King Josiah’s Exciting Discovery
King Josiah’s Biblical discovery in the Temple at Jerusalem is exciting,
but for a somewhat different reason than ordinarily thought. To see what was
truly exciting here, focus on who can read what when:
“And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, ‘I have found
the book of the law in the house of the LORD.’ And Hilkiah gave the book
to Shaphan, and he read it. …Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, ‘
Hilkiah the priest has given me a book’. And Shaphan read it before the
king.” II Kings 22: 8, 10
“And the king went up to the house of the LORD, and with him all the men
of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the
prophets, all the people, both small and great; and he read in their hearing
all
the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of
the LORD.” II Kings 23: 2
Note that upon the discovery of what traditionally is sometimes viewed as
being the long-lost Book of Deuteronomy, neither the priest Hilkiah, nor
King Josiah, could read what had been discovered. Only the scribe Shaphan
could read the original. Yet not too long thereafter, King Josiah reads the
text to the assembled multitude of Jerusalem and Judah.
This may be a key to figuring out the great antiquity of certain parts of
the Torah. Only the scribe Shaphan could read the original. That’s the
single most important part of the story. If, as seems likely, there is at
least a grain of historical truth to this story, then it appears that Jewish
wisemen in the 7th century BCE thought, probably accurately, that at least
parts of the Torah had originally been written using a writing system that
would be very easy to decipher for a person like King Josiah’s scribe, who
occasionally corresponded with Assyria or Babylonia, but that would be
impossible to decipher by literate people such as the high priest of Jerusalem
and King Josiah, who were very well-versed in alphabetical Hebrew writing
but who did not personally read the originals of correspondence sent from
Assyria or Babylonia. The authors of II Kings and Chronicles highly praise
King Josiah and his high priest of Jerusalem, and those two individuals are
portrayed as being highly literate, yet those two individuals are
nevertheless portrayed here as not being able to read a single word of the
original
of the sacred writing that was found in the Temple, which could only be
read by King Josiah’s scribe (who on occasion corresponded with Assyria and
Babylonia as a key part of his official duties). It’s the writing system,
you see, that’s the key here. The language and vocabulary of the ancient
sacred text that King Josiah claimed to have found in the Temple would have
been familiar to King Josiah and his high priest. But by sharp contrast,
the writing system that was used in this ancient sacred text was utterly
indecipherable by King Josiah and his high priest, even though it was
eminently readable upon first sight by King Josiah’s scribe.
That aspect of the story opens the door to discovering how incredibly old
certain parts of the Torah may be. II Kings is in effect telling us how
certain of the oldest parts of the Torah (not necessarily Deuteronomy) had
originally been written down, if we just pay close attention to what II Kings
tells us as to who could read what when.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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