The Reform Of King Josiah And The Composition Of The Deuteronomistic History

The Reform of King Josiah and the Composition of the Deuteronomistic History defends the thesis that 1 and 2 Kings arose in three redactional phases. The first author described the history of Judah and Israel from Solomon to Hezekiah (1 Kgs 3-2 Kgs 20). A second redactor, inspired by Deuteronomy, completed the history up to King Josiah and altered the work of his predecessor. The work of these two redactors was limited to Kings. A third redactor, also inspired by Deuteronomy, completed the history up to the exile. Unlike the preceding authors he reworked the whole of the deuteronomistic history. The first part of this study subjects the regnal formulae to a critical analysis. The second part studies 2 Kgs 23:1-30 as a text case in detecting the redactional structure of Kings.

A third redactor, also inspired by Deuteronomy, completed the history up to the exile. Unlike the preceding authors he reworked the whole of the deuteronomistic history.

Lauren Monroe argues that the use of cultic and ritual language in the account of the Judean King Josiah's reforms in 2 Kings 22-23 is key to understanding the history of the text's composition, and illuminates the essential, interrelated processes of textual growth and identity construction in ancient Israel.

This book investigates the composition of the book of Kings and its implications for the Deuteronomistic History (DH) of which it is a part. McKenzie analyses Kings on the basis of Noth's model of a single author/editor behind the original DH. He contends that the Deuteronomist (Dtr) wrote the series of oracles against the Northern royal houses without utilizing a prior, running prophetic document that some scholars have posited behind Samuel and Kings. He regards many other prophetic stories in Kings, including most of the Elijah and Elisha legends as later additions to the DH, in accord with Noth's recognition that the original DH was frequently supplemented by various writers. McKenzie illustrates Dtr's compositional techniques in a treatment of the accounts of Hezekiah and Josiah in Kings. He tentatively dates Dtr to Josiah's reign but believes that tensions among the many later additions to the work, including the report from Josiah's death on, suggest that they are not the result of systematic editing (e.g., Dtr2). The book offers the most up-to-date survey of research on the DH and the most recent detailed analysis of the lengthy variant version of Jeroboam's reign in LXXB at 1 Kings 12:24a-z. It offers a fresh perspective on the original shape of the DH based on recent scholarship and the author's own critical investigation.

This book presents new examinations of the reports of Josiah’s reform in 2 Kgs. 23:4-20 + 24 and 2 Chron. 34:3-7 and related biblical passages (especially 1 Kgs.12:33-13:32), concentrating on the likely compositional history of this material and its usefulness as a source for reconstructing the likely history of Josiah’s reign. Chapter 1 introduces the inquiry, reviewing the state of the question and methodological caveats. Chapters 2-6 are devoted to issues of composition and redaction, Chapters 7-10 to issues of historical context and circumstance. Both literary and archaeological materials are considered. These studies contribute fresh analyses and new propositions to the scholarly discussion of this seminal moment in the history of biblical Israel.

The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) covers all areas of research into the Old Testament, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its early and later forms in Ancient Judaism, as well as its branching into many neighboring cultures of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world.

King Josiah of Judah is a figure of extraordinary importance for the history of Israel. Using synchronic and diachronic analyses of the Deuteronomistic History, Deuteronomy, and selected prophetic books, Marvin Sweeney reconstructs the ideological perspectives of King Josiah's program of religious and national restoration.