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Huldah the prophetess—let us celebrate her—holds a unique place in history. It was she who, for the first time, designated a written document as Holy Scripture. She began the process that culminated more than millennium later in the canonization of the Bible.
It occurred during the reign of King Josiah of Judah in the late seventh century B.C. After half century during which paganism had infected Israelite religious practice, King Josiah led a campaign restore its purity and to centralize the worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem. Under the direction of Hilkiah, the high priest, carpenters and masons set about repairing the Temple that King Solomon built Contributions for the restoration of the Temple had been collected in a large trunk at the Temple. When payday came for the workmen, Josiah sent Shaphan, his secretary, to the Temple to pick up the donations and distribute the money. On arriving, Shaphan found Hilkiah eager to show him a dusty old scroll that had been uncovered when the offering container had been emptied. Hilkiah realized that the scroll contained laws, but no one knew their significance. When Shaphan returned to the royal palace With this unusual discovery, Josiah had the scroll read to him. He was distressed when he contrasted the demands of these laws with the prevailing practices in the Judahite state.
Although impressed by the scroll, Josiah unsure of its divine authority. If the scroll contained an authentic revelation from God, he would need to embark on much more sweeping reforms than he had anticipated. Josiah commissioned his top officers to ascertain whether the scroll was authoritative. These men realized that a prophet could best discern whether or not a scroll expressed the of God.
Several prophets lived nearby at the time— Jeremiah, Zephaniah and Nahum. All of them had been assisting Josiah in his efforts to eradicate Assyrian astral religious practices and return to the best traditions of the Israelite religion. Despite the accessibility of able male prophets, the delegation of royal officers turned instead to Huldah the prophetess (2 Kings 22)
That Huldah was a woman was apparently irrelevant; the biblical text does not suggest that seeking divine revelation from a woman was in any way unusual. Modem readers might be amazed that a male high priest and a male secretary of state would be part of a group seeking expert knowledge from a woman, but the ancient historian does not express surprise at the situation.
The royal officers went to Huldah’s home to confer With her,. and they accepted her authority without question. She verified that the scroll contained the message of the Lord, and then she interpreted that message. What this Jerusalem woman declared to be of unique importance is, scholars now agree, the core of the Book of Deuteronomy.
Huldah did, a momentous thing at her home that day in 621 B.C. Until then, no writing had ever been designated as Holy Scripture. Manuscripts about the past had been accumulating since the rise of literacy, but none had been singled out as a witness to God’s will. Huldah started the process that, after another eight centuries, would result in the gathering of dozens of scrolls into what we now call the Holy Bible. As one scholar has put it:
“The authority to pass judgment on this initial entry into the canon was given to a women. At the beginning of the Bible we find Huldah; in her we discover the first scripture authority, the founder of biblical studies.”1
Another scholar says the story of Huldah has “a landmark value” and hails the prophetess as “the certifier of the first Bible.”2
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The significant role that Huldah played has both puzzled and inspired subsequent leaders of synagogue and church. According to Jewish tradition, Huldah conducted an academy in Jerusalem.3 The rabbis discussed why King Josiah’s men consulted Huldah rather than Jeremiah. Looking backward centuries later, the rabbis realized that Jeremiah was certainly one of the most outstanding Israelite prophets; he was so close to Josiah’s officials may have felt that woman would be more compassionate and more likely to report a positive message from God.4My own guess is that Huldah was consulted, rather than Jeremiah, because she was literature. Jeremiah needed a professional scribe—Baruch ben Neriah—to write down his message. The prophets were generally recognized as speakers of oracles, not as interpreters of scrolls.
Huldah’s example encouraged the early Church to ordaian women to sacred office. The Apostolic Constitutions (8.20), a collection of ecclesiastical regulations and liturgical materials dated to the late fourth century, contains this prayer for deaconess ordination:
“Creator of man and woman, who filled Deborah, Anna, and Huldah with the spirit … look upon your servant who is chosen for the ministry and grant her your Holy Spirit.”
In the Reformed Church, the witness of Huldah provided biblical authority for accepting women in a role of authority over men. John Calvin disputed with his Scottish student John Knox over whether God would accept a woman as the head of a government. Calvin recorded his position on this question in a letter to a friend:
“Two years ago John Knox asked me, in a private conversation, what I thought about the government of women. I candidly replied… that there were occasionally women so endowed, that the singular good qualities which shone forth in them made it evident that they were raised up by divine authority; either that God designed by such examples to condemn the inactivity of men, or for the better setting forth his own glory. I brought forward Huldah and Deborah.”5
A century after Calvin, the Quakers became the first Christian denomination to advocate the equality of men and women. For George and Margaret Fox, who organized the Society of Friends, Huldah assumed special importance. George Fox writes:
“There are elder women in the truth as well as elder men in the truth; and these women are to be teachers of good things; so they have an office as well as the men … Deborah was a judge; Miriam and Huldah were prophetesses; old Anna was a prophetess.… Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were the first preachers of Christ’s resurrection to the disciples.… They received the command, and being sent, preached it.”6
In 19th-century America, a Quaker woman and a Calvinist woman worked together to change to the world. Lucretia Mott, a Quaker minister, and Elizabeth Stanton drafted a Declaration of Principles that prefaces a listing of grievances against masculine tyranny with the ringing affirmation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”
Opponents of the women’s rights movement often hurled biblical texts at Stanton to prove that males were commissioned by God to dominate public life. drawing on rabbinical tradition, she responded:
“The greatest character among the women thus far mentioned (in the Old Testament) is Huldah the prophetess, residing in the college in Jerusalem … Her wisdom and insight were well known to Josiah the king; and when the wise men came to him with the ‘Book of the Law,’ to learn what was written therein, Josiah ordered them to take it to Huldah, as neither the wise men nor Josiah himself could interpret its contents.… We should not have had such a struggle in our day to open the college doors (to women) had the clergy read of the dignity accorded to Huldah. People who talk the most of what the Bible teaches often know the least about its contents.”7
Huldah’s example sometimes had an effect on church authorities. Rev. Dr. George Hughey referred to Huldah as “the head of the Prophetic College in the Kingdom of Josiah,” but Hughey was unsuccessful in his drive in 1888 to admit women to the meeting of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.8
Unfortunately, most 20th-century scholarly studies on the Judahite monarchy disregard Huldah. For example, no mention is made of her in Arthur Herbert’s discussion of Josiah’s reforms in Peake’s Commentary.9 Nor is she given space in Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Prophets.10 John Bright does not mention her in his History of Israel,11 even though he states that finding the law scroll was the most 044significant event of Josiah’s reign. The Interpreter’s Bible displays both male bias and ignorance in this comment about the discovery of the scroll:
“Why did the chief priest not consult the very numerous male prophets in Jerusalem? … Little did Josiah and Hilkiah and Huldah realize that four miles distant from Jerusalem a lad was growing up… Jeremiah of Anathoth.”12
Actually, the adult Jeremiah began to prophesy some years before the scroll was discovered.
It is time to restore Huldah to her rightful place. She was the first to place a seal of approval on a scroll, certifying that it contained Yahweh’s genuine message. She deserves to be honored as the patron saint of textual critics across the ages who seek to validate what is divinely inspired.
Huldah the prophetess—let us celebrate her—holds a unique place in history. It was she who, for the first time, designated a written document as Holy Scripture. She began the process that culminated more than millennium later in the canonization of the Bible.
