Josiah's Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement

Abstract

The biblical account of the religious reforms of king Josiah is one of the most widely discussed texts in the Hebrew Bible. Scholars have long understood Josiah's destruction of Israelite cult objects and personnel to mark an essential break with Israel's polytheistic past and a foundational moment in the development of monotheism. The language of 2 Kgs 23 represents Josiah's reform as ritual, yet the text has never been systematically studied from a ritual perspective. Situating Josiah's defilement in the context of other Israelite rituals, it uncovers new fault lines in the text that reveal two compositional phases. An early account with parallels in priestly ritual texts and the Holiness Code promoted particular ambitions of the Josianic court, while a later, postmonarchic, Deuteronomistic version recast Josiah as the only king in Israel's history to fully appreciate the obligations and limitations imposed by Mosaic law. Utilizing language associated with Deuteronomy's war-ḥērem, the later author modeled Josiah on Joshua. Both [re]claimed the land from the clutches of the Canaanites and [re]established Israel as the place where Yahweh's law and priestly authority prevailed. This study challenges the widely held assumption that Josiah imposed Deuteronomic law in the late seventh century; it provides a more expansive picture of the holiness school and its engagement in literary production; and it points away from a Josianic, Deuteronomistic redaction of 2 Kgs 23, shedding new light on the composition of the book of Kings.