ABSTRACT
However, in practice the kingdom of God should be created by giving priests a political role and organizing the Judean community as a templecity – a totally innovative solution in the history of Palestine. In Palestine, and throughout the Levant, temples had always played a strictly cultic role. ‘Houses’ of various city gods (hence conceived as their dwellings), these temples were quite small, with a simple architectural structure comprising a vestibule, a sanctuary and an inner sanctum. Above all, they were not surrounded by outbuildings – the storehouses, shops, archives and rooms for the priests usually found in Egypt and Mesopotamia or even Anatolia, where the temple functioned as a redistribution centre and a basis of the country’s economy.
