Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>]

On Wednesday, August 3, 2005, at 07:32  AM, Dora Smith wrote:

> I don't accept the idea that Josiah found the book in the temple.

And yet you use that account as the springboard for your idea that 
Josiah's priests manufactured a document.

> However, it is very unlikely that a pogrom of the level of viciousness 
> that
> is described is in the text, and never happened.    Why would someone 
> say
> they did such a thing if it in fact never happened?

Vicious is the word you choose to describe Josiah's reforms? Are you 
saying that "bad" things are more likely to be accurately recorded than 
"good" things in the Bible? You do realize that the biblical writer 
considered the reforms of Josiah to be a good thing. There's no hiding 
of an allegedly "vicious" pogrom here.

> It makes the most sense to think that a document was actually produced 
> to
> legitimize the pogrom.    Such a document is consistent wtih the stated
> purpose of the pogrom to return Israel to its allegedly ancient 
> ways.    I
> think it was manufactured by the priests.

Manufactured as in completely falsified? How would they have gotten away 
with such a deception? And why do you pick Josiah's reforms and not 
Joash's cleansing and repairs (II Kings 12: 1-18)?

> Alternately the entire story could have been built up somehow to 
> support the
> later, equally cruel, pogrom by the returnees from Babylonia.

Cruel? I fail to see the cruelty here.

Best Salaams,

R. Brian Roberts
Amateur Researcher in Biblical Archaeology