Josias

JOSIAS. - King of Judah (639-609 B.C.). He ascended the throne at the age of 8, succeeding his father Amon (v.), who had been put to death by a palace conspiracy after two years of reign. "While he was still young he began to seek the God of David his father" (II Chron. 34:3). He found the country in grave religious and moral decline, owing to the long period of official apostasy under the reign of Manasseh and Amon. When he was able to act according to his conscience (at the age of 20, that is, in the twelfth year of his reign, II Chron. 34:3), he undertook with boldness and zeal a work of radical reform, purging the country of the entire idolatrous apparatus that had taken hold almost everywhere and had penetrated even into the sacred precincts of the Temple.

He swept away all the abominations from the holy place: he demolished the idolatrous altars built by King Manasseh in the two courts (II Kings 23:12) and the "chariot of the sun"; he destroyed the 'Āšērāh (II Kings 23:6), that is, the sacred pole, symbol of the goddess 'Āšērāh: to the cult of this goddess were attached the infamous practices of ritual prostitution, which the king energetically stamped out. With equal zeal he purged the other places of Jerusalem and Judah: he desecrated the Topheth, in the valley of Gē-Hinnōm or Gehenna (v.), where human sacrifices had been offered to Moloch (II Kings 23:10); he overturned the altar of the šē'īrīm (Vulg. satyrs), which was near the gate of the city; he desecrated the high places (maššēhōth) erected by Solomon (I Kings 11:7) near the Mount of Olives in honor of Astarte, Chemosh and Moloch: there had been raised steles and sacred poles to Baal and 'Āšērāh, which J. had demolished, filling the places with human bones (II Kings 23:13-14). The same fate befell the other maššēhōth scattered throughout the country, from Geba to Beersheba, tolerated by almost all the kings his predecessors (II Kings 23:8). The purifying action extended also to persons: J. removed the magicians and the soothsayers with all their idols (II Kings 23:24); he deposed the hierophants (hēmārīm) or idolatrous priests attached to the astral cults imported from Assyria, and summoned back from every quarter to Jerusalem all those priests who had in any way lent themselves to the illegitimate rites of the maššēhōth: nevertheless he showed consideration for the priests of Levitical origin, who, though suspended from priestly functions, continued to be supported by the offerings made at the altar. The zeal of the pious king extended also beyond the borders of his state, into the lands of the destroyed kingdom of Israel. He went in person to the various cities and towns as far as the distant territory of Naphtali, tearing down altars, images, steles and sacred poles, as well as the mozzabbih (II Kings 23:19 ff.; II Chron. 34:6 ff.); above all he destroyed the schismatic sanctuary of Bethel and desecrated its altar (II Kings 23:15-18), fulfilling what three centuries earlier, at the inauguration of that sanctuary, a prophet of Yahweh had foretold (v. HEDROAM 1; cf. I Kings 13:2 ff.).

The king's action was effectively supported, besides by the high priest Hilkiah, by the prophets Jeremiah (his prophetic vocation dates to the thirteenth year of J.'s reign, cf. Jer. 1:2), Nahum and Zephaniah, although it cannot be exactly determined how great a part they had in it. To encourage and stimulate the pious king there came a very important event: the discovery of the "book of the Töräh" in the eighteenth year of his reign (622 B.C.), during the restoration work in the Temple (II Kings 22:8 ff.; II Chron. 34:8 ff.). The king ordered it to be read in his presence, and, deeply impressed by the most grave curses of Yahweh against the transgressors of that same Law (Deut. 28:15-68), he consulted the prophetess Huldah (v.), who confirmed the threatening sanctions of the Töräh, while declaring that they would not be applied during J.'s reign as a reward for his zeal (II Chron. 34:19-28). J. intensified his reform work in accordance with the prescriptions contained in that same Law. And it was a period of constructive reform: while he continued to uproot the last remnants of superstition and idolatry, he successfully promoted throughout the country a general revival of faith and piety. The recovered document was to be, as in the times of Moses and David, the basis of the entire religious and civil life of the nation; therefore its promulgation was carried out with great solemnity: the people, the priests, the prophets and the king having been assembled in the Temple, the recovered Töräh was read aloud, and all swore to observe its statutes, renewing the pact or covenant with Yahweh (II Chron. 34:29-33). As a seal of the great event, in the same eighteenth year of J.'s reign a most solemn Passover was celebrated, such as had not been remembered in Israel since the times of Samuel (II Chron. 35:1-19).

The discovery of the book of the Töräh under J. is of great importance also from the historical-literary point of view for the question of the Pentateuch. The ancient Fathers, and especially the modern critics and exegetes for a century now, have asked themselves: what book was found on that occasion? and what should be thought of the biblical account (II Kings 22; II Chron. 34)? Beginning with the second question, rationalist critics down to the present day, for the most part denying the historical truth, have supposed that it was not a real discovery, but a pious fraud by which a wholly new sacred book would have been passed off as discovered, and this would in substance be Deuteronomy or its substratum, the first nucleus (according to the Wellhausenian theory) of the process of formation of the Pentateuch and the other historical books. But the fact is that very often in the ancient East important documents, especially of a religious character, were deposited in sacred places, and that not infrequently their trace was lost, until, on the occasion of restorations or other works, they were found again. This hypothesis alone corresponds to the truth, as also some critics are inclined to admit (E. Sellin, Geschichte des ir.-jüd. Volkes, I, Leipzig 1924, p. 289 ff.; R. Kittel, Geschichte des jüd. Volkes, II, 7th ed., Stuttgart 1925, p. 445). Nothing is more likely than that, in the times of the impious kings Manasseh and Amon, the sacred text was hidden in a safe place by some pious Yahwist, or was thrown by someone else as an old thing into a storeroom, and that in the end it returned to light, thus arousing so deep an impression. And that this book was Deuteronomy alone was the judgment of several ancients (Jerome, Athanasius, Chrysostom, etc.), and is a fairly common opinion among modern critics and exegetes (many rationalists and not a few Catholics, such as I. Coppens, G. Ricciotti and A. Vaccarì, Sacra Bibbia, II, Florence 1947, p. 467). From the account itself one might get the impression that the recovered text was not very extensive, since it was immediately read twice (II Kings 22:8, 10), and at the ceremony of promulgation "all the words" of it were read to the people (II Kings 23:2). But this hypothesis is uncertain; it does not appear that the twofold reading was done on the same day nor that Deuteronomy alone was read all at once; on the other hand the title of the codex "book of the Töräh" (II Kings 22:8), "book of the covenant" (II Kings 23:2), "the book of the Töräh of Yahweh written by the hand of Moses" (II Chron. 34:14), rather suggests the entire book of the Pentateuch (A. Bea [v. bibl.], p. 85 ff.). That the recovered codex was a book known to all in Israel is evident from the biblical account (II Kings 22:12).

Josiah's vast reform, peacefully extended also into the countries of the former Kingdom of Samaria, made one foresee not far off the day when the political unity of the nation, broken after the death of Solomon, would also be restored. And perhaps Josiah himself championed that hope and that plan. But political events made everything fail. When Nineveh fell in 612 under the blows of the Medes and Babylonians, Pharaoh Necho II set out from Egypt to bring aid to the dying Assyrian Empire. But the King of Judah barred his way, undoubtedly to prevent Egyptian help from saving from certain ruin a nation that had always been hostile to the people of Yahweh; and he drew up his army at Megiddo, an important strategic junction. When the Pharaoh's negotiations to obtain passage proved vain, battle was joined; fighting, Josiah was gravely wounded and died shortly thereafter (II Kings 22:28-30; II Chron. 35:20-25). His death (609 B.C.) was an irreparable disaster for the Kingdom of Judah and the prelude to the final catastrophe (v. IOAKIM; IOACHIN).

Gaetano Stano