Hulda the Prophetess was one of the first to read the scroll that was discovered in the walls of the temple. Her analysis of it would lead the king to gather the people in Jerusalem, read the contents of the scroll aloud, and begin a harsh, violent and comprehensive religious reform all over the southern and northern territories of Judah and Israel.
What was this scroll and what was in it? There are different opinions between the more traditional and critical readers of this text. Based on rabbinic opinions found in the Talmud, the 16th century Portuguese-Jewish commentator Don Isaac Abarbanel echoes this fantastic legend:
writes:
“Josiah’s grandfather, King Manasseh, would erase God's name from Torah scrolls and replace it with idolatrous names of deities. Hence, one of the priests feared that if the original Moses' Torah scroll were to come into the evil king's hands, Manasseh would remove the divine names here too and replace them. And so he hid the scroll in a chamber in the temple, between the walls. In Josiah's initial period, when he returned to God...the priests failed to find the scroll. But when they came to repair the house, Hilkiah found it between the walls and it was like finding a treasure; as such he said, "I have found the Torah scroll" .... It would not have generated such fright had it not been the selfsame Torah scroll that was penned by Moses' holy hands, directly from the Almighty.”
That is an amazing story, but why would the discovery of this scroll - the original one ‘written by Moses’ cause such terror? Abarbanel continues:
“The Rabbis in the Jerusalem Talmud explain that normally Moses' scroll was rolled to its beginning, but when they discovered it, they opened it at the verse: "God shall bring you, and your king which you shall set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known" (Deut. 28:36). The king was alarmed; he saw the entire event as a miracle and a divine sign regarding the future.”
The passage described here is part of the large section of rebuke found in the book of Deuteronomy - warning the people that they will be exiled and lost if and when they walk away from the ways and laws of Moses and YHWH.
And while traditional readings and Orthodox dogma believe, till this day, that what Josiah discovered is the ‘original’ Torah, most scholars claim that what happened here is not a discovery of an ancient text - but the creation of a new one, inspired by old versions, but utilizing the religious fervor and technology of that rare moment in history.
The political reality was a vacuum. Assyria was in decline and Egypt was rising. Judah had time to regroup and in that vacuum Josiah’s mentors and priestly allies too advantage of the moment to put down in writing their version of Jewish lore and law.
This is in line with the Assyrian culture that prioritized writing and the scribing of everything - from royal decrees to mythic legends and laws. While it’s likely that older versions of the Torah existed - both orally and as written fragments - there was not a solid version that was known.
The exiles of the Kingdom of Israel brought with them to Jerusalem the traditions of the north, while the residents of Judah had their older southern versions of some of the same stories.
Josiah’s reform would manufacture the text that we today know as the fifth book of Moses, and around it begin to mold what would become the entire Torah. This monumental project was done quickly, during the brief period between Josiah’s ascendancy and death on the battlefield with Egypt, at the end of this chapter, barely 40 years old. The task would continue in Babylon, following Jerusalem’s destruction and exile.
This is a lot of information.. And more will be revealed with time. The focus of today is realizing how the power of the written word would seal the deal and create the culture of Jewish literacy as we know it.
In order to enable the supremacy of the written word and the legacy of Moses as the original scribe of Torah - Josiah took on the most brutal and detailed fight against all other depictions of the sacred realm.
Today’s chapter lists the annihilation of the older cultures of the region - sacred trees and altars smashed and buried, priests and priestesses slain, the mysterious worship of the sun god and the moon, planets and stars - all up in smoke. Most scholars agree that these chapters were written in close proximity to the events described here which is why such vivid detail exists - the written word was used to highlight its rise over the images and idols of yore:
“Josiah also did away with the necromancers and the mediums, the idols and the fetishes—all the detestable things that were to be seen in the land of Judah and Jerusalem. Thus he fulfilled the terms of the Teaching written and recorded in the scroll that the priest Hilkiah had found in the House of YHWH”
In her fantastic and highly recommended book, The Bible: A Biography, Karen Armstrong reminds us why this historical moment is hinged on the emergence of the written word:
“In the older stories, there was no mention of Yahweh’s teaching (torah) being committed to writing. In the older accounts, Moses had passed on Yahweh’s directions by word of mouth and the people had responded orally.
The seventh-century reformers, however, added verses to the older versions of the saga which explained that Moses ‘put all the commands of Yahweh into writing’ and read the scroll of Torah to the people.
Hilkiah and Shaphan claimed that this scroll had been lost and its teachings never implemented, but its providential discovery meant that Judah could make a new start. Hilkiah’s document probably contained an early version of the book of Deuteronomy, which described Moses delivering a ‘second law’ (Greek: deuteronomion) shortly before his death.
But instead of being an ancient work, Deuteronomy was an entirely new scripture. It was not unusual for reformers to attribute new ideas to a great figure of the past. The Deuteronomists believed that they were speaking for Moses at this time of transition. In other words, this was what Moses would say to Josiah if he were delivering a ‘second law’ today.
The reformers did not use their scripture to conserve tradition, as is often done today, but to introduce radical change. They also rewrote the history of Israel, adding fresh material that adapted the earlier epic to the seventh century, paying special attention to Moses, who had liberated the Israelites from Egypt, at a time when Josiah hoped to become independent of Pharaoh. The climax of the Exodus story was no longer a theophany on Sinai, but the gift of the sefer torah and the tablets that Yahweh gave to Moses were now inscribed with the Ten Commandments. The Deuteronomists extended the Exodus story to include Joshua’s conquest of the northern highlands – a blueprint for Josiah’s reconquering of the northern territories. They also wrote a history of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the books of Samuel and Kings, arguing that the Davidic monarchs were the only legitimate rulers of the whole of Israel. Their story culminated in the reign of Josiah, a new Moses and a greater king than David.
Instead of simply recording the status quo, for the first time an Israelite text was calling for radical change. After the scroll had been read aloud to him, Josiah tore his garments in distress and immediately inaugurated a programme that followed Yahweh’s new torah to the letter. He burned down Manasseh’s abominations in the temple and, because the Judahites had always regarded the royal shrines of the northern kingdom as illegitimate, demolished the temples of Bethel and Samaria, killed the priests in the rural sanctuaries and contaminated their altars...The Deuteronomists pioneered the idea of scriptural orthodoxy.”
Josiah’s reform succeeded to intercept tradition with brutality and replace old religious ways with what would become the law. But Josiah’s reign would not be long. Hulda was right - he would be buried in Jerusalem - but he would die on the battlefield with Egypt, the empire that then supervised the succession. Josiah’s son was crowned by the elite but Egypt intervened and replaced him with his younger brother Elyakim, renamed Yehoyakim by the Egyptians, who in effect now rule the land.
The chapter ends with the 18th king of Judah, who does not seem to obey his dead father’s religious ways but none of that matters anymore.
Babylon is coming.
Judah is pious but pitiful. The end is near. But the words will live on.
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