The prophecy of the man of God about Bethel (1 Kings 13:1-2) as a legitimizing tool for Josiah's reformist actions in the 7th century BCE

Abstract

The pericope of 1 Kings 13, 1-2 stands out as a unique passage in the Hebrew Bible. In it, we find the condemning words of a "Man of God" from Judah against the altar at Bethel, and the introduction, through prophecy, of a Judean monarch named Josiah, who would be born about three hundred years after the prophetic utterance, according to the internal logic of the narrative. In this article, we propose the hypothesis that the text was written in the 7th century BCE, during the reign of Josiah, and therefore reflects ideological assumptions consistent with the historical period in which it was composed. These assumptions include the condemnation of altars outside Jerusalem to exalt the Jerusalem Temple and to glorify the Davidic dynasty through Josiah. As an analytical methodology, we will conduct a textual exegesis based on the original Hebrew, seeking to relate the text of 1 Kings 13,1-2 to its production context.