Yet while it seems certain that the
Arad fortified outpost was built at approximately the same time that
Beersheba was being developed as a royal stronghold, the specifics are debated.
This means there has also been debate about the date of the Arad temple, which
stood—along with an associated courtyard and a sacrificial altar—in the
northwest corner of Arad’s fortress compound (Fig. 6.4). Here, I follow Herzog’s
most recent assessments, which assign the temple and its associated courtyard and
altar only to Strata X and IX, which Herzog dates, respectively, to the mid-
and second half of the eighth century BCE. Then, in Stratum VIII, which Herzog
dates to the late eighth century BCE, the temple was intentionally dismantled.
This is approximately the same time that the altar and hypothesized temple in
Beersheba are thought to have been dismantled, and arguably, Herzog theorizes,
the Arad and Beersheba cult centers were decommissioned for the same reason: as
part of King Hezekiah’s attempts to centralize worship in Jerusalem. If so, we
can conclude that Arad, like Beersheba, was the site of a state-sponsored
fortress-shrine complex that was under royal control and subject to royally
promulgated dicta regarding its religious fortunes. (Susan Ackerman, Women
and the Religion of Ancient Israel [The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library;
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022], 161-62)
