I don't accept the idea that Josiah found the book in the temple.
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?
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.
Alternately the entire story could have been built up somehow to support the
later, equally cruel, pogrom by the returnees from Babylonia.
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