What to make of Josiah's reforms?

[Senator]

Was Josiah friend or foe to the true first temple?

The GD lesson clearly portrays Josiah's actions as commendable, from which a faith promoting lession is culled to coincide with our modern views of the temple.

But with Margeret Barker's work, it is argued that Josiah's actions were not "restorative", but rather revisive and destructive to the original temple worship.

Will modern scholarsip on the Deuteronomic reforms ever make it into our Sunday school material regarding this narrative?

[Nevo]

Will modern scholarsip on the Deuteronomic reforms ever make it into our Sunday school material regarding this narrative?

No, it won't. The Sunday School curriculum in my lifetime has never shown any awareness of modern critical biblical scholarship and I don't expect that to change. Most modern scholarship would fundamentally undermine a traditional LDS reading of the Bible.

The Gospel Doctrine manual presents Josiah's reform as commendable because the Bible itself presents it this way. As a rule, the manual is not going to flatly contradict the biblical account unless warranted by the JST or other modern revelation.

[maklelan]

Was Josiah friend or foe to the true first temple?

The GD lesson clearly portrays Josiah's actions as commendable, from which a faith promoting lession is culled to coincide with our modern views of the temple.

But with Margeret Barker's work, it is argued that Josiah's actions were not "restorative", but rather revisive and destructive to the original temple worship.

Will modern scholarsip on the Deuteronomic reforms ever make it into our Sunday school material regarding this narrative?

My approach is similar, but not quiet the same as Barker's, and you can find it here. By way of unsolicited commentary, while it's great that Barker is happy to work with LDS scholars and finds so many affinities with LDS ideologies, her ideas do not really represent the mainstream of modern scholarship. I recommend people find second, third, and fourth opinions with any theories being promoted in scholarship, but I recommend it even more with hers.

[Kevin Christensen]

Was Josiah friend or foe to the true first temple?

The GD lesson clearly portrays Josiah's actions as commendable, from which a faith promoting lession is culled to coincide with our modern views of the temple.

But with Margeret Barker's work, it is argued that Josiah's actions were not "restorative", but rather revisive and destructive to the original temple worship.

Will modern scholarsip on the Deuteronomic reforms ever make it into our Sunday school material regarding this narrative?

David Larsen posted on the topic here:

http://www.heavenlyascents.com/2010/08/06/ancient-israelite-religious-reformation-ot-lesson-30/

I agree that the Gospel Doctrine manuals are likely going to stay with the story as told at face value. As they probably should. Where ever we go in our readings and contexualizations, we have to start with the text we have. However, when I think it's important to raise my hand and make a comment, I do so. And Josiah is one of those instances where the implications are so far reaching, and the convergence with the Book of Mormon is so unexpected and elaborate, that alternate approaches to the Reform, such as Barker's, should be mentioned. I don't mind mentioning that Barker represents a minority view, a revisionist view. I just happen to think that she's on the right track, and that her excellent arguments can be supported by further study.

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

[Benjamin McGuire]

It made it into my Gospel Doctrine class ...

[LifeOnaPlate]

Rumor is that a new OT manual is being created, I wonder if anything about the reforms from these different perspectives will make it into the new manual.

[oremites]

... it is argued that Josiah's actions were not "restorative", but rather revisive and destructive to the original temple worship. ...

How does modern LDS temple worship compare to the original Biblical temple worship? How does the modern LDS temple worship compare to the original temple worship of this dispensation? Have there been "reforms" to the temple ceremony?

As I understand it, temple worship is not fixed but is adapted to meet the needs and conditions of the times. If Josiah's reforms were sanctioned/inspired by God, was the intention to restore the original temple worship? Or was it to create a temple that would meet the needs of God's children at that place and time?

[Brenda]

Darn, I wish you'd brought this up BEFORE I taught the lesson.

[Kevin Christensen]

How does modern LDS temple worship compare to the original Biblical temple worship? How does the modern LDS temple worship compare to the original temple worship of this dispensation? Have there been "reforms" to the temple ceremony?

As I understand it, temple worship is not fixed but is adapted to meet the needs and conditions of the times. If Josiah's reforms were sanctioned/inspired by God, was the intention to restore the original temple worship? Or was it to create a temple that would meet the needs of God's children at that place and time?

On a verbal level, LDS temple worship has differences. On a conceptual level, LDS temple worship is Temple worship.

Before answering the question of whether Josiah's reforms were sanctioned or inspired by God, it would help to describe what happened. We are then in far better position to think about the question. Who did what when and why? Who wrote the Biblical accounts? And how else were the reforms remembered? (Margaret is very good at bringing in these issues.) What are the differences between the II Chronicles and II Kings accounts? Hows does current archeology compare with the Bible accounts? What about non-Biblical accounts that Margaret brings in? What did Jeremiah think of the reform? Why is Jeremiah called the year after the reform beings, against the very people and institutions that were implimenting the reform (Jer. 1:17, and compare Ezekiel 22 on the same groups)? What was the relation of Deuteronomy to the reform? What version of Deuteronomy? Why does Jeremiah contradict Deuteronomy on the very points that Margaret Barker find as key to the reform? Why does the sacred calendar in Deuteronomy 16 not contain the Day of Atonement? Are Jeremiah's protests about public violence, and changing scripture, and putting forth a lying Torah as a Wisdom related to the public violence recorded 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, and the way that Deut. 4: offers the Law as Wisdom? And why is it that that early Christians celebrated the very things that the reformers destroyed?

And as LDS, what did Lehi think of the reforms? Does Jacob 4 provide a clue, in describing the "blindness" and "looking beyond the mark"? Is Jacob's "mark" the same as his contemporary Ezekiel's "mark"? Does Lehi's vision of the tree of life provide a clue?

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[Senator]

My fisrt five responces were from the pundit big hitters! Cool.

Thank you all for your insightful remarks.

[Senator]

It made it into my Gospel Doctrine class ...

In brief, how did you mesh it in with the lesson's portrayal?

[Senator]

If Josiah's reforms were sanctioned/inspired by God, was the intention to restore the original temple worship? Or was it to create a temple that would meet the needs of God's children at that place and time?

It appears that the reform had political motivations behind it as well, to centralize power in Jerusalem.

Also, Josiah was not a prophet. Other than being the King, one wonders why he thought he had authority to tinker with the temple.

[Senator]

Darn, I wish you'd brought this up BEFORE I taught the lesson.

How would your presentation have changed?

[Nevo]

It appears that the reform had political motivations behind it as well, to centralize power in Jerusalem.

Also, Josiah was not a prophet. Other than being the King, one wonders why he thought he had authority to tinker with the temple.

Who, other than the king, would have had the authority to purify the temple from idols and idolatrous practices? You seem to suggest that Josiah was somehow tampering with divinely ordained worship by removing vessels dedicated to the worship of Baal, Asherah, and the hosts of heaven, from the temple. Do you think God actually intended for Israel to worship Assyrian and Caananite deities (Baal, Asherah, Astarte, Anat, the sun, the moon, Venus, Mot, Molech, etc.)?

What was lost with Josiah's reform? Well, among other things,

• ancestor worship
  
• underworld cults
  
• necromancy
  
• child sacrifice
  

All in all, I don't think it was such a bad thing.

[Joseph Antley]

Who, other than the king, would have had the authority to purify the temple from idols and idolatrous practices? You seem to suggest that Josiah was somehow tampering with divinely ordained worship by removing vessels dedicated to the worship of Baal, Asherah, and the hosts of heaven, from the temple. Do you think God actually intended for Israel to worship Assyrian and Caananite deities (Baal, Asherah, Astarte, Anat, the sun, the moon, Venus, Mot, Molech, etc.)?

The big question, of course, is whether or not Israelites actually were worshipping these deities en masse. Were the asherah dedicated to the Canaanite goddess Asherah, or were they incorporated as a symbol for Yahweh, as Mark Smith believes? Did the northern kingdom's bulls placed on the nation's borders represent Baal, or where they incorporated as a symbol for Yahweh?

Of course the biblical account claims Josiah was ridding the temple and Israel if idolatry, but I'm not convinced that's what Hezekiah and Josiah's iconoclasm was really about.

What was lost with Josiah's reform? Well, among other things,

• ancestor worship
  
• underworld cults
  
• necromancy
  
• child sacrifice
  

All in all, I don't think it was such a bad thing.

I'm inclined to think that Josiah's removal of the high places and his slaughtering of all of the priests of the high places was not a good thing.

FWIW, I recently wrote a blog post where I briefly argue that Lehi-Nephi weren't happy with Josiah's reforms, and I think it's likely one of the strong reasons that they left Jerusalem.

[Nevo]

The big question, of course, is whether or not Israelites actually were worshipping these deities en masse.

I think it has been fairly well established that Israelite religion in this period was polytheistic. This is attested by toponymic, epigraphic, literary, and archeological data (see, e.g., Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel).

Were the asherah dedicated to the Canaanite goddess Asherah, or were they incorporated as a symbol for Yahweh, as Mark Smith believes?

Whether the goddess herself was worshiped in the temple, or whether the asherah (as Mark Smith hypothesizes) was viewed merely as "as a symbol of fertility and perhaps even female sexuality associated with Yahweh," I think it would be difficult to make a case for her/its inclusion in temple worship from an LDS perspective.

I'm inclined to think that Josiah's removal of the high places and his slaughtering of all of the priests of the high places was not a good thing.

I don't like it either, but I'm not sure what other means were at Josiah's disposal for eradicating Baal worship. Obviously the preferable course of action would have been persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness and meekness, and love unfeigned, but that doesn't seem to have been the Israelite way. We don't really see that even in Mark 11:15-17 and parr.

FWIW, I recently wrote a blog post where I briefly argue that Lehi-Nephi weren't happy with Josiah's reforms, and I think it's likely one of the strong reasons that they left Jerusalem.

Thanks. I'll take a look.

[Brenda]

How would your presentation have changed?

I would have thrown the idea out there for discussion.

[consiglieri]

Will modern scholarsip on the Deuteronomic reforms ever make it into our Sunday school material regarding this narrative?

This I would consider unlikely.

In my GD class four-years ago, we spent about two lessons dealing with this subject, as it has the potential to completely change one's reading of the Bible, especially Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history.

While I was still GD teacher at the beginning of this year, I covered this once again in my lesson about Deuteronomy, going so far as to point out that the Deuteronomistic list of Jewish festivals pointedly omits the Day of Atonement, as well as seeming to argue strongly against the theophany experienced on the mount by Moses, Aaron and his sons, and the seventy elders.

I believe I also mentioned Benjamin Franklin's aphorism, "History is written by the winners as an excuse for hanging the losers."

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[Benjamin McGuire]

In brief, how did you mesh it in with the lesson's portrayal?

The lesson? Oh, you mean the manual? I almost never use the manual - in the sense of its lesson plan. I usually take the material, read through it a few times over the course of the week, figure out what I want to do in the lesson I present, and then my class and I read the scriptures and discuss. In this case, I started with the pretty speech given by the emissiaries of the Assyrian king - and in particular the piece about how the Jews shouldn't look to God for salvation, since Hezekiah had just torn down all of the high places set apart for the worship of Jehoavah Elohim. We read the bit about Hilkiah's discovery of the book (and that the book was Deuteronomy). Then we read some of the descriptions of what Josiah did, then we talked about the passages in Deuteronomy that reflected his changes, and then we talked about the passages in Jeremiah that deal with what the people thought of Josiah's reform (particularly those that took Jeremiah with them to Egypt after the assassination of Gedaliah). Then we talked about Lehi and how what he did violated some of those same issues in Deuteronomy (building an altar, etc.) - I actually had a class member ask about this - so I didn't have to introduce it. We looked at the Menorah as an almond tree (from Exodus), we talked about the vision of the Tree of Life - and the meaning that is associated with it by Nephi - and what it might mean that Josiah had removed it. And then we talked about Lehi's and Nephi's views of Israel at the time they left. And finally, we wrapped it up with a bit of discussion about how current revelation from prophets ought to supercede the interpretation of past scripture. We didn't get into all of the material I might have liked to have covered, but we got through most of it. I used the 2 Kings account generally instead of Chronicles. I generally prefer Kings to Chronicles when I can use it. One of the major points thought - as a lead in to tomorrows lesson (Proverbs) was the notion that the Tree of Life (and in a sense the things which Josiah did away with - which weren't all pagan) represented a salvation apart from the Law of Moses. This was part of the reason why those things (even the ones instituted by Moses) were eliminated in the Josian reform. And it was these things which appealed to the early Christians - as Jesus was a salvation apart from the Law. I didn't get into any kind of significant discussion on the notion of Dtr and DtrH as a revisionist history.

Ben M.

[Kevin Christensen]

I'll probably make a few comments on the Josiah lesson, sort of like these, from one of my Meridian essays on Barker's work, for which the links are broken, though I am doing something about that. Besides referring to Margaret's work, I made some original observations in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Book of Mormon. I think combining the "blindness" passages tells some interesting things.

Last time, I started with a passage from 1st Enoch 93:7-8 that describes the period just

before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Babylonians. The description in 1st

Enoch reported that

[Nevo]

Both Lehi and Jeremiah show familiarity and approval of a version of Deuteronomy.... However, both Jeremiah and Lehi contradict our current version of Deuteronomy on key issues that Barker identifies as defining the reform.

I agree that both Lehi and Jeremiah show familiarity and approval of Deuteronomy. I disagree that they "contradict our current version of Deuteronomy on key issues."

You assert that "[the Deuteronomists'] edition of Deuteronomy is notable for claiming that God had not been seen (Deut. 4:12) and for the claim that possession of their Torah meant that there was no need for anyone to go to heaven to bring the word of God (Deut. 30:11-12). This is despite accounts of visions elsewhere in scripture, notably in Exodus 24:9-10, Isaiah 6:1-5, Jeremiah 23:18, 22; 33:3, and Ezekiel 1. These declarations in Deuteromony challenge the claims of the anointed temple priests such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jacob to provide visions. The passages in Deuteronomy deny the possibility of vision..."

But Deuteronomy 4:12-13 does not say that God could not be seen. It says that when God spoke to Israel at Mt. Sinai/Horeb, the Israelites saw no shape, but only heard a voice

[jadams_4242]

Was Josiah friend or foe to the true first temple?

The GD lesson clearly portrays Josiah's actions as commendable, from which a faith promoting lession is culled to coincide with our modern views of the temple.

But with Margeret Barker's work, it is argued that Josiah's actions were not "restorative", but rather revisive and destructive to the original temple worship.

Will modern scholarsip on the Deuteronomic reforms ever make it into our Sunday school material regarding this narrative?

Thats not what i got out of her teachings at all.

[Kevin Christensen]

I'll give David Seely the last word:

Oh, there are always more words.

While the account of the reform in 2 Kings 22-23 clearly favors Josiah (especially 2

Kings 23:25), we must consider that this account was written by Josiah?s supporters, and

indeed, by his tutors, by those who implemented the reforms, by the very people who

placed him in power when he was eight years old after the assassination of his father

Amon (2 Kings 21:24). Although both accounts in the Bible describe the reform as

directed against idolatry in Jerusalem, we should look carefully at those histories and

compare them to dissenting accounts within and outside the canon.

For example, Jeremiah?s call comes in the 13th year of Josiah?s reign, when King Josiah

was 21. According to the account in 2 Chronicles, the reform begins in the 12th year,

when the King was 20. A key problem for scholars exploring the book of Jeremiah has

been determining his relationship to Josiah and the reform. None of the commentaries I

have read have noticed that after the reform has begun, Jeremiah is called

[Nevo]

None of the commentaries I have read have noticed that after the reform has begun, Jeremiah is called

[Kevin Christensen]

Clearly, if you're right about Jeremiah, a great many scholars are wrong.

It is permissible to at least explore the possibility. The books I have read on Josiah and Jeremiah (Sweeney, Leuchter, Barrick-- who argues that the archeological record places some reform events in the south, rather than the North, Friedman, Doorly, and a Halliday essay or two) typically ally Jeremiah with Josiah and/or the reformers. So, yes, I'm definitely a minority voice, and not at all in the class of Seeley and Barker. Just an amateur dabbler. But Jeremiah as a court propagandist? Maybe, but I find it an uncomfortable possiblity, and odd job for a prophet, at least from the perspective of one who believes in real prophets. How do I square "Thus saith the Lord..." with that job description? The politics are interesting, and the linguistic ties to Deuteronomy are there certainly there. And the issue of redactors and editors complicates Jeremiah and II Kings and II Chronicles for everyone, let alone people like me without the Hebrew skill. In all the discussion of politics and idolotry, I'm struck by little discussion of theology, temple imagery, revelation, theophany. I think it possible that people who had politics in common might disagree on theology. And I think that people who shared the much of the same scribal training and vocabulary might have theological differences. For example, Deuteronomy 4:19 speaks against the "hosts of heaven" the Deuteronomist history almost never uses "Lord of Hosts", yet Jeremiah uses the title "Lord of Hosts" 81 times. Curious, I think. Striking to me, yet none of the books I've read mention it. Perhaps it doesn't matter. But makes me wonder. Deuteronomy 16 leaves the Day of Atonement out of the sacred calendar, and there are places in Jeremiah that I think presuppose the Day of Atonement (indications of the cosmic covenant in Jer. 5:22). And there is Jeremiah's use of temple imagery, Holy of Holies imagery (e.g. 17:12), theophany, the shepherds of nations (with implications of which version of Deuteronomy 32:8-9 he knew), and council in heaven imagery. Also interesting imagery in Jeremiah that parallels later use in 1 Enoch, a repository of temple tradition, with visions set in the Holy of Holies. And shared charges of "blindness" and corruption of scripture in the period just before the exile. And Jeremiah 33:3's "Call unto me and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thouh knowest not" seems quite different than Deut. 29:29 and 30:11-14. When I had time to explore the issue, I noticed some things that I thought were interesting.

I'll be very interested in Theodore Huchel's book on the topic of Temple Theology and the Latter-day Saints, whenever it comes out.

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA