Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 43:1 (NA 1992)
Article: The Central Sanctuary: Where And When?
Author: Jeffrey J. Niehaus

TynBul 43:1 (1992) p. 3

The Central Sanctuary:
Where And When?1

Jeffrey Niehaus

I. Introduction

For nearly two hundred years, scholars have given serious attention to the question of the central sanctuary as it appears in Deuteronomy and the Old Testament historical books. Deuteronomy 12:5 calls for Israel ‘to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling’, and there to worship him and present sacrifices. Traditionally it has been believed that this meant first, the tabernacle (wherever it might be pitched) and then, later, the Solomonic Temple.

Ever since de Wette’s Dissertatio Critica of 1805, however, the prospect has been raised that this call was really uttered, not by Moses, but by a later writer, who came to be called the Deuteronomist.2 Scholars have variously understood this term to mean the final editor or redactor of Deuteronomy,3 or the editor/compiler/redactor of the vast corpus, Deuteronomy–2 Kings.4

TynBul 43:1 (1992) p. 4

Driver, for instance, believed of Deuteronomy 12:5 that ‘Of course, the place tacitly designated by the expression is Jerusalem, which is described similarly in passages of Kings due to the Deuteronomy compiler’.5 Von Rad likewise states that ‘The phrase so frequently repeated in this connexion about the “place which Yahweh will chose to put his name there” must be claimed as specifically Deuteronomic’.6 Mayes also believes that the phrase itself is a ‘deuteronomistic form’ which ‘finds parallels in the deuteronomistic history’.7

On the other hand, J.A. Thompson, after a useful survey of possibilities, has argued the more traditional view that

There was a central sanctuary in Moses’ day in the first half of the thirteenth century BC. It can be identified clearly at Shiloh in the eleventh century BC, and it became permanent at Jerusalem from the tenth century BC onwards. The part it was intended to play in Israel’s national and religious life is set out in Deuteronomy.8

Likewise, Craigie has taken the phraseology of Deuteronomy 12:5