Two hundred years ago, a German scholar named W. M. L. De Wette concluded that, in fact, Josiah and his high priest had perpetrated a “pious fraud,” as he called it. Scholars since then have corroborated his conclusions. The book of Deuteronomy was actually written shortly before it was found, and its “discovery” was just a charade: the book was written to provide justification for the power grab of the Yahweh-alone movement.13
