Buildings Deemed Religious
“Gods required temples, and temples needed to be located in cities.”1
In The Histories, Herodotus claims that the Persians do not build temples, statues, or altars and sacrifice to their deities outdoors.2 Although his “observation” is well-known to many students and scholars of ancient Mazda-worship, it seems to apply to both religions deemed monotheistic examined in this dissertation. Comments concerning the general absence of pre-Jewish or pre-Zoroastrian temples can be found throughout the literature and the trend seems to be supported in the archaeological record. This chapter will explore the influence of mobile pastoralist social origins on the absence of archaeological data concerning “temples” dedicated to YHWH or Ahura Mazda and the impact of settled agricultural contexts on later developments of synagogues and fire temples. The absence of buildings deemed religious, in the mobile social contexts within which the worship of YHWH and of Ahura Mazda respectively originated, appears to have shaped conceptions of these deities and religions deemed monotheistic. These connections reveal the significance of natural landscapes on the invention, or adoption, of specific building blocks of religions in these communities of worship.
1 Van de Mieroop, The Ancient Mesopotamian City, 217.
2 Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Tom Holland (New York: Viking, 2014), 67–68.