From the
Hebrew Bible and from existing remains a good idea may be formed of the appearance of such a place of worship. It was often on the hill above the town, as at Ramah (); there was a
stele (
matzevah), the seat of the deity, and a
Asherah pole (named after the goddess
Asherah), which marked the place as sacred and was itself an object of worship; there was a
stone altar (
mizbeḥ "slaughter place"), often of considerable size and hewn out of the solid rock or built of unhewn stones (), on which offerings were burnt; a
cistern for water, and perhaps low stone tables for dressing the victims; sometimes also a hall (
lishkah) for the sacrificial feasts. Ancient Israelite religion was centred on these sites; at festival seasons, or to make or fulfil a vow, an Israelite might journey to more famous sanctuaries at a distance from home, but ordinarily offerings were made at the bamah of his own town. with an ethnic composition similar to that in
Ammon,
Edom and
Moab, The culture of ancient Israelite sites was extremely similar to that of other Canaanite sites, with the most significant difference being the worship of
Yahweh, so in spite of late Biblical references to Ur, it is probable that the Israelite federation evolved in situ in Canaan, rather than by conquest of a foreign nation, and inherited the cultural concept of high places from indigenous ancestors. While Canaanites associated high places with
ʼĒl, early Israelites used them for worship of Yahweh in an equivalent sense due to the conflation of Yahweh with ʼĒl. This can be seen in the
frequent Biblical references to Yahweh with terms such as
El,
El Shaddai,
Elohim, and
Elyon, instead of
YHWH, which was considered too holy to speak aloud. These El-based terms are likely derived from the original personal name of ʼĒl and from ancient Canaanite titles meaning "son of God," "angel of God," or "God most high." Consequently, high places can be seen as an indigenous development of both the Israelites and the Canaanites, but by the time of the composition of the Hebrew Bible's oldest texts, high places were considered
avodh zereh, foreign worship associated with the Canaanite pantheon. The prophets of the 8th century BCE assail the popular religion as corrupt and licentious and as fostering the monstrous delusion that immoral men can buy the favour of God by worship, but they make no distinction in this respect between the high places of Israel and the temple in Jerusalem. (cf. sqq.; ;
Isaiah to sqq.)
Hosea stigmatizes the whole
cultus as pure heathenism—Canaanite
Baal-worship adopted by apostate Israel. The fundamental law in prohibits
sacrifice at every place except the temple in Jerusalem; in accordance with this law
Josiah, in 621 BCE, destroyed and desecrated the altars (
bamoth) throughout his kingdom (where Yahweh had been worshipped since times before a permanent singular Temple at Jerusalem was erected) and forcibly removed their priests to Jerusalem, where they occupied an inferior rank in the temple ministry. In the prophets of the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, the word
bamot connotes "seat of heathenish or idolatrous worship"; and the historians of the period apply the term in this opprobrious sense not only to places sacred to other gods but to the old holy places of Yahweh in the cities and villages of
Judah, which, in their view, had been illegitimate since the building of
Solomon's temple, and therefore not valid centers for the worship of Yahweh; even the most pious kings of Judah are censured in the
Books of Kings for tolerating their existence. The reaction that followed the death of Josiah (608 BCE) restored the old altars of Yahweh; they survived the destruction of the temple in 586 BCE, and it is probable that after its restoration (520–516 BCE) they only slowly disappeared, in consequence partly of the natural predominance of Jerusalem in the little territory of
Judaea, partly of the gradual establishment of the supremacy of the written law over custom and tradition in the
Persian period. The rule of the Law of Moses that sacrifice can be offered to Yahweh only at the Temple in Jerusalem was never fully established in fact. The Jewish military colonists in
Elephantine in the 5th century BCE had their altar of Yahweh beside the highway; the Jews in
Egypt in the
Ptolemaic period had, besides many local sanctuaries, one greater temple at
Leontopolis, with a priesthood whose claim to "valid orders" was much better than that of the
High Priests in Jerusalem, and the legitimacy of whose worship is admitted even by the
Palestinian rabbis. ==Gallery==