Jeremiah and the Reform of Josiah
Some things are conspicuous by their absence. In Tanach for example there is the conspicuous silence by Elijah on the golden calf icons at Bethel and Dan which were placed by Jereboam. One would expect Elijah who was such a zealot against idolatry to have said something about the golden calves. Yet he is totally silent. Similarly silent is the prophet Jeremiah as to the reform of Josiah .
In the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign a “book of the law” was found during renovations to the Temple. The book of Melachim (Kings) tells the story of how this inspired King Josiah to “clean house” religiously. He removed the Asherah from the Temple. He removed all the elements of foreign worship that had infected Judaism during the reign of previous kings. He closed all the peripheral open air sanctuaries and centralized all worship to the Temple in Jerusalem. Due to the collapsing Assyrian empire he was able to go into what was formerly the Northern kingdom, which had been an Assyrian province, and remove the priests of the peripheral sanctuaries and destroy the cult site at Bethel which had the golden calf.
All the things that Josiah corrected were in the book of the law which most scholars say is the book of Dvarim (Deuteronomy). It appears that the book and its teaching had been sequestered at some point so that the knowledge of its content was lost to the majority. Upon reading the book Josiah was shocked at how the nation had lost its understanding of G-d's teaching. Josiah's reform was probably one of the most significant religious events since the giving of the Torah. And yet Jeremiah, the greatest prophet of his time, is silent about it. The question is why.
To answer the question we have to consider the timeline. Jeremiah begins his career in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah. The book of the law was found in the eighteenth year of his reign. There are scholars that question this chronology and in any event the bulk of his active ministry is later after the death of Josiah. But if the chronology is correct, Jeremiah would be a relative newcomer to the community of prophets in Jerusalem. In fact he mat have been still living in Anathoth. This might explain why Josiah goes to the prophetess Hulda and not to Yirmiyahu to validate the book of the law. Another reason is that it not the nature of prophets to give out "gold stars" for good behavior. They rarely compliment the nation for good behavior. They are primarily critical of bad behavior. So Jeremiah may have been silent about it even if he approved.
There may be another aspect to this which is somewhat speculative. Yirmiyahu comes from the village of Anathoth which is a few miles from Jerusalem in the territory of Benjamin. There is in the book of Jeremiah 11: 19-23 a difficult passage describing how men of Anathoth wanted to kill Jeremiah. These verses are somewhat intrusive as they do not follow smoothly from the preceding verses. The question is why did the people of his own town want to kill Jeremiah? The town of Anathoth was town specifically for cohanim (priests). Is it possible that these cohanim were officiants at the local sanctuaries- the bamot. The cohen Eviatar who was one of two cohanim for King David. He was exiled by King Solomon because he supported Adoniyahu, and not Solomon in the succession story. He was also a descendant of the priest Eli from the Tabernacle at Shiloh. The line of Eli was told by G-d that they would not continue because of their sins. This line of priests likely made up a part of the priests at the local sanctuaries. With the Josianic reform they were out of their jobs. Thus it may be that Jeremiah supported the reform of Yoshiyahu and thereby incurred the wrath of his neighbors in Anathoth. So possibly his approval of the religious reform was left out of his writings for this reason. So although there no textual evidence for this theory, the circumstantial evidence is intriguing.
