Pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the Old Testamet

ANOTATION Title: Pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the Old Testament The aim of this thesis is to show the extent to which the Old Testament pilgrimages issue - as a specific religious phenomenon - is related to the identity, historic formation, and eschatological targeting by the chosen people of Israel at the Lord, their God. After an introductory chapter, which covers the basic contextual foundations of the issue (anthropology, human movement, the history of the religious community, the anakefaleiósis of its "founder" and the myth that the objectives of the entire human race are in perfect harmony), the author moves on to discuss to the legal standards and regulations which applied on the pilgrimages, as codified in the Pentateuch. In this second chapter the author focuses mainly on the way in which the celebration of pilgrimage holidays helped build the identity of God's people in diverse environments, times and circumstances, and the development of the liturgy of the three major pilgrimages that culminate in pre-exile Jerusalem. In the third chapter, the author focuses on the conflicts between the prophetic institution and the royal and clerical institution in the environment of the temple in Zion. He shows that the dynamics of the Lord's cult and pilgrimage celebration are threatened by formalism if the..