* 2 Kings xxiii. 3-20, 24-27, where several glosses and interpolations are easily recognisable, such as the episode at Bethel (v. 15-20), the authenticity of which is otherwise incontestable.  The account in 2 Chron. xxxiv. is a defaced reproduction of that of 2 Kings, and it places the reform, in part at least, before the discovery of the new law.

The governor offered no objection to these acts; he regarded them, in the first place, as the private affairs of the subjects of the empire, with which he had no need to interfere, so long as the outburst of religious feeling did not tend towards a revolt:  we know, moreover, that Josiah, guided on this point by the prophets, would have believed that he was opposing the divine will had he sought to free himself from the Assyrian yoke by ordinary political methods; besides this, in 621, under Assur-etililani, five years after the Scythian invasion, the prefect of Samaria had possibly not sufficient troops at his disposal to oppose the encroachments of the vassal princes.  It was an affair of merely a few months.  In the following year, when the work of destruction was over, Josiah commanded that the Passover should be kept in the manner prescribed in the new book; crowds flocked into Jerusalem, from Israel as well as from Judah, and the festival made a deep impression on the minds of the people.  Centuries afterwards the Passover of King Josiah was still remembered:  “There was not kept such a Passover from the days of the Judges... nor in all the days of the Kings of Israel, nor of the Kings of Judah."*

1 2 Kings xxiii. 21-23; cf. 2 Chron. xxxv. 1-19.  The text of the Soptuagint appears to imply that it was the first Passover celebrated in Jerusalem.  It also gives in chap. xxii. 3, after the mention of the eighteenth year, a date of the seventh or eighth month, which is not usually accepted, as it is in contradiction with what is affirmed in chap, xxiii. 21-23, viz. that the Passover celebrated at Jerusalem was in the same year as the reform, in the eighteenth year.  It is to do away with the contradiction between these two passages that the Hebrew text has suppressed the mention of the month.  I think, however, it ought to be considered authentic and be retained, if we are allowed to place the celebration of the Passover in what would be one year after.  To do this it would not be needful to correct the regnal date in the text:  admitting that the reform took place in 621, the Passover of 620 would still quite well have taken place in the eighteenth year of Josiah, that being dependent on the time of year at which the king had ascended the throne.

The first outburst of zeal having spent itself, a reaction was ere long bound to set in both among the ruling classes and among the people, and the spectacle that Asia at that time presented to their view was truly of a nature to incite doubts in the minds of the faithful.  Assyria—­that Assyria