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Josiah’s Reforms and ‘am ha’ares - Socio-political Understanding

이동규 1

1서울대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

Since A. Menes and G. von Rad, various scholars have acknowledged the connection between the ‘people of the land’ and Deuteronomy and deuteronomistic movements. It has been argued that they were supporters of deuteronomistic reforms, however, the Hebrew Bible is not clear on this point, and they were non-existent in reform scenes. This study has attempted to find a way forward in understanding their relationship with King Josiah's reform by focusing on socio-political aspects of the reforms and their activities, aided by archaeological observations. The late eighth through the late seventh centuries presented the royal court in Jerusalem with new circumstances. Jerusalem experienced rapid expansion, and the centralization of Judah would have been in progress from the eighth century. Also, as the Hebrew Bible vividly describes, factional conflicts in the court had existed from the reign of David, and Josiah’s enthronement occurred in the middle of court conflict. It was the ‘people of the land’ who appeared to be active participants in Judahite political events for Judah’s last centuries, influencing the succession of the Davidic dynasty. As landed aristocracy and as rural elders representing their towns and social units and having strong rural connections to decentralized cultural bases, they could not help but be against the national centralization tendency of the time. For Josiah whose father was assassinated in the court intrigue and who would have lived his young life under the influence of the regent or regent figure(s), centralization reform could be seen as an inevitable route to escape from the influence of the regent figure(s) and to consolidation of his kingship over court of kingdom. Through his reforms, Josiah seems to have attempted to challenge the power structure of Judah, changing national fiscal flows and embracing other elite groups drawn from Jerusalem officialdom, while the ‘people of the land’ were still caught up in the decentralized rural culture of Judahite provinces. The analyses of socio-political circumstances of Josiah's reforms reveal a quite different picture of the ‘people of the land’ and their relationship with the reforms from the traditional one. Von Rad's thesis regarding their relations to the Deuteronomistic movement must be re-considered and re-evaluated in the light of socio-political stance of the "people of the land" in the kingdom of Judah.

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