King Josiah and the secret Temple scroll

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

As discussed a few weeks ago on this group, the origin of the book of Deuteronomy has long been a matter of intense speculation and debate. This post will tackle a popular approach from academic bible critics, which attempts to trace Deuteronomy’s provenance to the religious revolution instituted by King Josiah towards the end of the First Temple era.

The young Judean king is raised in a religious void following the efforts of his predecessors to erase knowledge of Torah and Jewish beliefs from the nation. II Kings 22-23 describes how Josiah courtiers discover a Torah scroll (II Chronicles 34:14: “written by the hand of Moshe”) which had been concealed within the Temple. Josiah proceeds to read this “scroll of the covenant” publicly to his subjects before enthusiastically instituting its requirements.

Scholars point to the biblical passage describing Josiah’s reaction to reading the scroll, identifying a number of “Deuteronomic” words, phrases and themes. Various theories evolved from this identification, which proposed distinguishing between the book of Deuteronomy and the previous books of the Torah in terms of their functions, authorship and era. Some even went so far as to suggest that Deuteronomy – with its strong insistence on centralized worship and power – was a forgery, perpetrated by Josiah’s courtiers as part of a ruse to enhance the authority of the young king.

We will first address the claim that Josiah’s revolution reflects an exclusively Deuteronomic influence, before examining some of the broader theories of a fraudulent power-grab which sprouted up around it.

Josiah’s Scroll: From All Four Corners of the Bible

In Who Really Wrote the Bible?, Clayton Ford responds to the claim that Josiah’s revolution reflects a solely Deuteronomic theme by arguing that terms and ideas from all four supposed biblical sources can be found in the crucial passage of II Kings. While scholars draw upon common linguistic and legal themes in order to connect Josiah to “D”, he explains, the same kinds of arguments, however, prove that the book of the Torah must also have contained the other proposed J, E, and P sources too.

The discovered scroll is referred to in II Kings as "the Book of the Covenant." Near the end of his reform, Josiah commanded the people to "Keep the Passover to YHWH your Elohim, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant" (II Kings 23:21). At the beginning of his reform, when Josiah gathered the people to the temple, "he read in their ears all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which was found in the house of YHWH" (2 Kings 23:2). Aside from this episode, “the Book of the Covenant" appears in only one other place: “Then he [Moshe] took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the ears of the people” (Exodus 24:7). Scholars are in agreement that this verse originates from “E” – containing all of the laws of Exodus 21-23. Based on the methodology of the critics, therefore, the book which Hilkiah found must have contained E as well.

Furthermore, the description of Josiah’s reforms recounts how he "smashed the sacred monuments and cut down the Asherim [a type of idol]" (23:14). This directly replicates and fulfils a law found only in Exodus 34:13, a passage attributed by scholars to the “J” source: "You shall smash their sacred monuments and cut down their Asherim" (Deuteronomy 7:5 contains a similar though differently worded law). The alleged “P” source is also reflected in Josiah’s reaction to discovering the scroll, which describes how he prevented the priests who had sacrificed at the prohibited bamot (private altars) from officiating at the Temple in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, they still “ate unleavened bread among their brethren” (II Kings 23:8-9).

In The Exodus and Biblical Narrative, Richard Elliot Friedman himself notes how Josiah's treatment of these priests was similar to the treatment of the physically blemished priests proscribed by a law in “P”: "He may eat the bread of his God...only he shall not go near the curtain nor approach the altar, because he has a defect" (Lev. 21:22-23). The “P” source, he continues, may also have prevented Josiah from prohibiting priestly consumption of bread to those who had sinned since it commands “all the males among the children of Aaron may eat it. It shall be a statute forever in your generations" (Lev. 6:16, 18). Finally, the description of Josiah defiling Topheth so that “no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech" (2 Kings 23:10) closely reflects the language of Lev. 18:21).

Thus all four of the critics’ claimed biblical sources are reflected and well represented in the passage describing Josiah’s revolution.

Was Josiah Attempting to Centralize Sacrificial Worship?

Further academic theories have proposed more radical implications of the alleged special relationship between Deuteronomy and scroll of Josiah. One claim put forward in a variety of forms by bible critics over the last 150 years is that Josiah’s attempt to eradicate idolatry and bamot, was driven by the desire to consolidate power and assert control over the nation’s religious worship. His advisors, it is alleged, fraudulently composed the scroll and claimed to have found it hidden in the Temple.

The unique structure and content of the book of Deuteronomy — which we examined a few weeks ago— together with its injunctions not to offer sacrifices on private bamot, are taken by these critics to be evidence in support of this theory. While this idea has enjoyed widespread popularity among some bible scholars, Amnon Bazak, (To This Very Day) demonstrates that powerful questions against its credibility tend to be overlooked.

The first challenge questions the assumption that Judaism before the time of Josiah lacked any notion of centralised worship, and that no religious laws restricted private sacrifice. Support for this assumption is often premised on a verse shortly after the first recording of the Ten Commandments, which is taken to approve sacrifices in any place of the worshipper’s preference. A more careful reading of the verse however shows that this approval of sacrifices is limited to a place “asher azkir et Shemi — where I [God] allow My name to be mentioned”, which clearly implies a limitation. Furthermore, the Hebrew text contains a subtlety which does not translate easily and is therefore often overlooked. In the phrase “bechol hamakom asher azkir et shemi” the word makom (“place”) is prefixed by the heh hayediah (the Hebrew equivalent of the definite article, i.e. “the place”) which means, in effect, “any specific place in which I allow My name to be mentioned”.

In fact, many biblical sources point strongly to an earlier prohibition against the performance of sacrifices in private non-centralised locations. The details of the construction of the Mishkan in the desert are related at length by the Torah, as are the details of Shlomo’s construction of the first Mikdash – an indication of the importance placed on a place of centralised sacrifice. This is underlined by the prohibition (Lev. 17. 1-9) of the performance of any sacrifice (and at times even regular slaughter) outside the Mishkan’s perimeters Furthermore, in an episode towards the end of the book of Joshua (chap. 22), a misunderstanding brought the nation to the brink of civil war when the tribes of mainland Israel thought that their Transjordanian brethren were setting up their own altar to rival the centralized one.

Dating Deuteronomy

A closely-related question which arises from the suggestion that Deuteronomy was forged for political reasons by the courtiers of Josiah (or Hezekiah as others suggest) is the broader antiquity of the book. But is the content of Deuteronomy consistent with such a claim that it was authored in the late First Temple period?

Many scholars maintain that the book was the work of power-grabbing leadership who sought to centralize worship in Jerusalem. But were this to be true, it would be surprising that within the entire book of Deuteronomy there is not even a single instance of any mention by name of the capital.

If anything, the text appears delicately and deliberately to step around the word “Jerusalem”, substituting in its place the verbose and vague phrase “in the place in which God shall choose that His name shall dwell there” – a phrase which appears approximately 20 times throughout the book. While this phenomenon can be seen to support Jewish tradition that the Temple was just the latest and most impressive of the places of centralised worship, it deals a blow to the claim that a primary aim of the book of Deuteronomy was to focus on the central importance of this specific place.

Additionally, despite the existence of several mentions of the prohibition to sacrifice outside the permitted place(s), it is far-fetched to imagine that it constitutes the primary or even a central theme of the book of Deuteronomy. Instead, Deuteronomy places far greater emphasis on avoiding the temptations of idolatry, the establishment of effective institutions in the Land and appropriate preparations for upcoming battle with the Canaanite nations.

A broader look at the book of Deuteronomy reveals that, if its composition was dated to the era of the later kings, this would render much of its content both anachronistic and absurd. The entire context and tone of Deuteronomy is fundamentally suited to a nation being addressed by Moshe on the cusp of its entry into the Land of Israel. Politically, Deuteronomy (23:8) regards the nation of Edom favourably, as a ‘brotherly’ nation not to be “rejected”. The reality in the era of Josiah, however, was that Edom had become a bitter enemy of the Jewish people, with whom it had fought several severe battles. It is indeed hard to imagine a book composed in Josiah’s times viewing the nation of Edom in such a positive light; however, this position is entirely consonant with the more peaceful attitude towards Edom displayed by Moshe in Numbers (20:14-21), where God instructed him to detour rather than trespass and provoke the Edomites.

The wars of conquest which are envisaged and legislated for in the book of Deuteronomy are well suited to a nation posed to embark on an invasion. Such descriptions, however, are profoundly incongruous with the political reality of Josiah’s era in which, it is alleged, they were composed — an era in which the tiny Judaean state was struggling to exist alongside the regional Assyrian and Babylonian superpowers. Furthermore, there is no hint in the entire book of Deuteronomy of the serious rupture which had taken place among the Jewish people, splitting it into two separate kingdoms, one of which had recently been defeated and exiled. The fundamental incompatibility of the content of much of the book of Deuteronomy with Josiah’s era was conceded by Richard Elliot Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? p 120, who considered that: “The laws of war in the book of Deuteronomy, therefore…suggest an early, nonmonarchic point of view”. Friedman also argues that the type of conscripted armies described in Deuteronomy had been entirely replaced by professional armies by the time of the later kings such as Josiah.

Finally, if the primary agenda motivating the composition of the book of Deuteronomy was truly to expand the authority of the monarch by centralising religious worship in Jerusalem, it is extraordinary that this scroll in fact limited monarchy in a way which was unique among ancient cultures. The concept of a limited monarchy was a contradiction in terms in ancient Eastern cultures. It is an unfathomable proposition that a king, setting out to compose a fraudulent document in order to broaden his power, would include such a passage – which sets limits to his glory and places him within rather than above the law as was the norm in Josiah’s era.

First posted on Facebook 8 August 2021, here.

Nechemiah's Sukkot celebration: not since the times of Yehoshua bin Nun?

Nechemiah’s description of the Sukkot celebration as something that “the Children of Israel had not done so since the days of Yehoshua bin Nun,” raises profound questions. As a Gemara asks: “Is it possible that [King] David came and yet [the Jews] did not perform Sukkot until the days of Ezra?” We can add to the Gemara’s example many more righteous rulers such as Shmuel, Shlomo, Josiah and Hezekiah who were lauded by the prophets for their punctilious observance and teaching of the Torah and under whose reign it would therefore seem inexplicable for the festival of Sukkot not to have been celebrated as mandated by the Torah.

Furthermore, other biblical sources indicate widespread and enthusiastic participation in Sukkot observance. When Yeravam ben Nevat’s Northern Kingdom seceded from Judah, he “innovated a holiday in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month,” in imitation of the holiday in Judah. The commentaries explain that the pilgrimage festival of Sukkot was so popular that Yeravam could not simply abolish it. Instead he had to fabricate a replacement festival a month later.

The importance of the Sukkot celebration in the Jewish calendar is also apparent from Shlomo’s consecration of the First Mikdash. With the construction work having been completed almost a year earlier, Shlomo waited until the Sukkot festival of the following year in order to dedicate the Mikdash “in the festival of the seventh month.” This delay enabled him to celebrate the dedication and the Sukkot festival in consecutive weeks with the amassed crowd of pilgrims.

The statement in Nechemiah, that the festival had not been observed since the days of Yehoshua, is addressed by Malbim, who highlights the fact that there is only one aspect of the celebration of Sukkot—dwelling in sukkot—which the text records as not having been performed since the days of Yehoshua:

[The people] made sukkot, each man on his roof, and in their courtyards, in the courtyards of the Temple of God, in the plaza of the Water Gate and in the plaza of the Gate of Ephraim. The entire congregation that returned from the captivity made sukkot and dwelt in sukkot. The children of Israel had not done so from the days of Joshua ben Nun until that day…

Noting the clear emphasis placed on the various public locations of the sukkot which the people built, Malbim draws upon halachic and Talmudic sources to propose a solution. Starting by citing the halachic ruling that it is forbidden to build a sukkah in the public domain, Malbim argues that this severely limited the practicality of widespread sukkah construction during the days of the First Mikdash. The festival of Sukkot, being one of the three pilgrimage festivals, would have required a significant proportion of those observing its laws to be away from their private property.

The inability of pilgrims and celebrants to build sukkot was exacerbated following the construction of the Beit Hamikdash by King Shlomo, which meant that the festival of Sukkot would have been observed primarily in Jerusalem. Malbim cites Tannaic sources which teach that the whole city of Jerusalem was not divided among the tribes and therefore remained public property. One result of this would have been that constructing sukkot within its walls was prohibited. Such a surprising phenomenon may have been considered acceptable in light of the Torah’s unusual presentation of the commandment to “every resident [ezrach]” to dwell in sukkot. This is understood by some commentators to mean that the mitzvah is primarily applicable to those in their own property and not to travellers.

When the Jews returned to Jerusalem at the start of the Second Commonwealth, Malbim continues, Ezra legislated a series of key religious and social enactments which included “permission to build sukkot in Jerusalem” [Tosefta, Baba Kama 6:13; see Magen Avraham, who uses this as basis for current halachah].

The first sukkot in the aftermath of this enactment revolutionized the national observance of Sukkot in Jerusalem, leading Nechemiah to list the key public areas which were now filled with private sukkot. It is in the immediate aftermath of this listing of public places—in reference to the new dimension to the celebration of the Sukkot festival—that we find the comment “The Children of Israel had not done so since the days of Yehoshua bin Nun.”

First posted on Facebook 5 October 2020, here.

Broken transmission in Bayit Rishon?

The Judaism Reclaimed chapter related to Parashat Ki Tavo explores the implications of the fearsome curses and punishments which are to be unleashed upon Israel in the event of severe national sinfulness – something which the book of Devarim makes clear will come to pass.

As is made clear from later books of Prophets, Israel does indeed descend into idolatry and the nation as a whole no longer appears to obey or be interested in the Torah’s commandments. Could such a nation possibly have faithfully transmitted the Torah’s teachings through such sinful periods?

In his commentary to the curses, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch grapples with these dramatic threats. He observes that it is evident from the recurring conclusions such as “until you will be destroyed”, “until you will be annihilated”, that the Torah cannot mean that all of the various forms of suffering described would fully affect the entire nation. Rather, they appear to indicate that some will perish through illness, others through famine, others again from war, and so forth.

More significantly, writes Rav Hirsch, the general proclamation of these decrees is conditional, to be carried out in their entirety only if the nation descends to a complete defection from God’s Torah. Such a level of degeneration, he argues, was never reached. We know from the books of the Prophets that a loyal nucleus always remained so that even when the upper classes of society, who were more susceptible to the pagan influences of the surrounding nations, descended into idolatry and corruption, a pure and virtuous religious class maintained and transmitted the tradition of the prophets. Since the defection was never absolute, so too God’s punishment was never implemented to its fullest extent, and there was thus no “total annihilation”.

In his Collected Writings, Rav Hirsch develops further the idea of a ‘healthy remnant’ of faithful Jews, based on the opening chapter of Yeshaya. There the prophet describes the moral and religious degeneration of his era, writing: “Had God, Master of the Legions, not left us the trace of a remnant, we would have been like Sodom and resembled Gomorrah”.

What is clear from Yeshaya is that, while this righteous minority certainly existed, it was too small in number to influence the trend of events in the state and therefore seldom appeared in historical records. Elsewhere, Yechezkel testifies that an entire clan of Tzaddokite Kohanim – whose job it was to teach and transmit the Torah’s teachings – remained loyal to the Torah.

The weak and persecuted status of this minority can be seen from further prophetic descriptions such as this statement much later in Yeshaya (66:5): “Listen to the word of God, you who are zealous regarding His word, your brethren hate and shun you ….”

And the description by Yechezkel (9:4) of how the righteous would be saved from Jerusalem’s destruction: “… put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst."

Nevertheless it is their existence alone which prevented the nation from descending to the level of total wickedness and corruption that would have engaged the full force of the tochachah curses.

Rabbi Alex Israel, writing in I Kings: Torn in Two points out how even the generation of the wicked king Achav is described by Eliyahu as “poschim al shnei se’ipin” – wavering between two beliefs rather than being idolatrous through and through.

The books of the prophets, particularly the two books of Kings, tell the story of the decline and fall of the Jewish state. This story focuses upon the leaders and elites since the demoralisation of the people began at the top before spreading downwards and engulfing the nation as a whole. But we learn little about the lives of the masses of people during those centuries.

Prophetic critiques of the sinful state of the nation will often seek to exaggerate its extent for the sake of rebuke. The use of such exaggeration is evident from an exchange between God and Eliyahu during the reign of the wicked Achav. Eliyahu bitterly condemns the entire Israelite kingdom for having “forsaken God’s covenant…I alone have remained” (I Kings 18) – yet not long after God attests to the fact that 7,000 Israelite remained totally loyal to Him.

Rav Hirsch concludes that, without this precious minority, we cannot explain the appearance during sustained periods of ‘total sinfulness’ of such brilliant men as the prophets. Prophets do not just appear overnight; rather, the gift of prophecy is limited to those who excel in wisdom and moral character, qualities that must be patiently acquired.

It follows that a nation which, through the centuries, could produce such luminaries as Devorah, Shmuel, Eliyahu, Elisha, Hoshea, Amos, Yeshaya, Micha, Habakkuk, Yirmiyah, Yechezkel and many others, must have maintained an ongoing cadre of righteous and spiritually healthy members of Jewish society. This is presumably the “healthy remnant” to which Yeshaya refers. A religiously loyal nucleus who would have possessed both the capacity and the motivation to transmit the Jewish tradition throughout its darkest and most sinful periods.

First posted on Facebook 3 September 2023, here.