Hilkiah temple law-book copy behind the Josiah reform notices

This article describes an entity that is not directly attested as an extant recoverable object; it is inferred from source-citation traces and should not be read as ordinary documentation of a surviving book.

Epistemic status

Draft article. Kings and Chronicles report the discovered copy, but its exact identity and historical status are not resolved here.

Summary

2 Kings 22:8 reports Hilkiah finding the book of the law in the temple; 2 Chronicles 34:14 preserves a parallel notice. Inferpedia treats the missing object as the reported temple law-book copy behind Josiah reform notices.

What is being inferred

The inferred entity is the physical or source-surface copy described as found by Hilkiah, not the entire Torah or a settled source-critical identification.

What is attested

Kings reports the finding of the book of the law in the house of the Lord, and Chronicles reports a book of the law of the Lord given by Moses.

Why infer this entity

The object is narrative-specific, tied to a discoverer and place, and reported in parallel traditions, yet the copy itself is not extant here.

Evidence ledger

• E1, 2 Kings 22:8: primary trace for Hilkiah finding the law book in the temple.
• E2, 2 Chronicles 34:14: parallel trace for Hilkiah finding a law book.

Counterarguments

The finding narrative may be theological historiography, and the object's relation to Deuteronomy or the Torah is debated.

Confidence scores

Direct attestation: 62. Existence warrant: 80. Specificity: 66. Reconstruction dependence: 78. Counterevidence: 24.

What would change the score

Specialist source-critical work on Josiah's reform, manuscript or versional variants, or clearer evidence for the book's identity would change the score.