I\u2019ve blogged before about getting students to read texts as adults that they were previously exposed to as children. It often makes them acutely aware of the gulf between perceptions of what the Bible says and is they had growing up, and the reality of its contents. I\u2019ve tended to use the stories of David and Samson<\/a> to get at that point. Now, Fred Clark has done the same with Josiah<\/a>. Here\u2019s an extended excerpt. Click through to read the rest<\/a>.<\/p>\n Our Sunday school versions of the story of Josiah had skipped past some of the more vivid details of Josiah\u2019s zealous plans for reform:<\/p>\n Moreover, Josiah removed all the shrines of the high places that were in the towns of Samaria, which kings of Israel had made, provoking the\u00a0Lord\u00a0to anger; he did to them just as he had done at Bethel. He slaughtered on the altars all the priests of the high places who were there, and burned human bones on them.<\/p>\n Arch Books left that out of their chipper little rendition of this story,\u00a0King Josiah and God\u2019s Book.\u00a0<\/em>The toppling of the idols and of the idolatrous altars was considered good stuff for a children\u2019s story, but the mass murder of the idolaters and their vengeful human sacrifice (!) wasn\u2019t considered appropriate material even for the adult Sunday school classes.<\/p>\n Nor did we ever get into the stranger aspects of this story. Our version of the story always included the\u00a0cheery promise made to Josiah at the end of 2 Kings 22. Because of his devotion to the rediscovered scriptures, and because he instituted the commemoration of Passover, God promised Josiah that \u201cyou shall be gathered to your grave in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n But we left out the bit where that didn\u2019t happen. The following chapter, 2 Kings 23, ends with Josiah riding out to meet the army of \u201cPharaoh Neco king of Egypt\u201d and then matter of factly states that \u201cwhen Pharaoh Neco met him at Megiddo, he killed him.\u201d<\/p>\n Josiah\u2019s \u201cservants carried him dead in a chariot from Megiddo,\u201d and brought him back to Jerusalem to bury him. I suppose in some technical, monkey\u2019s paw sense, that might count as being gathered to his grave in peace. But it\u2019s still unsettling.<\/p>\n And then it gets worse. Josiah\u2019s oldest son becomes king but only serves for three months before Neco takes him captive and begins exacting tribute on Josiah\u2019s conquered kingdom. The Pharaoh then installs Josiah\u2019s younger son as a puppet king, a tool of Egypt.<\/p>\n The ending to this story is\u00a0poetically<\/em>\u00a0horrifying. The righteous king Josiah devotes himself to God more than any other king of his people. And then the only king of Israel or Judah ever to keep Passover is killed by Pharaoh, who then makes Josiah\u2019s son a captive in Egypt.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what to make of that. The cruel irony of that is almost as difficult to contend with as the text-of-terror aspects of Josiah\u2019s gleeful slaughter of the idolatrous priests.<\/p>\n To me, stories like this are a reminder that our Bible is an ancient book. If the past is a different country, then the ancient world is a different\u00a0planet<\/em>. The ancient stories of our Bible can be inscrutable, impenetrable, and bewildering. An important part of our task as modern readers, then, is to admit and accept that we are bewildered.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t like to do that. We like to pretend that the Bible is as simple, tidy, \u201cperspicuous,\u201d and self-evidently clear in its meaning as our own Arch Books adaptations of it. It becomes merely a collection of stories like that children\u2019s-book version of the story of Josiah \u2014 an anthology of facile fables with simple \u201cmorals\u201d that no one would ever regard as unsettling or disturbing in any way.<\/p>\n Whatever else the Bible may be, it surely is not that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Josiah is arguably one of the most important figures in the Bible, not because he finally obeyed commands everyone knew about but ignored up until he came along, but because he undertook a revolution in Judah, extending its control to Israel\u2019s territories to the north, in the process promulgating stories about their shared heritage as a single people and the need for those in the north to worship only in Jerusalem that set in motion to creation of the Bible and of Judaism as we now know them.<\/p>\n See also:<\/p>\n The Bible: Rated \u201cE\u201d for Everyone?!<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n