Alternative Temples

The Temple of Jerusalem was never the only place of worship and sacrifice. In the biblical period, local shrines existed before, and even after, the effort to centralize the ritual cult in the Jerusalem Temple. The Jewish mercenary colony at Elephantine, Egypt, had its own temple from perhaps as early as the seventh century to at least the early fourth century BCE. At Mount Gerizim, the Samaritans—in many ways indistinguishable from Judeans—had their own temple until it was destroyed in the Hasmonean period. And in the Hellenistic period and later, sources refer to a temple established by Onias, a displaced high priest, at Leontopolis in Egypt. However, most sources from the Hellenistic and Roman periods indicate that the Jerusalem Temple was the cultic center of the Jewish people until its destruction in 70 CE.