Q&A: Hilkiah and the Discovery of the Torah Scroll
Hilkiah and the Discovery of the Torah Scroll
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi, may he live long!
I really enjoy your sharp and excellent answers, and I wanted to ask maybe I too could ask a question.
II Kings chapter 22, verse 8 through the end of the chapter:
8 And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the Torah scroll in the House of the Lord”; and Hilkiah gave the scroll to Shaphan, and he read it. 9 And Shaphan the scribe came to the king and brought back word to the king, and said, “Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the House and have delivered it into the hand of the workers who oversee the House of the Lord.” 10 And Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a scroll”; and Shaphan read it before the king. 11 And when the king heard the words of the Torah scroll, he tore his clothes. 12 And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam son of Shaphan, and Achbor son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying: 13 “Go, inquire of the Lord on my behalf, and on behalf of the people, and on behalf of all Judah, concerning the words of this scroll that has been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that has been kindled against us, because our fathers did not listen to the words of this scroll, to do according to all that is written concerning us.”
From the text, doesn’t it seem at least a little possible that Hilkiah kind of gave laws of his own choosing?
What if the entire Torah was invented?
Answer
How do you see that? He found an old scroll. You can suspect him of cheating or deception (why?), but to conclude that it was a fraud—that’s a conclusion I don’t understand. Beyond that, I explained this passage in my first available book, The First Available, fifth talk, and there I argued among other things that the fact that the people accepted the scroll indicates that they knew there had once been a Torah scroll and that it had been lost. Otherwise, how could he invent a new scroll and then explain to them that this was a Torah scroll that had been given to them in the past, if nobody had ever heard of such a thing?
Discussion on Answer
I already answered all of that. It’s simply not true that they didn’t know there was a Torah. It’s far more reasonable that they did know. And if this is a conspiracy, then how did the idiot who wrote it document his own fraud for future generations? In short, anyone determined to look for conspiracies will of course find them.
You’re starting from the assumption that in Josiah’s time the people were intellectually challenged; how can you write a verse like this: “For great is the wrath of the Lord that has been kindled against us, because our fathers did not listen to the words of this scroll, to do according to all that is written concerning us,” and come with claims against the people, if this is a law book they had never heard of in their lives? They would ask, quite rightly, how could we have observed it? The scroll was known, and therefore it was possible to come with claims against those who did not observe what was written in it.
Indeed. Exactly what I wrote.
Let me sharpen the point that’s bothering me:
The story in II Kings chapter 22 describes the discovery of a Torah scroll that was apparently unfamiliar—not to the king, not to the people, and it seems not even to earlier generations before him.
So even if we say there was some “general awareness” of some idea of Torah, still, why wasn’t there any living tradition about it?
How is it that Hilkiah himself had never heard of the existence of a scroll on this level?
How can one rule out the possibility that the priesthood or the monarchy created here a document whose purpose was religious reform, and presented it as an ancient “discovery”?
The claim that “the people would not have accepted it if there hadn’t been prior memory” is understandable, but also a bit circular:
A people that recognizes the authority of the priesthood or the monarchy, and that lacks an educational system, written tradition, or access to Torah, might very well accept a new authority even if they had never heard of it before, especially if it is presented as “a loss now restored”….
Therefore, there is a real, historical, and plausible opening here for the possibility that the Torah was not necessarily transmitted in a living chain from the revelation at Mount Sinai, but rather may have developed and taken shape over time, and perhaps even started here.
Thanks for the answer!