Outside the City Walls: Remarks on 2 Kgs 23,4-20

Abstract

ABSTRACT The account of Josiah’s reform has raised the interest of biblical scholars over the years. This paper focuses on the pericope of 2 Kgs 23,4-20 and, based on spatial categories, provides a further argument to date the section in the Persian period. After outlining why 2 Kgs 23,4-20 can be considered separately from the rest of the narrative, this paper will focus on the pericope’s passages that, through Josiah’s actions, highlight a tension between the city’s inner and outer. Such a logic of space, absent in the Chronicler’s report and emphasised in the Antiochian revision of the Greek text, functions as a narrative means to promote a theological idea based on the sharp distinction between pure and impure, sacred and polluted, and charges the king with priestly traits. As a result, 2 Kgs 23,4-20 will be argued to be part of a text revision dated to the Persian period, when the ruling priestly class could be interested in loading the character of Josiah with religious prerogatives.