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According to the Bible, among the last kings of the kingdom of Judah was one of the most notorious kings-Manasseh-and one of the most righteous-Josiah. Are the accounts of their contrasting reigns anything more than the ideological creations of pious writers and editors? Does this juxtaposition of a 'good king' and a 'bad king' provide good historical information or only theological wishful thinking? In this volume the on-going discussions in the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel's History have tackled the history of Judah in the seventh century BCE, with a focus on the reign of Josiah. Some essays survey the history and archaeology of Judah from Sennacherib to Nebuchadnezzar. Several examine the reign of Manasseh and address the question of whether it is ripe for re-evaluation. Others ask what we know of the reign of Josiah and, especially, what form his famous cult reform took or even whether it was historical. As always, the editor gives an introduction to the topic, with summaries of the contributions, plus a concluding summary of and personal perspective on the discussion. Contributors include such internationally known scholars as Rainer Albertz, Philip Davies, Axel Knauf, Nadav Na'aman, Marvin Sweeney, and Christoph Uehlinger. JSOTS 393
This collection of essays edited by Lester Grabbe address what appears to be the major historical debate in Old Testament research: Josiah and his reform. The selection of essays covers a range of opinions and approaches the problem from different methodologies. In short, there is little extrabiblical evidence supporting the reform of Josiah and the finding of the scroll. Furthermore, there appears to be plenty of extrabiblical references to Manasseh who some of the authors feel was vilified by the Deuteronomist Historian(s).While the work is intelligent, scholarly and well argued we must remember that we are expecting access to information about historic events that occurred over 2600 years ago. Frankly, it appears that these events are lost to us and we can only scratch the surface with conclusions based upon limited data.The critics assume that the DeH is a theological document that has some core historic truths but was written and redacted with other purposes in mind. This should not undermine our faith for Israel has always understood its history as being a salvation history guided and ordained by God. A similar statement can be made about the written documents from the various empires of the period that may have been selective and distorted to glorify the king and his accomplishments and were not concerned with the issues important to scripture.Rather than undermine the authority of the scripture, such silence from extrabiblical sources reinforce scriptures demand that, as Karl Barth says, "read the Bible Biblically." While such debates are important they are tangential to the Bible's purpose of salvation history and the argument from silence is basically faith in scripture or in biblical science.The student and scholar must keep in his mind these two issues separate. For those interested this work will be a standard.
