**8. Why Were Temples Not an Integral Part of Israelite Cult?**

Identifying the pattern, and noting that Israelites cult was not commonly practiced in temples, is the most important observation, and it has significant implications for the study of ancient Israelite religious practices.

This observations, however, naturally leads to two new questions: (1) why were temples not an integral part of Israelite cultic practices? and (2) how was Israelite cult practiced?

The second question will be dealt with in a separate article, and in the remainder of this paper I would like to offer an initial, even if probably only partial, answer to the first question: Why was Israelite cult practiced differently than other ancient Near Eastern religions?

<sup>17</sup> In some cases, previous studies of Israelite religion(s) treated also Iron Age non-Israelite sites, and this added to the confusion.

<sup>18</sup> For countering a possible claim that one cannot learn from the absence or rarity of such finds, see (Faust 2010, p. 30); see also (Stephens 2011).

It appears that one possible answer is that this was probably a result of Israelite ethos and worldviews. For reasons to be recapitulated below, it was suggested by many that Israelite society had an ethos of "simplicity" and "egalitarianism", and that many overt signs of hierarchy and power were not viewed favorably. The existence of temples, and of temple personnel (i.e., official priests), transmit a clear message of hierarchy and social differentiation, and their lack (or rarity) is therefore suitable for a society that does not view signs of hierarchy positively. While it is possible that this ethos, evidence for whose existence will be presently discussed, is one of the causes for the scarcity of temples, it is important to emphasize that it is possible that other causes were perhaps directly related to Israelite religion religious practices. While a detailed discussion of Israelite religion is beyond the scope of this paper, it must be stressed that even if the rarity of temples had deeper, religious, causes, than the discussed ethos made this phenomenon socially acceptable, despite its being unique in the socio-cultural landscape of the ancient Near East.
