Crisis
Writings*Crisis
Writings*The ancient sacred stories were preserved in part because of historical invasions, retrenchments, and reforms. Such crises scattered the Israelites and compelled their leaders to write down the community’s laws and customs, both to preserve the people’s identity, and to reform the faithless nation in order to escape the wrath of God.
In 722 B.C. the Assyrians swept down from the north and destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel. This destruction was widely perceived as punishment by God for breaking the covenant, and had been anticipated by prophets who had called for a rejection of all idolatry and a new alliance with Jerusalem. According to ancient military custom, the Assyrians sold the captured Israelites as slaves throughout the Ancient Near East. Those who were not carried away lived as subject people under Assyrian and then Babylonian rule.
Jerusalem, in the South, was spared when the Northern Kingdom was destroyed. The Northerners who had fled to the South brought with them the sacred texts of their kingdom. The century and a half between the fall of the Northern Kingdom and the fall of the Southern Kingdom was a time of blending the memories and collecting the written texts of both the Northern and Southern tribes of Israel. We see this blending in the text when we find two different names for the same site, such as Mt. Horeb and Mt. Sinai; or two very similar stories (doublets) about the same people, such as the two tellings of Sarai and Abram in Egypt. The editors kept faith with the various sources by maintaining the differences between the texts. These sacred texts were brought together around the law code "found" in the reign of Josiah.
In the surviving Southern Kingdom of Israel called Judah, the destruction to the North struck fear in the hearts of all. King Josiah called for repentance and a return to the covenant, reviving the religious practices that had fallen into disuse. He decided to renovate the 300-year-old Temple in Jerusalem as part of this national repentance and revival. According to the account in 2 Kings 22-23, the high priest Hilkiah discovered a book from the Torah, the Law, in the Temple wall during renovations in 621 B.C. The reading of this book to the community precipitated the reform and revival of Judaism under King Josiah. To verify the authenticity of the text, the officials turned to the "prophetess" Huldah, who is described as the little-known wife of a minor official (2 Kings 22:13-14). Huldah assumes an important role in the transmitting of the covenant story by confirming that God does require obedience to the traditional commandments of the Law. She also proclaimed that Jerusalem would become "a desolation and curse" because of the nation’s sin of faithlessness to the covenant. In response, King Josiah calls for a covenant renewal ceremony, to be followed by reforms to bring Israel into line with the covenant teaching. Josiah’s untimely death at the hands of the Egyptian Pharaoh Neco cut short the process, but these massive reforms still resulted in a return to an earlier tradition.
While the book is not precisely
identified in the text, many scholars believe it to be the law
code from the book of Deuteronomy (4:44-28:68), since it prompted
the reform that reflects the issues of Deuteronomy. As scholars
have tried to understand the various sources of material that
went into the Pentateuch in its final form, this narrative from 2
Kings has been of interest. If it is the centerpiece for the work
of the Deuteronomist as Deuteronomy is formed, the event might
also have been the motivation for the bringing together of the
strands of the tradition that were available to different parts
of the community in various forms. The oral tradition by this
time had taken on many characteristics from local areas. The
southern nation Judah and the northern nation Israel had each
carefully passed on the epic tradition that formed part of the
heritage of both. As each lived with the oral tradition and began
to write it down, some differences developed. This reality led to
editing of the texts.
