**1. Introduction**

Modern scholarship seems to have been fascinated by Israelite religion(s), and numerous attempts were made to reconstruct ancient Israelite cult. Initially, research focused on the interpretation supplied by the various texts, but as the archaeological evidence gradually accumulated, the material record came to play a major role in these reconstructions (e.g., Alpert Nakhai 2001, pp. 8–16; Zevit 2001, pp. 1–80; see also Hess 2007, pp. 43–80). While various questions surrounding Israelite religion(s) were left undecided, a consensus had been gradually established regarding the nature of Israelite cult practices, and especially on their spatial dimension. According to this consensus, Israelite cult was practiced in temples or shrines, i.e., houses built for cultic purposes in general and to house a deity in particular, and until Josiah's reforms of the late seventh century BCE such structures existed in every Israelite city, town, and village (e.g., Holladay 1987; Zevit 2001; Schmitt 2014, and many more references below). While this consensus was based on a possible reading of the biblical data, it contradicted the archaeological information available, and a few years ago I challenged this consensus (Faust 2010), and demonstrated that Iron Age Israelite temples were a rare phenomenon, and that cult was usually practiced in more simple settings, and not in buildings erected especially for this purpose.

While this view was adopted by some (below), other scholars still repeat the older maxim (e.g., Schmitt 2014; Geller 2016, p. 312, and more below), and in this article, which is part of a general issue on *Archaeology and Israelite Religion*, I would like to update the main arguments raised in my original paper, and then to advance one step further and to offer a possible explanation for the Israelite practice

of preferring simpler cultic settings, in contrast to most other ancient Near Eastern societies in which temples were common.1

## **2. Preliminary Notes on the Definition and Identification of Cultic Buildings**

Before beginning the archaeological survey, I would like to briefly comment on the terminology used in reference to cultic buildings and on the mere identification of buildings as cultic in the first place.
