Approaches to the 'Chosen Place': Accessing a Biblical Concept

Description

Deuteronomy's command to restrict cultic practice to one "chosen place" has occupied a central position in scholars' understandings of the book and their reconstruction of Israelite political and religious history. The debates about the date of Deuteronomy, its proposed connections to "Josiah's reform", and, most profoundly, the "Deuteronomistic History (DH) hypothesis" have dominated study of the idea of "chosen place". These debates have, to a large extent, determined how we read Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets in general. Through a reading of key texts from these corpora, this book provides a new, textually grounded, perspective of the "chosen place."

Rannfrid Thelle is an independent scholar working in Wichita, Kansas. Her background is from the University of Oslo and she has previously published, Ask God: Divine Consultation in the Literature of the Hebrew Bible (2002).