, it shows how alternative traditions continued to imagine God as mobile, relational, and impossible to confine to any single location. The destruction of the temple, the Babylonian exile, and the restoration period all reshaped how divine presence was understood and experienced.
Written for educated readers, clergy, students, and scholars, Locating God reframes familiar debates about monotheism, centralization, and temple worship by focusing on the dynamic tension between a God rooted in sacred places and a God who ultimately transcends them.
Brief description:
William M. Schniedewind is Distinguished Professor of Biblical Studies at UCLA and the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. He also serves as associate director of the excavations at Tell Shaddud. His many publications include How the Bible Became a Book, A Social History of Hebrew, The Finger of the Scribe, and Locating God.
Review Quotes:
"In Locating God, William Schniedewind takes a seemingly simple question--where is God?--and uses it to illuminate the varied and complex world of ancient Israelite religion. Few scholars are as well equipped to treat the textual, philological, historical, and archaeological evidence, and Schniedewind has produced a real tour de force, both deep and broad, scholarly and accessible. This is how it should be done."
--Joel S. Baden, professor of Hebrew Bible, Yale Divinity School
"William Schniedewind has a track record of producing stimulating well-researched works that are truly groundbreaking. In Locating God we are gifted with an insightful diachronic history of locating divine presence. Schniedewind's accessible synthesis integrates a sophisticated understanding of scribalism and archaeology to unpack the unresolved tension and paradox of mapping God's presence. How is it that God can be encountered or anchored at a fixed location (especially Jerusalem) while also being with his people, uncontained mobility totally apart from a temple? Sociological and political insights abound in this refreshing locative-locomotive spatial analysis. Who has institutional control over access to the divine? Locating God is a must read for specialists and nonspecialists alike who are interested in a fresh approach to studying the history of ancient Israelite religion."
--Theodore J. Lewis, Blum-Iwry Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Johns Hopkins University
"In Locating God, Schniedewind deftly integrates archaeological and textual data to explore the ancient dilemma about the whereabouts of God. By showing how the centuries-long quest for divine presence produced an integration of sacred space with authoritative text, this book shines new light on the development of Israelite religion."
--Carol Meyers, Mary Grace Wilson Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, Duke University
"William Schniedewind retells the story of Israelite religion through perspectives of divine place and space. A very engaging treatment combining texts and archaeology by a highly accomplished professor in these fields."
--Mark S. Smith, Helena Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary
"This book is a treat. It's really three books in one: a history of Israelite religion, an up-to-date synthesis of text and archaeology, and a history of Jerusalem. It's also a good story, told by a master teacher. Superb."
--Ronald S. Hendel, Dabby Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, UC Berkeley
"Locating God tackles the thorny question: Where is God? Schniedewind's masterful synthesis of biblical, archaeological, and inscriptional evidence concludes that, in spite of the emphasis on the Jerusalem temple(s) and their legacy, the textual and material evidence for religion suggests a more fluid reality: God was here, there, and everywhere. This work is a must read for specialists and students of Israelite religion."
--Alice Mandell, William Foxwell Albright Chair in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Johns Hopkins University
"William Schniedewind has crafted a deft and compelling account of ancient Israelite religion by using the lens of sacred space. Drawing on both archaeological data and the biblical text, Schniedewind thoroughly discusses sacred sites such as household shrines, high places, local sanctuaries, and the Jerusalem temple--from its construction, through the gradual centralization of worship within its precincts, to its destruction and rebuilding--to ask how and where the ancient Israelites found God. The answer, he argues, is multivalent, for however dominant the traditions that locate God in the temple in Jerusalem, they are not monolithic: As Schniedewind demonstrates, different ideas about the divine presence exist and persist throughout Israelite history. Locating God is thus a complex and comprehensive picture of Israelite religion that ends up being far more than the sum of its parts."
--Susan Ackerman, Preston H. Kelsey Professor Emerita of Religion, Dartmouth College