Josias como um rei exemplar: a formação política do pan-israelismo em Judá durante o reinado de Josias (641-609 a.C.)

Abstract

This paper investigates the way in which Judahite deuteronomistic historiography created an extremely positive image of King Josiah in its literature, making him an exemplary king, exalted above the other monarchs of Judah after David. The aim of this research is to understand how the Judahite royal power of the seventh century BC made use of deuteronomistic historiography to legitimize its royal pretensions by exalting Josiah as an exemplary king and, above all, by creating a mythical narrative of a united kingdom that would include the territories and populations of Israel and Judah under the aegis of Jerusalem and the Davidite dynasty. The methodology of analysis that supports our research is the method of historical exegesis, through which we set out to critically analyze the biblical texts that speak about Josiah, focusing on the question of how they are heavily imbued with a pro-Davidite and pro-Josianic propagandistic content – particularly because there is an intentional intertwining by the author between the Davidic dynasty and the figure of Yahweh. With this, we seek to visualize how the Judahite royal power used some religious precepts to seek sustainability. Through this research, we hope to identify the political and social origins of the construction of the pan-Israelite ideology in Judah, as well as the historical reasons why the biblical text exalts the figure of Josiah. At the end of the study, it was possible to verify that the myth of the united kingdom and the formation of an exemplary profile for Josiah were two faces of the same coin, which sought not only to reinforce Davidite power over Judah, but also to legitimize the conquest of Israelite territories by the Kingdom of Judah