Locating God

A history of Israelite religion, driven by an enduring question: Where is God?

Locating God explores ancient Israelite religion through the lens of sacred space and divine presence. The book traces a long and unresolved struggle over a central question: Where does God dwell? Drawing together biblical texts, archaeology, inscriptions, and material culture, William Schniedewind examines how ancient Israelites and Judeans located divine presence in temples, household shrines, high places, and sacred landscapes, and eventually in texts and communities themselves.

Beginning with the religious world of Late Bronze Age Canaan and early Yahwism, the study follows the rise of Jerusalem as a sacred center and the repeated attempts by kings, priests, and scribes to concentrate worship in one authorized place. At the same time, it shows how alternative traditions continued to imagine God as mobile, relational, and impossible to confine to any single location. The destruction of the temple, the Babylonian exile, and the restoration period all reshaped how divine presence was understood and experienced.

Written for educated readers, clergy, students, and scholars, Locating God reframes familiar debates about monotheism, centralization, and temple worship by focusing on the dynamic tension between a God rooted in sacred places and a God who ultimately transcends them.