IV. Reading comprehension
Passage I (Questions 31-35)
The Hebrew Bible states that the priest Hilkiah found a “Book of the Law” in the temple during the
early stages of Josiah’s temple renovation. Hilkiah then gave the scroll to his secretary Shaphan, who took it to King Josiah. According to the Bible, King Josiah then changed his form of leadership
entirely, entering into a new form of covenant with the Lord. He wiped out all of the pagan cults that
had formed within his land. He, along with his people, then entered into this new covenant with the
Lord to keep the commandments of the Lord.
    For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was agreed among biblical scholars that
this “Book of the Law” was an early version of the Book of Deuteronomy, but recent biblical
scholarship sees it as a largely legendary narrative about one of the earliest stages of the creation of
Deuteronomistic work. That is, historical-critical biblical scholars generally believe that the “Book
of the Law”—an early predecessor of the Torah—was invented by Josiah’s priests, who were driven
by ideological interests to centralize power under Josiah in the Temple in Jerusalem. William G.
Dever, for example, argues that the Book of the Law was actually composed by orthodox Yahwist
priests, who attributed it to the legendary figure of Moses and then hid it in the Temple, where it
would be dramatically discovered； in this way, a “miraculous new Word from Yaweh” would seem
to have appeared, giving Judah a chance to redeem itself and save itself from the advance of the Neo-
Babylonian Empire.
【題組】31. Which of the following titles best describes the passage?
(A) What the Book of the Law is.
(B) Where the Book of the Law is Hid.
(C) How the Book of the Law is Compiled.
(D) When the Book of the Law is Completed.