The Weird Case of King Josiah

[Pazooka]

KJ gets called things like “the last righteous king” because of how he supposedly destroyed the idols and reformed the system of worship in the years directly preceding King Zedekiah...but his story doesn’t add up. There’s really no real support for the idea that his reforms were good besides what is written about him by people such as the ones he employed to make the reforms.

He was raised by people who sacrificed children and were ultra-wicked, becoming king at age 8 because his own father was murdered. One can only guess what they did to him as a child. He would have been controlled, as a ruler.

The prophet Jeremiah was called to preach against what was being done under his rule.

Josiah consulted a prophetess regarding his death. She said he would die in peace. Yet he was shot on the battlefield and died during the siege of Jerusalem, where the city was taken, later burned, and all the woes pronounced upon it by Jeremiah were executed.

And yet, here we are, to this day, talking about how great his reforms were. Margaret Barker talks a lot about what they consisted of. We have her speak at LDS conferences and such. But the funny thing is, we tend to twist her conclusions to suit our own Deuteronomical assertions. It’s bizarre.

For instance, she talks about how Josiah’s people removed the tree of life (symbolized in the branched lampstand) from the holy place of the temple, as well as the anointing oil that was said to have come from and been a product of the tree of life. These are both directly linked to Lady Wisdom, the Great Lady of the temple, so-called weaver of the veil. There was an attempt to completely remove her from scripture by the Deuteronomists of Josiah’s day, and to remove all traces of her from the temple. Even when BYU scholars elaborate on Barker’s work, they strangely leave out all mention of the Woman and focus instead on the high priest. I will include a stellar example in a comment to follow.

But anyways...it must an increasing awareness of how wicked rulers/priests destroy children and groom them for their use that it occurs to me that there was very little chance King Josiah acted in a way that furthered God’s work. And the fruits of his reign would suggest the same.

(From Forerunner Commentary)

It will be helpful to set the stage for Josiah's appearance in 639 BC. The northern ten tribes, Israel, are in captivity, having been conquered by Assyria about 80 years earlier during the reign of Judah's king Hezekiah. A good king who tried to follow God, Hezekiah rules for 29 years. His son Manasseh, however, is a very evil man. During his 55 years on the throne, he leads the people away from God, even to the extent of sacrificing children. Coming as it does after the 29 years of obedient leadership under Hezekiah, Manasseh's reign provides a clear contrast to the people.

Though Manasseh exercises corrupt leadership, it appears the people willingly follow. In II Kings 21:9, God comments, "But they [the people] paid no attention [to God's laws], and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than the nations whom the LORD had destroyed before the children of Israel." Because of this, God says in verses 12 and 15, "Behold, I am bringing such calamity upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle . . . because they have done evil in My sight and have provoked Me to anger. . . ." God prophesies severe punishment for Judah because He sees it is plain that the people themselves are corrupt, not just their king.

After Manasseh's death, his son Amon rules for only two years, assassinated by his own servants. And so eight-year-old Josiah ascends to the throne of Judah. His story begins in II Kings 22:1, "Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem." Through the chronicler, God comments, "And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, and walked in all the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left."

[Pazooka]

Plain and Precious Things Restored: Margaret Barker and Josiah?s Reform
By Kevin Christensen · October 10, 2005

https://latterdaysaintmag.com/article-1-4162/

Here is a sample of some of the thinking of an LDS scholar who sees some of what Barker is saying but totally sidesteps the divine female and focuses more on the high priest. This is hardly better than the scribes of Josiah’s day.

In an address given at a BYU Devotional in May of 2003, Margaret Barker discussed the reform in detail and observed that “Josiah’s changes concerned the high priests and were thus changes at the very heart of the temple.” [7] She cites Jewish traditions that remembered that the priest of the first temple was remembered as being different than the priest of the second temple. The reform involved Jeremiah sending Hilkiah into the Holy of Holies (2 Kings 23:4), to which only the anointed high priest was to enter, only once a year on the Day of Atonement, and removing and destroying items to which only the anointed high priest had access. One of these items was the “anointing oil,” which tradition remembered as being hidden away by Josiah. [8] The anointing of the high priest must have been the “mark” referred to in Jacob 4:14.

After Josiah’s reform the high priest was no longer “the anointed,” which is what Messiah and Christ both mean. Remember that he reform has been closely associated with a version of Deuteronomy. Barker observes that the sacred calendar in Deuteronomy 16 does not include the Day of Atonement. As we have seen, certain prohibitions in our Deuteronomy deny the possibility of vision. These kinds of things support Jacob 4:14 claim that the blindness in Jerusalem was caused by “looking beyond the mark,” that is, by rejecting the anointed high priest. It also would explain the theme of Lehi’s first discourse, where he prophesies of a messiah of the redemption of the world,” (1 Nephi 1:19) that is, an anointed high priest and a day of atonement. It fits with Barker’s striking suggestion in her talk at the Joseph Smith Conference at the Library of Congress that the wickedness in Jerusalem that Lehi preached against was the reform.

The reform involved removing the Asherah (mistranslated in the Kings James version as “grove”[9] ) from the Temple, and not only burning it, but stamping it to powder, and desecrating the powder by casting it on the common graves (2 Kings 23:7). This Asherah was the Menorah, the “Tree of Life”, which is associated with Wisdom both in scriptures (for example, Proverbs 3:13, 18 and Jeremiah 17:8), and in non-Biblical accounts (such as 1st Enoch, The Narrative of Zosimus, 1 Nephi and Alma 32). For example, in Proverbs 3:13, 18 we read “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and that getteth understanding . She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her.”

The reform included institutional violence. “And he slew the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men’s bones upon them.” (2 Kings 23:2). Compare passages in Jeremiah that “also in they skirts is found the blood of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all of these. Yet thou sayest, Because I am innocent, surely his anger shall turn from me” (Jer. 2:34-5).

Barker notes that 2 Kings 23:7 that are currently translated as “and he brake down the houses of the sodomites,” the same letters can be read as “the holy ones,” meaning the priests. [10] Besides deposing and killing priests that did not support the new changes, a key element of the reform was the insistence that Jerusalem would the only shrine, the only temple. [11] That Nephi built a temple in the New World (2 Nephi 5:16) shows that he did not agree with that part of the reform.

[Silver Pie]

Margaret Barker was quite an eye-opener for me when it came to Josiah. It made me realize that we know very little, and that our Old Testament could be majorly screwed up - on purpose.

As an aside, I read a book of Graham Hancock's called The Sign and The Seal: The Quest for the lost ark of the covenant (I got it used on Thriftbooks). The book follows his journey and also his reasoning. I found him quite convincing.

Part of what he addresses is when and how the ark disappeared from the temple during the purge.

[Pazooka]

Margaret Barker was quite an eye-opener for me when it came to Josiah. It made me realize that we know very little, and that our Old Testament could be majorly screwed up - on purpose.

As an aside, I read a book of Graham Hancock's called The Sign and The Seal: The Quest for the lost ark of the covenant (I got it used on Thriftbooks). The book follows his journey and also his reasoning. I found him quite convincing.

Part of what he addresses is when and how the ark disappeared from the temple during the purge.

Thank you. I will definitely look into that.