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What is the Connection between the Book of Deuteronomy and the Reign of King Josiah?

Introduction

In 622BCE, Judah's King Josiah transformed the cultic system that had until then existed in the Judahite kingdom. He executed the idea that only one God should be worshiped by all Israelites, and Judahites and that Jerusalem should be the only lawful and genuine place where YHWH sacrifices should be slaughtered (Freud, p.273). The foundation of these striking transformations is a "Book of Law" discovered at the temple in Jerusalem during renovations commanded by the young king. As per the wording of the story and content of the transformations described in 2 Kings 22-23, intellectuals and scholars believe that Josiah was talking about something very much similar to the middle chapters of the “Book of Deuteronomy” which thus composed the initial parts of the Torah ever to be executed as cultic law.

Discussion

The Hebrew term Torah, according to the general consensus of modern scholars, is connected with the hiphil conjugation of the root yrh, “to point out, direct, teach,” and thus literally means “teaching” or “instruction.” The Torah functions in Jewish traditions as a category invested with transcendent authority that has both textual and supra-textual dimensions. As the quintessential scripture and encompassing symbol of rabbinic Judaism, the Torah continues to be revered by contemporary Jewish communities in Israel, the United States, and throughout the transnational Diaspora (Heschel, p.239).

The Pentateuch was granted sacrosanct and authoritative status in the rabbinic tradition as divine revelation, and therefore any text, teaching, or practice that wished to invest itself with divinely sanctioned authority could only do so through becoming incorporated within the ever-expanding domain of Torah. While the Torah as a circumscribed written text is a bounded category, in its status as revealed truth it functions as an open-ended symbol that extends beyond the boundaries of the text and is capable of absorbing a host of candidates whose linkage to the revelation, however tenuous, has been established.

The encompassing nature of the Torah as a symbol is linked in particular to its identification with the Word of God, for while the Pentateuch Torah might be held to be the most perfect, concentrated expression of the Word of God on earth, the Word itself is not limited to that expression (Eliade, p.119). The divine Word through which God manifested Himself at the time of revelation is also represented as the creative power through which He brought forth creation. In certain representations of the Torah found in seminal form in rabbinic texts and subsequently elaborated in medieval kabalistic texts, the Torah is personified as the primordial Word or wisdom that had existed in heaven from “the beginning,” prior to the revelation, as a living aspect of God and the immediate source of creation. At the time of the revelation at Mount Sinai, the primordial Torah is represented as descending from its supernal abode and becoming embodied on earth in the concrete form of the Pentateuch Torah. It assumed the finite form ...