Josiah's Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement: Israelite Rites of Violence and the Making of a Biblical Text

Chapters 22 and 23 of 2 Kings tell the story of the religious reforms of the Judean King Josiah, who systematically destroyed the cult places and installations where his own people worshipped in order to purify Israelite religion and consolidate religious authority in the hands of the Jerusalem temple priests. This violent assertion of Israelite identity is portrayed as a pivotal moment in the development of monotheistic Judaism. Monroe argues that the use of cultic and ritual language in the account of the reform is key to understanding the history of the text's composition, and illuminates the essential, interrelated processes of textual growth and identity construction in ancient Israel. Until now, however, none of the scholarship on 2 Kings 22-23 has explicitly addressed the ritual dimensions of the text. By attending to the specific acts of defilement attributed to Josiah as they resonate within the larger framework of Israelite ritual, Monroe's work illuminates aspects of the text's language and fundamental interests that have their closest parallels in the priestly legal corpus known as the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26), as well as in other priestly texts that describe methods of eliminating contamination. She argues that these priestly-holiness elements reflect an early literary substratum that was generated close in time to the reign of Josiah, from within the same priestly circles that produced the Holiness Code. The priestly composition was reshaped in the hands of a post-Josianic, exilic or post-exilic Deuteronomistic historian who transformed his source material to suit his own ideological interests. The account of Josiah's reform is thus imprinted with the cultural and religious attitudes of two different sets of authors. Teasing these apart reveals a dialogue on sacred space, sanctified violence and the nature of Israelite religion that was formative in the development not only of 2 Kings 23, but of the historical books of the Bible more broadly.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Destructive Rituals and the Creative Process: The Dynamics of Defilement in 2 Kings 23 Chapter 2: Priestly Rites of Elimination and the Holiness: Core of 2 Kings 23:4-20 Chapter 3: Herem Ideology and the Politics of Destruction: Josiah's Reform in Deuteronomistic Perspective Chapter 4: The Mechanics of Transformation: The Holiness Substratum and Deuteronomistic Revision of 2 King 23:4-20 Chapter 5: Literary, Historiographic and Historical Implications

About the Author :
Lauren A.S. Monroe is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel at Cornell University.

Review :
"Josiah's Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement is an innovative, clearly-written work that suggests a new, compelling understanding of 2 Kings 22-23 concerning Josiah's reform, and the historicity of that reform. This will be of great interest to scholars of Deuteronomy, Kings, and Priestly literature, and to those studying the connection between these various corpora, especially in its novel and compelling suggestion that sections of this reform in Kings were written by holiness priests."--Marc Brettler, Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies, Brandeis University "Lauren Monroe's Josiah's Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement unsettles what biblical scholars thought they knew about 2 Kings 22-23. In a book that is well researched but also accessibly written, Monroe develops a bold new approach to this episode that may require a revision of how scholars think about the history of Israelite religion and the development of the Hebrew Bible."--Steven Weitzman, Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion, Stanford University "Monroe's judicious observations about the vocabulary and phraseology used in the description of Josiah's reforms in II Kings 23:4-20 enable her to demonstrate that they reflect some of the same concerns about ritual, cultic purity, and the elimination of impurity, as does the Holiness Code (Lev 17-26) and parts of P. Her conclusions about how this came about are important both to the intellectual history of ancient Israel and the history of biblical literature. Monroe's book will open up important new discussions about links between Pentateuchal sources and their dates."--Ziony Zevit, Distinguished Professor in Bible and Northwest Semitic Languages, American Jewish University "Monroe makes a significant contribution...her core argument about the influence of priestly ideas on the reform account should influence all future studies of Josiah's reform and its literary reflections."--Interpretation