High places (, singular ''bamā'') are simple hilltop installations with instruments of religion: platforms, altars, standing stones, and cairns are common. Along with open courtyard shrines and sacred trees or groves, they were some of the most often-seen public places of piety in the

ancient Near East The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Nea ...

. They appear in the early Bronze Age at the latest.

Hebrew Bible

From the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' stele ('' matzevah''), the seat of the deity, and a Asherah pole (named after the goddess Asherah), which marked the place as sacred and was itself an object of worship; there was a stone altar ( ''mizbeḥ'' "slaughter place"), often of considerable size and hewn out of the solid rock or built of unhewn stones (), on which offerings were burnt; a

cistern A cistern (; , ; ) is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. To prevent leakage, the interior of the cistern is often lined with hydraulic plaster. Cisterns are disti ...

for water, and perhaps low stone tables for dressing the victims; sometimes also a hall ( ''lishkah'') for the sacrificial feasts. Ancient Israelite religion was centred on these sites; at festival seasons, or to make or fulfil a vow, an Israelite might journey to more famous sanctuaries at a distance from home, but ordinarily offerings were made at the bamah of his own town. The building of the Temple at Jerusalem, which under the

Law of Moses The Law of Moses ( ), also called the Mosaic Law, is the law said to have been revealed to Moses by God. The term primarily refers to the Torah or the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Terminology The Law of Moses or Torah of Moses (Heb ...

had an exclusive right to offer sacrifices (), did not stop the bamot sacrifices until Kings Hezekiah and Josiah proscribed them. According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition, it was believed at the time (1911) that the development of the religious significance of the word took place not in

Land of Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definition ...

but among the

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

ites, from whom the Israelites, in taking possession of the holy places of the land, also adopted the name. The Hebrew Bible claims that the Canaanites and Israelites were entirely distinct peoples, that their ancestor

Abraham Abraham (originally Abram) is the common Hebrews, Hebrew Patriarchs (Bible), patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father who began the Covenant (biblical), covenanta ...

hailed from Ur rather than from Canaan, and that the Israelites migrated to the land inhabited by native Canaanites and conquered it by force. The prevailing academic opinion today is that the Israelites were a mixture of peoples predominantly indigenous to Canaan, although an Egyptian matrix of peoples may also have played a role in their

ethnogenesis Ethnogenesis (; ) is the formation and development of an ethnic group. This can originate by group self-identification or by outside identification. The term ''ethnogenesis'' was originally a mid-19th-century neologism that was later introduce ...

(giving birth to the saga of

The Exodus The Exodus (Hebrew language, Hebrew: יציאת מצרים, ''Yəṣīʾat Mīṣrayīm'': ) is the Origin myth#Founding myth, founding myth of the Israelites whose narrative is spread over four of the five books of the Torah, Pentateuch (specif ...

), with an ethnic composition similar to that in

Ammon Ammon (; Ammonite language, Ammonite: 𐤏𐤌𐤍 ''ʻAmān''; '; ) was an ancient Semitic languages, Semitic-speaking kingdom occupying the east of the Jordan River, between the torrent valleys of Wadi Mujib, Arnon and Jabbok, in present-d ...

, Edom and

Moab Moab () was an ancient Levant, Levantine kingdom whose territory is today located in southern Jordan. The land is mountainous and lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by ...

, and including Habiru and Shasu. The culture of ancient Israelite sites was extremely similar to that of other Canaanite sites, with the most significant difference being the worship of

Yahweh Yahweh was an Ancient Semitic religion, ancient Semitic deity of Weather god, weather and List of war deities, war in the History of the ancient Levant, ancient Levant, the national god of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Judah, Judah and Kingdom ...

, so in spite of late Biblical references to Ur, it is probable that the Israelite federation evolved in situ in Canaan, rather than by conquest of a foreign nation, and inherited the cultural concept of high places from indigenous ancestors. While Canaanites associated high places with ʼĒl, early Israelites used them for worship of Yahweh in an equivalent sense due to the conflation of Yahweh with ʼĒl. This can be seen in the frequent Biblical references to Yahweh with terms such as ''El'', '' El Shaddai'', ''

Elohim ''Elohim'' ( ) is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is plural in form, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly but not always the Go ...

'', and '' Elyon'', instead of '' YHWH'', which was considered too holy to speak aloud. These El-based terms are likely derived from the original personal name of ʼĒl and from ancient Canaanite titles meaning "son of God," "angel of God," or "God most high." Consequently, high places can be seen as an indigenous development of both the Israelites and the Canaanites, but by the time of the composition of the Hebrew Bible's oldest texts, high places were considered ''avodh zereh'', foreign worship associated with the Canaanite pantheon. The prophets of the 8th century BCE assail the popular religion as corrupt and licentious and as fostering the monstrous delusion that immoral men can buy the favour of God by worship, but they make no distinction in this respect between the high places of Israel and the temple in Jerusalem. (cf. sqq.; ; Isaiah to sqq.) Hosea stigmatizes the whole cultus as pure heathenism—Canaanite Baal-worship adopted by apostate Israel. The fundamental law in prohibits

sacrifice Sacrifice is an act or offering made to a deity. A sacrifice can serve as propitiation, or a sacrifice can be an offering of praise and thanksgiving. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Gree ...

at every place except the temple in Jerusalem; in accordance with this law Josiah, in 621 BCE, destroyed and desecrated the altars (''bamoth'') throughout his kingdom (where Yahweh had been worshipped since times before a permanent singular Temple at Jerusalem was erected) and forcibly removed their priests to Jerusalem, where they occupied an inferior rank in the temple ministry. In the prophets of the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, the word ''bamot'' connotes "seat of heathenish or idolatrous worship"; and the historians of the period apply the term in this opprobrious sense not only to places sacred to other gods but to the old holy places of Yahweh in the cities and villages of Judah, which, in their view, had been illegitimate since the building of Solomon's temple, and therefore not valid centers for the worship of Yahweh; even the most pious kings of Judah are censured in the

Books of Kings The Book of Kings (, ''Sefer (Hebrew), Sēfer Malik, Məlāḵīm'') is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Kings) in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It concludes the Deuteronomistic history, a history of ancient Is ...

for tolerating their existence. The reaction that followed the death of Josiah (608 BCE) restored the old altars of Yahweh; they survived the destruction of the temple in 586 BCE, and it is probable that after its restoration (520–516 BCE) they only slowly disappeared, in consequence partly of the natural predominance of Jerusalem in the little territory of Judaea, partly of the gradual establishment of the supremacy of the written law over custom and tradition in the Persian period. The rule of the Law of Moses that sacrifice can be offered to Yahweh only at the Temple in Jerusalem was never fully established in fact. The Jewish military colonists in

Elephantine Elephantine ( ; ; ; ''Elephantíne''; , ) is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological site, archaeological digs on the island became a World Heritage Site in 1979, along with other examples of ...

in the 5th century BCE had their altar of Yahweh beside the highway; the Jews in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

in the Ptolemaic period had, besides many local sanctuaries, one greater temple at Leontopolis, with a priesthood whose claim to "valid orders" was much better than that of the High Priests in Jerusalem, and the legitimacy of whose worship is admitted even by the Palestinian rabbis.

Gallery

R A Stewart Macalister in Gezer. File:Sacredcaveplan.png, File:Massebotlady.png, File:Taanachaltar.png, File:Olivepresses.png File:Cupmarks.png File:Highplacecave.png,

Modern Judaism

In Jewish

synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...

s, the "High Place" (''bimah''; see also ''bema'') is the elevated platform from which the

Torah The Torah ( , "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () ...

is read. It traditionally had its origin from the platform erected in the

Temple in Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Accord ...

at which the king would read the Torah during the Hakhel ceremony every seven years at the Feast of Tabernacles (). The ''bimah'' is located in the center of Orthodox synagogues, and in the front of

Reform Reform refers to the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The modern usage of the word emerged in the late 18th century and is believed to have originated from Christopher Wyvill's Association movement, which ...

and

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

synagogues. The word ''bimah'' is almost certainly derived from the Ancient Greek word for a raised platform, bema (βῆμα), with the resemblance to the Biblical word ''bamah'' being coincidental.

Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism

In the

Eastern Orthodox Church The Eastern Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, and also called the Greek Orthodox Church or simply the Orthodox Church, is List of Christian denominations by number of members, one of the three major doctrinal and ...

and

Eastern Catholic Churches The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also known as the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous (''sui iuris'') particular churches of ...

the ''High Place'' is the name used for the location of the

cathedra A ''cathedra'' is the throne of a bishop in the early Christian basilica. When used with this meaning, it may also be called the bishop's throne. With time, the related term ''cathedral'' became synonymous with the "seat", or principa ...

(episcopal throne), set in the center of the

apse In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical Vault (architecture), vault or semi-dome, also known as an ' ...

of a church's

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred space, sacred place, such as a shrine, protected by ecclesiastical immunity. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This seconda ...

, behind the Holy Table (altar). In larger churches there may be a literal elevation, but there is often not room for this in smaller churches. The cathedra is surrounded on both sides by the '' synthronos'', a set of other seats or benches for the use of the

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...

s. Every Orthodox church and Eastern Catholic church has such a High Place even if it is not a

cathedral A cathedral is a church (building), church that contains the of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, Annual conferences within Methodism, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually s ...

. The term ''High Place'' also refers to the central portion of the Holy Table, where the antimension and Gospel Book are normally kept. The only other objects that are permitted to occupy this place on the altar are the

chalice A chalice (from Latin 'cup', taken from the Ancient Greek () 'cup') is a drinking cup raised on a stem with a foot or base. Although it is a technical archaeological term, in modern parlance the word is now used almost exclusively for the ...

and discos (paten) for the celebration of the

Divine Liturgy Divine Liturgy () or Holy Liturgy is the usual name used in most Eastern Christian rites for the Eucharistic service. The Eastern Catholic Churches, Eastern Lutheranism, Eastern Lutheran Churches and the Eastern Orthodox Church believe the Divi ...

. On the various Feasts of the Cross, a tray covered by an aër (liturgical veil) holding a

Cross A cross is a religious symbol consisting of two Intersection (set theory), intersecting Line (geometry), lines, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of t ...

and branches of basil is placed on the High Place of the Holy Table until it is taken in procession to the center of the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

. On

Good Friday Good Friday, also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Great and Holy Friday, or Friday of the Passion of the Lord, is a solemn Christian holy day commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary (Golgotha). It is observed during ...

, the Epitaphion is set on the Holy Table until it is taken to the "tomb" in the center of the nave for veneration by the faithful. During the Paschal Vigil, this Epitaphion is taken through the Holy Doors and placed again on the High Place of the Holy Table, where it will remain until the Ascension.

References

* Baudissin, W.W.F. von. "Hohendienst", '' Protestantische Real-Encyklopädie'' (viii. 177–195) * Hoonacker, Albin van (1894). ''Le Lieu du culte dans la legislation rituelle des Hebreux''. * (1898). ''Altisraelitische Kultstätten''.

External links