JOSIAH, was the grandson of Manasseh, king of Judah (II Kings xxii. 3o). He was born in 647 B.c., and ascended the throne after the assassination of his father Amon in 639. His reign witnessed the collapse of the Assyrian empire, whose last great king, Asshur-bani-pal, died in 626, and the final destruction of Nineveh. Egypt also was weak, and few kings of Judah since the days of Solomon can have been as independent as Josiah. It was, perhaps, this freedom from interference which enabled him to carry out in 621 a thorough religious reform, based on a book of law discovered in the Temple during some repairs, and commonly (though not now universally) identified with Deuteronomy or a part of it. The Temple at Jerusalem was purged of all foreign cults, and dedicated wholly to the worship of Yahweh, and all local sanctuaries were abolished, sacrifice being concentrated at Jerusalem. (See DEUTERONOMY, JEREMIAH.)
Egypt, meanwhile, had revived, and the young king Necho made an effort to save the falling Assyrian empire. Josiah seems to have taken the opposite side, either secretly or openly. He met Necho during one of the latter's expeditions to Mesopotamia, and was put to death at Megiddo. The Chronicler (II Chron. xxxv. 20-24) speaks of a battle in which Josiah was killed by the Egyp tian archers, but 'this may be a much later exaggeration of a slight skirmish in which his attendants were involved, and the Book of Kings does not in the least suggest an armed expedition. Josiah was long remembered as approaching the Israelite ideal of monarchy, kindly, open and democratic in ways and spirit, and scrupulously fair in judicial procedure. (T. H. R.)