Endnote 3 – What’s a Bamah? How Sacred Space Functioned in Ancient Israel

See, for example, Avraham Biran, “To the God Who Is in Dan,” in Temples and High Places in Biblical Times, ed. Biran (Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1981), pp. 142–145. Here, Biran discusses the enormous stone platform excavated in Divided Monarchy Dan. See also “Avraham Biran—Twenty Years of Digging at Dan,” BAR 13:04. Patrick D. Miller’s description of the bamah as, minimally, “a raised elevation, platform, or mound often alongside or near a sanctuary and set up primarily for the purpose of sacrifices” (“Israelite Religion,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. D.A. Knight and G.M. Tucker [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985], p. 228) incorporates the idea of platform and several others. See also Patrick H. Vaughan, The Meaning of “Bama” in the Old Testament: A Study of Etymological, Textual and Archaeological Evidence, Society for Old Testament Study Monograph Series 3 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974), p. 55. Vaughan specifies two types of bamot or “cultic platforms.” They are “truncated cones of some height; and low oblong ones which may also have had an altar standing on them.”