Josiah ( or ) or Yoshiyahu was the 16th King of Judah (–609 BCE). According to the Hebrew Bible, he instituted major religious reforms by removing official worship of gods other than Yahweh. Josiah is credited by most biblical scholars with having established or compiled important Hebrew scriptures during the "Deuteronomic reform" which probably occurred during his rule. Josiah became king of the Kingdom of Judah at the age of eight, after the assassination of his father, King Amon. Josiah reigned for 31 years, from 641/640 to 610/609 BCE.
Josiah is known only from biblical texts; no reference to him exists in other surviving texts of the period from Egypt or Babylon, and no clear archaeological evidence, such as inscriptions bearing his name, has ever been found. However, a seal bearing the name "Nathan-melech," the name of an administrative official under King Josiah according to , dating to the 7th century BCE, was found in situ in an archeological site in Jerusalem. The discoverers believe this seal represents the individual mentioned in 2 Kings 23:11. Additionally, most scholars believe that Josiah existed historically and that the absence of documents is due to few documents of any sort surviving from this period, and to Jerusalem having been occupied, conquered, and rebuilt over thousands of years.
Biblical narrative
The Bible describes him as a righteous king, a king who "walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left" (; ). He is also one of the kings mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew's gospel, one of the two divergent genealogies of Jesus in the New Testament (cf. Matthew 1:10–11).
Family
According to the biblical narrative, Josiah was the son of King Amon and Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. His grandfather Manasseh was one of the kings blamed for turning away from the worship of Yahweh. Manasseh adapted the Temple for idolatrous worship. Josiah's great-grandfather was King Hezekiah, a noted reformer also respected by the biblical writers as having "done what was right in the sight of the LORD, as David had done.
Josiah had four sons: Johanan, and Eliakim (born c. 634 BCE), whose mother was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah; and Mattanyahu (c. 618 BCE) and Shallum (633/632 BCE), whose mother was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. Eliakim had his name changed by Pharaoh Necho of Egypt to Jehoiakim.
His youngest son Shallum succeeded Josiah as king of Judah, under the name Jehoahaz. Shallum was succeeded by Eliakim, under the name Jehoiakim, who was succeeded by his own son Jeconiah; then, Jeconiah was succeeded to the throne by his uncle Mattanyahu, under the name Zedekiah. Zedekiah was the last king of Judah before the kingdom was conquered by Babylon and the people exiled.
Religious reform
The Second Book of Chronicles records that Josiah was eight years old when he became king. In the eighth year of his reign, he "began to seek the God of his father David" and in the twelfth year of that reign he began a program of destruction of Baalist altars and images throughout Jerusalem and Judah. The Chronicler records in detail the execution of this program, whereas the account in 2 Kings begins with the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem, which both accounts say was initiated in the eighteenth year of his reign.
Josiah ordered the High Priest Hilkiah to use the tax money which had been collected over the years to renovate the temple. While Hilkiah was clearing the treasure room of the Temple he discovered a scroll described in 2 Kings as "the book of the Law", and in 2 Chronicles as "the book of the Law of the LORD given by Moses". The phrase sefer ha-torah (ספר התורה) in is identical to the phrase used in and to describe the sacred writings that Joshua had received from Moses. The book is not identified in the text as the Torah and many scholars believe this was either a copy of the Book of Deuteronomy or a text that became a part of Deuteronomy.
However it has been noted that the story of the repairs to the Temple is based on those ordered by an earlier Judean king, Joash (who ruled c. 836 – 796 BCE) in .