The sixth episode of the second season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast is posted today (May 30, 2018). You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the podcast by following one of these links or by searching for the podcast on your favourite platform:

SHOW NOTES

This episode is a retelling of the story that is told in 2 Kings 22:1-20 in the Old Testament of the Bible. (Click the reference to read the original story). Any direct biblical quotations in the episode are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Here are a few of my thoughts on the episode.

THE HISTORY BEHIND THIS STORY

King Josiah, Secretary Shaphan, High Priest Hilkiah and the Prophetess Huldah are all characters whose life stories are only told to us in the Bible. There are no records of these people to be found on archeological artifacts or in the archives of other nations during their time. Nevertheless, the ruling dynasty that Josiah belonged to, the House of David, is historically attested and there are no compelling reasons to doubt the existence of these people or of the basic events of their lives.

Josiah seems to be a pivotal character in the history of Ancient Judah particularly because of the religious reforms that he enacted. He banned the worship of gods other than Yahweh and he centralized the worship of Yahweh at the temple in Jerusalem. This is presented in the scriptures as a return to former worship practices, but much of it seems to have been inspired by the discovery of a Book of the Law in the temple during the time of this king — a book that seems to have been previously unknown. This episode of the podcast presents a speculative story about the origins and creation of this strange book of the Law.

Was the Book that was Discovered Deuteronomy?

The story of the discovery of the book in the 2 Kings 22:1-20 does not give any description of the discovered scroll, apart from an indication that it contained a number of curses that would be inflicted on Judah for its failure to follow its prescriptions. The reforms that Josiah instituted upon receiving the book, however, closely follow the instructions that are found in Deuteronomy — in particular the section of the book that is found in chapters 12 through 26, which is followed by a list of curses for those who fail the keep the laws and blessings for those who keep them. This has led to the conclusion that the book that was found was either Deuteronomy or this central portion of the book.

But how did the Book come to be there?

The most intriguing question is how did the book come to be there, hidden in the temple. We do not know, but it seems reasonable to conclude that somebody hid it there, either for safekeeping or with the explicit intention of “discovering” it at a useful moment.

One explanation, for example, is that perhaps the contents of the book were compiled in an attempt to preserve information from an oral tradition when it was in danger of being lost. The precipitating event for this project might be the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 720 BCE. There would have been a fear that the traditions surrounding the worship of Yahweh that had been maintained in Israel up until that time might be lost forever, so perhaps some enterprising individual in the surviving Kingdom of Judah undertook to write these traditions down. The resulting scrolls might have then been hidden during the reigns of Manasseh and Amon when the worship of Yahweh appears to have fallen into disfavour.

The more cynical theory is that someone wrote the book with the specific goal of inciting Josiah’s reforms and produced it at a key moment to get the ball rolling.

My story is a mix of these two theories and I decided to make the Priest Hilkiah the mastermind of the plot mostly because he seems to be the character who is likely to benefit most from the reforms.

The Bible as in Inspired Book

I am a Christian and I do see the Bible as a book that is inspired by God. And yet, at the same time, I think it is absolutely undeniable that the Bible was written by fallible human beings who were often more interested in their own agendas than anything else. I don’t think that there needs to be a conflict between those two notions.

Inspiration of a sacred text does not mean that God ordained or dictated every word. It can mean that God made use of various people, their interests, their weaknesses and their strengths to produce a text that has great power, perhaps in spite of the intentions of those who wrote it.

I do think that parts of the Book of Deuteronomy were written to advance certain people’s agendas. That, for me, does not change the fact that God used the book and its themes to bring about important and meaningful new understandings of the relationship between God and the people of Israel.

Deuteronomy does have many important and helpful things to teach us, even still today, about justice, neighbourliness and faithfulness. The writing of this book was an important step in human development and in the development of the faith to which I belong today. I believe that that was something that God accomplished and was not necessarily part of the intentions of the authors. That, for me, is how inspiration is supposed to work.

Thanks for listening to this episode. I’d be happy to receive your feedback. You can comment here, tweet me @RetellingBible or contact me on the Facebook page (Retelling the Bible). Please do rate and review the episode on iTunes or wherever you listened and share the story with others!

Music in this Episode

“AhDah” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/