The Bible describes Josiah as the most righteous king of David’s line, and the last significant king before Judah’s final decline and fall to the Babylonians. Second Kings claims that a “Book of the Law” was discovered in the Jerusalem Temple in the early years of Josiah’s reign, triggering a “renewal” of the religious practice established by Moses. This led to the destruction of all the shrines, altars, sacred poles, and statues that Judahites were using to worship Baal, Asherah, and other gods. The temple itself needed to be cleansed of idols and thereafter was reserved to the worship of Yahweh alone. While the Bible presents this as a return to the worship of the God of Israel, modern historians see Josiah’s program as its introduction. Most scholars suspect that the book “discovered” in Josiah’s time was an early version of Deuteronomy composed in Josiah’s time. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at evidence within the Bible that points to Josiah’s reforms as the introduction of a kind of monolatry in First Temple Judaism, that later evolved into full monotheism in the Second Temple Period.