Josiah
Josiah or Yoshiyahu was the 16th king of Judah. Described as "one of Judah’s most important kings," his reign likely marked a turning point in the development of Yahwism.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Josiah ascended to the throne of the southern Kingdom of Judah at the age of eight following the assassination of his father, King Amon. He reigned for 31 years, during which he expanded Judah and initiated major religious reforms, centralizing worship in Jerusalem and eliminating the worship of foreign gods.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Josiah's religious reforms began in his eighteenth year as king when the 'Book of the Law' was discovered during repairs to the Temple, and the prophetess Huldah confirmed its authenticity. Following this discovery, Josiah destroyed idols, high places, and sacred poles and purged Judah of false priests, mediums, and magicians. His reforms also extended into the territory that had once been part of the northern Kingdom of Israel, which had been absorbed into the Assyrian Empire. Josiah's reforms were not purely religious; they were also politically motivated. By centralizing worship at the Jerusalem Temple and eliminating smaller shrines and high places, Josiah gained control over the offerings and dues previously managed by local cultic centers. Scholars argue that he sought to revive a united kingdom.
The biblical account of Josiah's reforms, especially the removal of idol worship and the destruction of high places, has traditionally been considered historically accurate. However, the accuracy of these descriptions is now widely debated among scholars. Despite no direct reference to Josiah in other contemporary texts from Egypt or Babylon, and no inscriptions bearing his name, a seal bearing the name "Nathan-melech," an official under Josiah mentioned in, was discovered in situ in an archeological site in Jerusalem. This seal provides some archaeological support for the biblical account. Most scholars, however, agree on Josiah's historical existence.
The influence of Josiah’s reign is evident in the Deuteronomistic History, a collection of biblical texts that evaluate the reigns of Israelite and Judahite kings based on their adherence to the laws of Deuteronomy. Josiah is depicted as the most righteous king in this tradition, the only one to fully implement the reforms outlined in the "Book of the Law." His death in 609 BCE during a confrontation with Pharaoh Necho II of Late Egypt set the stage for the decline of the kingdom.
Biblical narrative
The Bible describes him as a righteous king in 2 Kings 22:2, "He did what was pleasing to GOD and he followed all the ways of his forefather David; he did not deviate to the right or to the left." A similar phrase appears in 2 Chronicles 34:2. He is also one of the kings mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, one of the two genealogies of Jesus in the New Testament.Family
According to the biblical narrative, Josiah was the son of King Amon of Judah and Jedidah, daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. His grandfather Manasseh was one of the kings blamed for turning away from the worship of Yahweh. Manasseh adapted the Temple for idolatrous worship. Josiah's great-grandfather was King Hezekiah, a noted reformer also respected by the biblical writers as having "done what was right in the sight of the LORD, as David had done." in 2 Kings 18:3 and 2 Chronicles 29:2.According to 1 Chronicles 3:15, 2 Kings 23:31 and 36, 2 Kings 24:18, Josiah had four sons: Johanan and Eliakim, whose mother was Zebidah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Ruma; and Shallum and Mattanyahu, whose mother was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. Eliakim had his name changed by the Saïte pharaoh Necho II to Jehoiakim according to 2 Kings 23:34.
Shallum, his third son, succeeded Josiah as Jehoahaz according to 1 Chronicles 3:15 and Jeremiah 22:11. Eliakim succeeded Shallum as Jehoiakim in 2 Chronicles 36:4, and he was succeeded by his son Jeconiah in 2 Chronicles 36:8. Jeconiah was succeeded to the throne by his uncle Mattanyahu, under the name Zedekiah in 2 Kings 24:17. Zedekiah was the last king of Judah before the kingdom was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Babylonian captivity began.
Religious reform
The Second Book of Chronicles records that Josiah was eight years old when he became king. In the eighth year of his reign, he "began to seek the God of his father David" and in the twelfth year of that reign he began a program of destruction of Baalist altars and images throughout Jerusalem and Judah according to 2 Chronicles 34:1-3. The Chronicler records in detail the execution of this program. In contrast, the account in 2 Kings begins with a restoration of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, which both accounts say was initiated in the eighteenth year of his reign.File:Close-Up.jpg|thumb|right|220px|View of the inner court and Holy Place of Solomon's Temple depicted in a 3-D computer model
Josiah ordered Hilkiah, the High Priest, to use the tax money collected over the years to renovate the Temple. While Hilkiah was clearing the treasure room of the Temple, he allegedly discovered a scroll described in 2 Kings 22:8 as "a scroll of the Teaching" and in 2 Chronicles 34:14 as "the book of the Law of the LORD given by Moses". The phrase "scroll of the Teaching" in 2 Kings 22:8 is identical to the phrase used in Joshua 1:8 and 8:34 to describe the sacred writings Joshua had received from Moses. The book is not identified in the text and many scholars believe this was either a copy of the Book of Deuteronomy or a text that became a part of Deuteronomy.
The story of the Temple restoration is based on those ordered by an earlier Judean king, Joash in 2 Kings 12, who ruled c. 836 – 796 BCE.
Hilkiah brought this scroll to Josiah's attention. Josiah consulted the prophetess Huldah, who assured him that the evil foretold in the document for non-observance of its instructions, would come, but not in his day; "because", she said, "thine heart was tender and thou didst humble thyself before the Lord". An assembly of the elders of Judah and Jerusalem and of all the people was called, and Josiah then encouraged the exclusive worship of Yahweh, forbidding all other forms of worship. The instruments and emblems of the worship of Baal and "heavenly host" were removed from the Temple in Jerusalem. Local sanctuaries, known as high places, were destroyed from Beersheba in the south to Bethel and the cities of Samaria in the north. Josiah had pagan priests executed and even had the bones of the dead priests of Bethel exhumed from their graves and burned on their altars. Josiah also reinstituted Passover celebrations.
According to an unnamed "man of God" had prophesied to King Jeroboam of the northern Kingdom of Israel, approximately three hundred years earlier, that "a son named Josiah will be born to the house of David" and that he would destroy the altar at Bethel. And the only exception to this destruction 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. Josiah ordered the double grave of the "man of God" and of the Bethel prophet to be left alone, as these prophecies had come true.
Josiah's reforms are described in two biblical accounts, 2 Kings 22–23, and 2 Chronicles 34–35. They began with the ending of ancient Israelite religious practices, and the astral cults that had become popular in the 8th century, and led to centralisation of worship in Jerusalem, and the destruction of the temple at Bethel. Some scholars have rejected the entire historicity of these accounts, while others have defended the historical existence of a religious reform under Josiah's reign.
According to the later account in 2 Chronicles, Josiah destroyed altars and images of pagan deities in cities of the tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim, "and Simeon, as far as Naphtali", which were outside of his kingdom, Judah, and returned the Ark of the Covenant to the Temple.
Book of the Law
The Hebrew Bible states that the priest Hilkiah found a "Book of the Law" in the temple during the early stages of Josiah's temple renovation. Hilkiah then gave the scroll to his secretary Shaphan, who took it to King Josiah. According to the Bible, King Josiah then changed his leadership entirely, entering into a new covenant with God. He wiped out rival cults that had formed within his land. He, along with his people, then entered into this new covenant with God to keep the commandments.For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was widely accepted among biblical scholars that this "Book of the Law" was an early version of the Book of Deuteronomy, but recent scholarship views it as a largely legendary narrative of one of the earliest stages in the creation of the Deuteronomistic work. William G. Dever, for example, argues that the Book of the Law was actually composed by orthodox Yahwist priests, who attributed it to the legendary figure of Moses and then hid it in the Temple, where it would be dramatically discovered; in this way, a "miraculous new Word from Yahweh" would seem to have appeared, giving Judah a chance to redeem itself and save itself from the advance of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Many scholars view the entire core narrative, from Joshua to 2 Kings, as a Deuteronomistic History written during Josiah's reign. In fact, some recent European theologians even go so far as to posit that most of the Torah and Deuteronomistic History was composed and finalized several centuries later, during the Persian rule. However, biblical scholars are coming to believe that the Deuteronomistic History was composed using other earlier sources, including a brief chronicle of king's names, age at the beginning of their reign, and their mother's names.
Prophets and King Josiah
According to rabbinic interpretation, Huldah said to the messengers of King Josiah, "Tell the man that sent you to me...", indicating by her unceremonious language that for her Josiah was like any other man. The king addressed her, and not Jeremiah, because he thought that women are more easily stirred to pity than men, and that therefore the prophetess would be more likely than Jeremiah to intercede with God in his behalf. Huldah was a relative of Jeremiah, both being descendants of Rahab by her marriage with Joshua. While Jeremiah admonished and preached repentance to the men, she did the same to the women. Huldah was not only a prophetess, but taught publicly in the school according to the Targum of 2 Kings 22:14. It is doubtful whether "the Gate of Huldah" in the Second Temple has any connection with the prophetess Huldah; it may have meant "Cat's Gate"; some scholars, such as Rashi, associate the gate with Huldah's schoolhouse.The prophetic activity of Jeremiah began in the reign of Josiah; he was a contemporary of his relative the prophetess Hulda and of his teacher Zephaniah. These three prophets divided their activity: Hulda spoke to the women and Jeremiah to the men in the street, while Zephaniah preached in the synagogue. When Josiah restored the true worship, Jeremiah went to the exiled ten tribes, whom he brought to Israel under the rule of the pious king. Although Josiah went to war with Egypt against the prophet's advice, Jeremiah knew that this was an error by the otherwise pious king; and later he bitterly laments the king's death: the fourth chapter of Lamentations beginning with a dirge on Josiah.
King Josiah, who foresaw the impending national catastrophe, concealed the Ark and its contents within a hidden chamber which had been built by Solomon] ; cf. Babylonian Talmud and their whereabouts will remain unknown until, in the Messianic age, the prophet Elijah shall reveal them.