ABSTRACT
Whereas the first five books of the Bible, the Torah (Pentateuch), present an essentially theocentric viewpoint, for Jews they nevertheless establish and pledge allegiance not to land or a land but to the land (Rowley 1981). Thus in the Torah there is no timeless space nor is there spaceless time. Rather there is storied place, that is a place which has meaning because of the history lodged therein. In essence, the unbreakable dialectic between a people and a place increases the burden of awareness (Hall 1966; Tuan 1977), Smith suggesting that: ‘It is briefly history that makes a land mine’ (Smith 1969: 109), while Brueggemann (1977: 5–6) asserts that the land assures Israel of its historicality and is a repository for identity.
