Joshua

Joshua (Heb. Jehóshúá; Gr. Iēsoús, from late Heb. Jéshúá), or HOSHEA (Num. xiii. 16), the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, is first mentioned in Ex. xvii. 9 as commanding the warriors of Israel in the battle of Rephidim. He was also one of the twelve spies sent out from Kadesh to collect information about the strength of the Canaanites and the prospects of the intended invasion (Num. xiii.), and when the others returned disheartened he and Caleb alone retained their courage and reported in favour of an armed advance. These two alone, therefore, out of all the grown men of Israel, were exempted from the divine sentence that because of their want of faith they should fall in the wilderness. During the forty years' wanderings Joshua acted as the 'minister' or personal attendant of Moses (Ex. xxiv. 13, &c.), a relation which seems to have marked him out as the favourite disciple and probable successor of the lawgiver. After 'the Lord was angry with Moses' Joshua was expressly designated to lead the people into Canaan (Deut. i. 38), and this designation was solemnly confirmed at the tabernacle (Deut. xxxi. 14 sqq.) before Moses' death. The book that bears his name is a narrative of the conquest and settlement of Canaan under the leadership to which he thus succeeded. It relates with considerable detail the passage of the Jordan, the fall of Jericho and Ai, the submission of the Gibeonites, the defeat of the five kings of the south at Bethoron and of the four kings of the north at the waters of Merom, gives a large number of geographical and administrative details as to the distribution of the conquered territory among the tribes that had taken part in the conquest, and concludes with two addresses which Joshua delivered shortly before his death. The Jewish rabbins and early Christian writers all supposed this book to have been written by Joshua himself; but this is an impossible assumption, for besides telling of his death it alludes to a number of things that did not happen until long after that event (see, for example, xv. 63 compared with Judges, xix. 10–12; and xix. 47 with Judges, xviii. 7, 27 sqq.). In fact, like the other historical books of the Old Testament, it is an anonymous writing, and when critically examined is seen to have been originally united to the Pentateuch, and to have been composed in the same manner. It is made up of extracts from various narratives, pieced together by a later hand in the manner of eastern historians, and in its present form cannot be much earlier than the time of Ezra. Most modern critics are agreed that the documents used by the editor were mainly three—the Jehovistic (known to critics by the symbol JE) of the 8th or 9th century, the Deuteronomistic (D) of the 7th, and the Priestly (P) of the 5th. To the Jehovistic document belong in the main chaps. ii. 1–viii. 29; ix. 1–xi. 9; xxiii., xxiv., and a few short fragments in other chapters. To the Deuteronomist are assigned chaps. i., viii. 30–35; xi. 10–xiii. 14; xiv. 6–15, and some other small portions; while the remainder, including the greater part of the account of the division of the territory, comes from the priestly writer. Its geographical details are characterised by great vagueness, except as regards the portion of the land which was held by Jews after the exile. The best commentary on Joshua is that of Dillmann (1886).