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mation is vital and critical to a proper understanding of the
narrative, and tells us why Shaphan was competent to render
judgment as to the authenticity of the found manuscript.
Preceding Josiah's reign on the throne was the chaotic
period of Menashe, King Josiah's grandfather persecutor of
the faithful, who burned manuscripts of the Torah. 252 Shaphan
came from a scribal dynasty. His grandfather, in turn a Scribe,
is the Hebrew Bible's best example of a chain of tradition from
father to son mitigating against a physical destruction of Torah
manuscripts. Indeed, Biblical critics are hard pressed to
explain the importance of the pedigree of Priestly families and
their scribal functions. For example, Shemaya ben Nethanel
kept records for King David concerning the Priestly families
(I Chron. 24:6), and every king had such records kept
(II Chron. 26:11). Shaphan was not only descendant of a
Priestly family, but his descendants in turn carried on the
tradition. For example, when Josiah's son Yehoyakim ruled
over Judah, Shaphan's son Gemariah served as Scribe. On
one occasion Jeremiah's disciple, Baruch ben Neriah, recited
a prophetic message in
"—the chamber of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan the scribe in
the upper court... . And when Micaiah the son of Gemariah,
the son of Shaphan, had heard the words of the Lord he went
into the king's house, into the scribe's chamber and all the
princes sat there, even Elishama the scribe (Jeremiah 36,
10:12)."
Elishama and his clerks were named after their scribal
ancestors who are explicitly mentioned having lived in the
days of Jehosophat, and they "taught in Judah, having the
book of God's Torah with them (II Chron. 17:9)." This Scribal
dynasty produced none other than Ezra, the Scribe, who
resurrected the Torah in his day, and who himself was
descended from Meshulam, or Shalum in abbreviated Hebrew
(Ezra, 7:2), and was from the stock of Aaron the High Priest. 253
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