Geography Colloquium | Building a Temple, Constructing a Nation: Sacred Space and Cultural Memory in Iron Age Jerusalem. Feb. 9

Cory Crawford

The Geography Colloquium Series presents Dr. Cory Crawford on “Building a Temple, Constructing a Nation: Sacred Space and Cultural Memory in Iron Age Jerusalem” on Friday, Feb. 9, at 3:05 p.m. in Clippinger 119.

Crawford is Assistant Professor of Classics & World Religions at Ohio University, where he teaches biblical studies and ancient culture, including a course on Ancient Jerusalem. He earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University in near Eastern languages and civilizations and has since published on the Bible and material culture in the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia.

Abstract: For ancient Israelites, Jerusalem was something of a paradox: It was the capital city of the storied dynasty of David and Solomon, yet it came into the hands of the Israelites only relatively late in their history. This paper looks at one of the central means of integrating the city into the history of Israel: building the temple in Israel and telling stories that wove it into the fabric of what would become commonly shared memories of their deeper past. It also discusses how critical spatial theory can help make sense of the diverse streams of evidence in contexts where documentation may be less abundant, such as in the first-millennium-BCE Levant.