"Of Wood and Stone": The Significance of Israelite Cultic Items in the Bible and Its Early Interpreters.

• Author: Hurowitz, Victor Avigdor
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

"Of Wood and Stone": The Significance of Israelite Cultic Items in the Bible and Its Early Interpreters. By ELIZABETH C. LAROCCA-PITTS, Harvard Semitic Monographs, vol. 61. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 2001. Pp. xiii + 385. $39.95.

This revised Harvard University dissertation contends that a monolithic picture supposedly painted in scholarly literature, of blanket Biblical opposition to certain objects of ancient Israelite cult, is spurious, resulting from disregard of literary diversity in the Bible, improper combination of archaeological and textual evidence, and the imposition of later interpretations of the objects on earlier sources. In fact, these artifacts are treated in diverse manners by different authors throughout the centuries beginning with the biblical sources themselves, and down into the ancient Greek, Latin, and Aramaic translations, as well as into Rabbinic literature. The particular items examined are 'aserim (sacred trees), bamot (high places) massebot (standing stones), and mizbehot (altars).

Chapters 2-4 list mechanically the various objects according to the literary sources where they appear (J, E, P, D, Dtr, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Prophets, Writings), and enumerate other cultie objects such as statues mentioned in the same contexts. Chapters 5-8 synthesize the material according to the four items under study. This part, the heart of the book, determines what objects were legitimate and when, emphasizing that not all the items were viewed uniformly as negative. Although Larocca-Pitts reasonably critiques M. Haran's assertion that bamot were just altars, she does not investigate deeply or independently the more significant questions of the nature of the objects (especially 'aserim, bamot, and massebot), nor does she discuss why some sources allowed them while others banned them. One learns very little about the form or function of the more enigmatic objects.

More seriously, Larocca-Pitts fails to note or take into account that the items studied are related to different aspects of worship, and that in fact there is really little reason to consider them together in the first place. Sacred trees and certain standing-stones represent divinity and may receive worship, but other standing stones are commemorative monuments with no religious significance, Why mention them at all in this volume? The high place is a locus of worship with nothing inherently intolerable to Israelite belief. Were they banned for religious...