Josiah in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE

o-si'-a (yo'shiyahu, "Yahweh supports him"; Ioseias; the King James Version Josias (which see)): I. SOURCES FOR HIS LIFE AND TIMES 1. Annalistic 2. Prophetic 3. Memorial II. TRAITS OF HIS REIGN 1. Situation at the Beginning 2. Finding of the Law 3. The Great Reform 4. Disaster at Megiddo The name given 6 years before the death of his grandfather Manasseh resumes the Judaic custom, suspended in the case of that king and Amon, of compounding royal names with that of Yahweh; perhaps a hint of the time, when, according to the Chronicler, Manasseh realized Yahweh's claim on his realm (2 Ch 33:12,13). One of the most eminent of the kings of Judah; came to the throne at 8 years of age and reigned circa 637- 608 BC. I. Sources for His Life and Times. 1. Annalistic: The earliest history (2 Ki 22:1-23; 30) is dispassionate in tone, betraying its prophetic feeling, however, in its acknowledgment of Yahweh's wrath, still menacing in spite of Josiah's unique piety (2 Ki 23:26,27). For "the rest of his acts" (to which the rather bald account of his death is relegated as a kind of appendix), it refers to "the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah." In the later history (2 Ch 34; 35), written from the developed ecclesiastical point of view, he is considerably idealized: the festal and ceremonial aspects of his reform are more fully detailed, and the story of his campaign and death is more sympathetically told in the sense of it as a great national calamity...