Observation

This question was unpopular among the candidates as only a few of them attempted it. Candidates needed to have pointed out that Josiah’s reform was initiated after the book of the law was discovered in the temple. There is no guess work in this question thus, since candidates were not familiar with this story, majority of them performed poorly especially in the part A. The supposed points candidates were expected to have written were:

1. After the discovery of the book of the law in the temple, King Josiah initiated some religious reforms.
2. Josiah ordered Hilkiah, the priest to bring out all the vessels made for Baal and Asherah and all other gods.
3. He burnt them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and took the ashes to Bethel.
4. He deposed the idolatrous priests whom the king of Judah had ordained to burn incense in high places to honour Baal and other gods.
5. He broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes which had taken over the house of the Lord.
6. He went all over the city and defiled and chased out the high priests from the temple where they burned incense to the gods.
7. He defiled Topheth to prevent people from sacrificing their sons and daughters as burnt offering to Molech.
8. He removed the horses the king of Judah had dedicated to the worship of the sun god at the entrance of the temple and burned them.
9. He destroyed all the altars put in place by Manasseh, Solomon, Jeroboam and other kings before him.
10. Josiah carried out his reforms up to the Northern Kingdom; he removed the shrines of the high places that were in the city of Samaria/ Bethel which the Israelites had made.
11. Josiah killed and burned the bodies of all the priests of the high places.
12. He restored the Passover feast and the Sabbath and commanded the people to keep it as it was written in the book of the covenant/He restored the ancient faith.
13. He abolished idolatry, witchcraft, sorcery, soothsaying, divination from Judah/ Jerusalem.
14. Altars at the high places were demolished and worship was centralized in Jerusalem.

In the part B, candidates were able to guess the answers right using the experiences of their immediate environment to point out some ways in which Christians can maintain purity of their religion. However, candidates performed better in the part B than in the part A. In totality, candidates performed poorly in this question.