Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Prof. Yigal Levin:

 

1. You wrote: “Nowhere does it say that Hilkiah and Josiah could not read the book that had been found. On the contrary, Hilkiah tells Shaphan that he had found a "book of the Law". How could he have known what the book was if he could not read it?”

 

Here is what II Kings 22: 8 says: “And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, ‘I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD.’ And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.”

 

The only type of truly ancient writing, using a writing method that was so old as to be indecipherable to the high priest of Jerusalem, that would likely be found in the Temple would be an ancient part of the Torah, and hence could be referred to by Hilkiah as being “the book of the law”. If the high priest Hilkiah could read that holy work himself, why would he give it to the scribe Shaphan to read, when the scribe usually handled secular matters, whereas the priest handled religious matters? Hilkiah didn’t know precisely what “the book of the law was”, though he rightly suspected it must be part of the Torah, given its ancient writing system and the fact that it had been found buried in the Temple, until Shaphan read it to him.

 

Please note that Shaphan, by sharp contrast, has no trouble whatsoever reading the book immediately. To me, if the high priest had been able to read this sacred holy book himself, he would not have willy nilly handed it over to the scribe. Rather, Hilkiah would have first read the book himself, and then knowing its contents, Hilkiah would have promptly handed the book over to King Josiah directly, with the scribe Shaphan not playing any key role in the matter at all.

 

2. You wrote: “Shaphan the reports back to the king, first about the repairs (which he had been put in charge of), and then mentions the book and reads from it before the king. Not because the king could not read, but because reading to the king was the scribe's job. So the story really does not say what you claim it does.”

 

Is that a plausible interpretation of these two verses of text? “Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, ‘Hilkiah the priest has given me a book’. And Shaphan read it before the king.” II Kings 22: 10.. “And the king went up to the house of the LORD, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great; and he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the LORD.” II Kings 23: 2.

 

If King Josiah could read the book himself, and knowing that it was so important that King Josiah soon read this sacred book to “all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem”, why would the king first have his scribe, who normally was involved with secular matters such as repairing the Temple, read him the book?

 

To me, the implication is that only Shaphan the scribe could read the book in its original format, due to the writing system used in the book. Shaphan, who routinely corresponded with Assyria and Babylonia, could read that writing system without any hesitation. The language and vocabulary of the book were no problem, being well-known by King Josiah and his high priest. But what Shaphan needed to do was (i) first read the book to King Josiah, so that King Josiah (who could not read the book in its original format) would know precisely what had been found in the Temple, and then (ii) promptly transform the ancient writing system used in the original book into alphabetical Hebrew writing. That could be done very fast and quite mechanically, because it wasn’t translating from a foreign language. Rather, it was simply putting the book into a writing format that King Josiah and high priest Hilkiah could read.

 

3. You wrote: “In general, I find the idea of a book, Deuteronomy or otherwise, being "lost" in the Temple since the days of Moses highly unlikely. Since the Temple itself was only built centuries after Moses, where would it have been in the meanwhile?”

 

I hear you. But having said that, can’t you see that this famous story would only have verisimilitude if what I said in my first post is true? Jewish wisemen in the 7^th century BCE must have thought, probably accurately, that at least parts of the Torah had originally been written using a writing system that would be very easy to decipher for a person like King Josiah’s scribe, who occasionally corresponded with Assyria or Babylonia, but that would be impossible to decipher by literate people such as the high priest of Jerusalem and King Josiah, who were very well-versed in alphabetical Hebrew writing but who did not personally read the originals of correspondence sent from Assyria or Babylonia.

 

What’s super-exciting about this famous story is that it is effectively telling us what ancient writing system had been used to record parts of the Torah, which would most likely apply to the very oldest part of the Torah (not necessarily to Deuteronomy). I myself think that there’s at least a grain of truth to this story, namely that a portion of the Torah was so old that it had originally been written down using a writing system that was completely different from alphabetical Hebrew, even though the underlying language and vocabulary had not changed too much over time.

 

In my next post I will set forth my own interpretation of what’s exciting about King Josiah’s discovery, and cite some scholarly authority that to an extent backs up my view.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois