ABSTRACT
The observant congregation round the temple in Jerusalem holds only a fraction of the Promised Land, and the contrast to the descriptions in the book of Joshua is almost overwhelming in its effect. Nomistic theology in Deuteronomy binds the divine hr to Israel's good behaviour; an obedient Israel will possess the whole land. The history of every nation is a great synoikismos writes Theodor Mommsen, Rmische Geschichte I, 97. It is only that here, influenced as we are by Deuteronomistic theology; we are accustomed to view the synoikismos as something absurd, even contrary to the divine will. But we have to ask how far people in Israel already thought like this, or indeed could do so, before the prophets Elijah and Hosea began so forcibly to entrench the unbridgeable antithesis to the Canaanite religion.
