key aspects of Josiah’s reform and of Deuteronomy—centralizaton of sacrifice, destruction of shrines other than the Temple, and destruction of cultic pillars and sacred posts—had already been undertaken a century earlier by Hezekiah. Since Hezekiah’s short-lived reformation is not said to have been based on a book, we cannot be certain that Deuteronomy existed then, but the ideas that produced the book were clearly developing. It seems likely, then, that Deuteronomy was composed in the eighth-seventh