Josiah

   Josiah or Yoshiyahu (יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ "supported of the Lord", Standard Hebrew Yošiyyáhu, Tiberian Hebrew Yôšiyyāhû) was king of Judah, and son of Amon and Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. His grandfather was King Manasseh, who had turned from the Jewish religion, even adapting the Temple for worship that was considered idolatrous by faithful Jews. Josiah is credited by some historians with having established Jewish scripture in written form as a part of the Deuteronomic reform that occurred during his rule.

William F. Albright has dated his reign to 640 B.C.E.-609 B.C.E., while E. R. Thiele offers the dates 641 B.C.E.-609 B.C.E. The chief sources of his reign are 2 Kings 22-23, and 2 Chronicles 34-35; 1 Esdras 1 clearly a copy of the relevant portion of 2 Chronicles. Archaeologists have recovered a number of "scroll-style" stamps dating to his reign.

Judah's condition at his accession

When Josiah was placed on the throne of Judah by the "People of the Land", the international situation was in flux: to the east, the Assyrian Empire was in the beginning stages of its eventual disintegration, the Babylonian Empire had not yet risen to replace it, and Egypt to the west was still recovering from Assyrian rule. This favored the resurgence of the prowess of Jerusalem, which Josiah expressed in the 8th year of rule by his sincere championing of the exclusive worship of Yahweh. He had the foreign cultic objects of Baal, Ashterah (or Asherah), "and all the hosts of the heavens" in Solomon's Temple destroyed. The living pagan priests were slaughtered and the bones of priests exhumed from their graves and burned on their altars — which was viewed as an extreme act of desecration against these pagan deities by their adherents. (2 Kings 23:4, et seq.) The authors of Kings and Chronicles add to these acts in Jerusalem Josiah's similar destruction of altars and images belonging to pagan deities in the cities of the tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim, "and Simeon, as far as Naphtali" (2 Kings 23:8f);(2 Chr. 34:6f).

In his 18th regnal year, Josiah again worked on behalf of Yahweh by having the High Priest Hilkiah take the tax monies that had been collected over the years and use them to repair the neglect and damage the Temple had suffered during the reigns of Amon and Manasseh.

Deuteronomic reform

While Hilkiah was clearing the treasure room of the Temple (2 Chr. 34:14), he found a scroll described as "the book, book of the Torah"/"הספר ספר התורה" (Second Kings 22:8) or as "the book of the Torah of YHVH by the hand of Moses" (2 Chr. 34:14). Following De Wette's suggestion in 1805, many scholars believe this was either a copy of the Book of Deuteronomy, or a text that became Deuteronomy as we have it. Hilkiah brought this scroll to Josiah's attention, and the king had it read to a crowd in Jerusalem. He was praised for this piety by the prophetess Huldah, who made the prophecy that all involved would die peacefully (2 Kings 22:14-20; 2 Chr. 34:22-28). As the fate of King Josiah shows, this prophecy was not fulfilled in a physical sense.

Assertion of control over Israel

At some point between this year and his death, Josiah reasserted Judean control in the former territories of the kingdom of Israel, which is recorded in 2 Kings as systematically destroying the cultic objects in various cities, as well as executing the priests of the pagan gods. The only exception he made was for the grave of an unnamed prophet he found in Bethel, who had foretold that these religious sites Jeroboam erected would one day be destroyed (23:15-19).

Josiah's death

There are two versions of Josiah's violent death. The Book of Kings tersely remarks that Necho II met Josiah at Megiddo, and killed him the moment the Egyptian king laid eyes on him (2 Kings 23:29)See Battle of Megiddo (609 B.C.E.). Proponents of DtrH ascribe this portion of the book to a post-Josiahwic redaction. The author of Chronicles describes Josiah meeting Necho in battle at Megiddo, where Josiah was fatally wounded by Egyptian archers, and was brought back to Jerusalem to die. Some scholars favor the account in Chronicles, because it better fits with what is known of international events. Necho had left Egypt around 609 B.C.E. for two reasons: one was to relieve the Babylonian siege of Harran, and the other was to help the king of Assyria, who was defeated by the Babylonians at the Battle of Carchemish. Josiah's actions suggest that he was aiding the Babylonians by engaging the Egyptian army.

In either case, the death of this king was a serious blow to the Yahweh-only faction in Judea. 2 Chronicles 35:25 implies that Jeremiah wrote a lament for Josiah's passing. A Jewish tradition claims that this lament is preserved in Lamentations chapter 4.

Textual criticism

While the Biblical text relates that the scroll was "found", this has been met with skepticism among some modern textual critics: the view of the English deists of the 16th century (Hertz 1936), that the book was a forgery created to help centralize power under Josiah, is held today among some Biblical scholars. (However, scholars such as W.R. Smith, Rudolf Kittel, Dillman and Driver disagree, pointing out that priestly forgery of the Deuteronomic text was unlikely, as the text placed restrictions on the privileges of the priestly class, who were a thorn in the side of King Josiah.)

In the ancient Near East it was commonplace for religious scrolls to be deposited in temple walls when they were constructed (Hertz 1936), and according to the Swiss Egyptologist Naville, this was the custom amongst the Jews at the time of Solomon. It would have been more unusual if such scrolls were not found in during the renovation of a temple building, and Naville recounts a similar find recounted in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It is interesting to note in this respect that the specific text cited by Naville is one of many which are attributed to famous figures of the past, typically sons of a Pharaoh, and which are all known to have be written at a much later date. The linguistic evidence and all of the anachronisms contained in the Book of Deuteronomy suggest that the scroll was likely to have been written during the reign of King Josiah.

On the assumption that Deuteronomy was forged by Josiah's priests, these scholars go on to propose that the core narrative from Genesis to 2 Kings up to Josiah's reign comprise a "Deuteronomistic History" (DtrH) written during that reign. This history compiled the hypothesised "J", "E", and "D" narratives, all already textual at this point, of which the J narrative at this time would have extended into the history of David's court; the DtrH further attempted to historicise narratives of the times of Joshua and the Judges. The hypothetical DtrH is distinguished from the surviving Biblical books in that it omits the priestly "P" narrative. The DtrH portrayed King Josiah as the ideal ruler as Deuteronomy had defined it, and thus as the rightful ruler of Judah. (This interpretation is often confused with the position of "Biblical Minimalism", which denies that David and Solomon ruled a united kingdom; but Baruch Halpern has noted that however tendentious, DtrH must still be treated as a history, and as largely accurate at least for the reign of Josiah.) See Dating the Bible and The Bible and history. Such claims are detailed in Who Were the Early Israelites? by William G. Dever (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2003). Another such book is The Bible Unearthed by Neil A. Silberman and Israel Finkelstein (Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001).

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