Reconstructing the Temple: The Royal Rhetoric of Temple Renovation in the Ancient Near East and Israel

This book examines temple renovation as a rhetorical topic within royal literature of the ancient Near East. Unlike newly founded temples, which were celebrated for their novelty, temple renovations were oriented toward the past. Kings took the opportunity to rehearse a selective history of the temple, evoking certain past traditions and omitting others. In this way, temple renovations were a kind of historiography. Andrew R. Davis demonstrates a pattern in the rhetoric of temple renovation texts: that kings in ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, Syria and Persia used temple renovation to correct, or at least distance themselves from, some turmoil of recent history and to associate their reigns with an earlier and more illustrious past. Davis draws on the royal literature of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE for main evidence of this rhetoric. Furthermore, he argues for reading the story of Jeroboam I's placement of calves at Dan and Bethel (1 Kgs 12:25-33) as an eighth-century BCE account of temple renovation with a similar rhetoric. Concluding with further examples in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Reconstructing the Temple demonstrates that the rhetoric of temple renovation was a distinct and longstanding topic in the ancient Near East.

About the Author :
Andrew R. Davis is associate professor of Old Testament at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. His first book, which was a revision of the dissertation he wrote at Johns Hopkins University, compared the temple complex at Tel Dan to biblical descriptions of worship in the Northern Kingdom. Davis's other main research interest involves literary approaches to biblical texts, which he has explored in articles on the books of Genesis, Ruth, and Job, and is pursuing in a new project on the book of Amos.

Review :
"The renovation of temples and palaces was an important public activity of rulers in the ancient Near East including Israel. But it was also, as Davis shows in this substantial study, an important theme in the official literature of these rulers, with a particular rhetorical style. To make his case, Davis compares a range of texts from the Hebrew Bible and elsewhere in the ancient Near East. And he subjects these texts to exemplary close readings, revealing their sophisticated language and their capacity to proclaim in multiple ways royal power and legitimacy." -- Peter Machinist, Hancock Research Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, Harvard University "Reconstructing the Temple probes the links between past and present, continuity and discontinuity, memory, imagination, and historiography. In this thoughtful and important inquiry, Andrew Davis takes us on a careful journey through ancient Near Eastern and biblical sources to demonstrate how the rhetoric of temple renovation was a distinct and longstanding literary topos that used preservation as a means of present illumination and legitimation. Original, compelling, insightful." -- Dr. Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, Assistant Professor, College of the Holy Cross "Reconstructing the Temple by Andrew Davis shows how accounts of temple renovation drew on memories of the past to serve royal purposes, asserting continuity with the past as well as the new achievements of royal renovators. Drawing on extensive textual and archaeological evidence, the result is a fresh, brilliant understanding of temple renovation as a form of royal historiography. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Jerusalem Temple or in ancient literature about temples more broadly." -- Mark S. Smith, Helena Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary