Was King Josiah Really the Man Who Wrote the Bible?

Was Deuteronomy inserted into the Bible much more recently than it claimed? Source: pamela_d_mcadams / Adobe Stock.

During renovation of an ancient temple, workers uncovered a hidden scroll buried deep within the stone walls - a scroll that contains the very words of God, offering divine legitimacy to a struggling kingdom at precisely the moment the king needed it most. Too convenient to be true? Perhaps. Yet this is the history of what happened in 621 BC when King Josiah of Judah claimed his priests had discovered a mysterious “Book of the Law” during renovations of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

What followed would reshape the course of human spirituality forever. This single scroll would become the foundation for one of the most influential books ever written—the Hebrew Bible—and spawn the world’s three major monotheistic religions. But behind this monumental discovery lies one of history’s most intriguing questions: Was this divine providence, or the world’s first recorded case of religious propaganda?