any proposal remains speculative. If a resident of the territory that was once part of the Northern Kingdom wrote the book, that person could have been either a Judaean who moved north or a survivor of the Assyrian occupation of the Northern Kingdom. Perhaps responding to some northerners’ objections to Josiah’s political ambitions and denigration of his character by highlighting the ethnic blemish in the royal family, this tractate demonstrates that nobility is not merely an issue of blood, but