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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Josiah's book of the Law

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  • From: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
  • To: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Josiah's book of the Law
  • Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 09:39:45 +0100

I would like to make the following observations:

1) Josiah was born in a time when the entire nation was engulfed in pagan
worship,
and magical practices in which the priesthood most likely took the lead.
2) The scroll Josiah came into possession of by the chance finding of the
high priest
was the only source Josiah had to conduct the reformation.
3) If we are to believe that the law-scroll was added to after Josiah's day,
this would
leave no reliable mechanism for a fithful final edition.
4) It is a possibility (non demonstrable) that Josiah's law-scroll was
protected in the
foundations since the original building of the temple.
5) As the temple was completely destroyed by the babylonians and then later
rebuilt, there
is no reliale way of archeologically establishing when the original temple
was built.
6) In fact, we cannot archeologically establish if there ever was a first
temple.
7) Chronicles and Kings present the only unbroken attempts to record the
entire history
of the kings of Isreal and Judah.
8) Unlike records of neighbouring empires, the records have a large emphasis
on the failings
of its kings and thus, from a historical perspective, have the hallmarks of
reliable sources.
9) Tradition would have us believe that such scrolls were faithfully copied
by the scribes
(sopherim) that employed strict counting methods to establish the
authenticity of such copies.
10) Fragments of ancient letters, while they do give us the possibility to
view things from
the perspective of other nations, can hardly compete against the completeness
of records
such as Kings and Chronicles whose agendas were to faithfully represent the
history of a nation
that believed that lying was one of the worst and most punishable of sins.
11) Apart from an inherent desire to criticise a historical work just because
it resides in
the hebrew canon, no real reason has been presented to doubt that Solomon
built his temple
12) It is a well established fact that Solomon had a great and peaceful
empire and was the only
king with both the time and the resources to be able to accomplish such a
work.


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