ABSTRACT
This chapter examines study of Jerusalem’s ritual space by giving priority of concern to the materiality of space and how the body played a central role in mapping the meaning of space. The majority of studies on Jerusalem as a sacred or ritual space offer rather narrow definitions of what this characterization of the city means. Mircea Eliade’s ideas have exerted an especially large influence upon the ways that biblical scholars have described Jerusalem as sacred space. The Israelite household formed one of the most important associations that the biblical texts employed to describe Jerusalem as ritual space. The natural topography of Jerusalem also formed an important dynamic in the biblical descriptions of the city’s ritual space. According to certain biblical texts, notions of Jerusalem as ritual space also derived from the historical and physical changes that occurred in the city. Prostrating the body also plays a significant role in the biblical texts’ description of Jerusalem as ritual space.
