JOSHUA
In all the sources of the Pentateuch the possession of Canaan is the
goal toward which the whole history moves, from the call of Abraham to
the last exhortations of Moses in the plains of Moab, and they must
all have narrated, however briefly, the occupation of the country. The
history of the conquest and division of Canaan is the subject of the
Book of Joshua. The author has evidently derived his material from
diverse sources, and it is reasonable to expect to find among them
the continuation of the chief sources of the Pentateuch. This
expectation is verified; it is not difficult to recognize in some
places the sequel of the preceding narratives, and other passages
which on internal grounds may confidently be ascribed to one or the
other of them. But the attempt to analyze the book discovers at once
the fact that the problem is different from that in Genesis to
Numbers. The author of the Pentateuch had two chief narrative sources,
a history compiled probably in the first half of the seventh century
and in any case pre-Deuteronomic, which from its two principal strands
is commonly designated by the symbol JE, and the history of the
religious institutions (P), probably of the fifth century. The author
of Joshua had for his sources, besides the continuation of P, a
history of the conquest by a writer belonging to what is not inaptly
called the deuteronomist school of historians, whose thought and style
are moulded by those of Deuteronomy. In cc. 1-12 the author of Joshua
follows this source almost exclusively, only here and there
introducing a passage from the post-exilic narrative (e.g. Jos. v.
10-12); in cc. 13-24, on the other hand, the allotment of the tribal
territories and the assignment of cities in these territories to the
levites and the priests, are chiefly from the later work. Inasmuch as
the style of the deuteronomist and of the priestly writers is
characteristically different, the rough analysis is here comparatively
easy, nor is it ordinarily difficult to recognize the brief passages
which are incorporated from the older sources; but, as in the
Pentateuch, the discrimination of the original contents of the
priestly source from subsequent expansions and from the hand of the
author of Joshua himself is frequently very uncertain. Here also
additions were made by editors at a still later time, some of which
are not found in the Greek version.
A different and much more difficult problem is presented by Jos. 1-12,
the problem, namely, of the sources of the deuteronomist history. The
duplication of the narrative is very plain in the story of Jericho
(Jos. 6). One account told how the Israelites marched around the city
once each day for seven days in ominous silence; on the seventh day,
at Joshua's command, they broke out in the war-cry, and rushing upon
the city from every side, took it by storm, and put every living thing
in it to the sword, sparing only Rahab the harlot and her household.
In the parallel narrative a religious procession, the priests bearing
the ark in the midst, compassed the city seven times; on the last
circuit the priests blew a fanfare on their ram's horns, at which the
walls fell flat to the ground, and the Israelites, after bringing
Rahab to a place of safety, burnt the city with fire. Editors or
scribes who were particularly edified by the horn-blowing start it
prematurely in vs. 8 f., 13, and have tried to improve on the story in
other places. The second version shows the same inclination to glorify
the divine interventions by giving them a magical form which has been
remarked in E's account of the deliverance at the Red Sea, while the
simpler story of the unexpected assault--to which there is a close
parallel in a Roman hand-book of military stratagems--resembles in its
naturalness J's account of the crossing of the sea.
Both sources tell of the rescue of Rahab, and thus presuppose some
such story as we find in Jos. 2, where, again, duplication is evident.
The interdict on the spoils of Jericho (vi. 17, J), is the antecedent
to the story of Achan, whose appropriation of a part of the spoil is
the cause of the repulse at Ai (c. 7), and thus the clues can be
followed backward and forward. The chief source in c. 8 (the taking of
Ai) and c. 9 (ruse of the Gibeonites) also is J, with which the
parallel account of E is combined; additions by later hands are
recognizable, the most remarkable being viii. 30-35 (cf. Deut. xxvii.
1-8, 12). In the history of the two campaigns by which the allied
kings of the south and of the north respectively were annihilated
(Jos. 10 and 11) both sources appear. A considerable part of these
chapters, however, is the work of the deuteronomist author, especially
the summary of the conquests, cc. x. 28-43; xi. 10-23. Chapter 12,
which for completeness goes over the conquests east of the Jordan
also, is dependent on Deut. 3; Jos. xiii. 2-6 (the territories
remaining to be conquered) is of the same sort and probably by the
same hand.
It seems, therefore, that both J and E related the crossing of the
Jordan, the taking of Jericho and the operations against Ai, and,
further, the wars with the confederate kings. In these narratives
Israel, from its standing camp at Gilgal, invades the country as one
great army under the command of Joshua; the deuteronomist author
represents them as exterminating the native population root and
branch, "they left not a soul alive." There are, however, scattered
here and there through the text, fragments of a very different story
(xiii. 13; xv. 13-19, 63; xvii. 11-13, 14-18; xix. 47), most of which
are also found continuously in Judg. 1. According to this account, the
Israelite tribes invaded the country separately or in small groups;
their success varied in different regions, but everywhere the walled
cities remained in the possession of their old inhabitants; in some
quarters the Israelites became subject to the Canaanites, in others
they in time reduced them to subjection. This account may not embody a
historical tradition--it could perfectly well have arisen by inference
from the actual situation at the beginning of the kingdom--but it is
at least in a broad sense historical. The case illustrates in an
instructive way the fact that the oldest literary sources of the
history which we can recover had themselves diverse and sometimes
contradictory sources in tradition.
In the Pentateuch it is well established that J and E had been
combined by a historian of the prophetic period (JE), though there is
evidence that the separate works continued to circulate. In Joshua,
also, it is probable that the deuteronomist historian used the
composite JE, and that the harmonizing of these sources and some of
the religious improvement which runs along with it is the work of his
predecessor who combined the two sources. It seems that P also had E
independently, and it is certain that later editors of the
deuteronomist school added their contributions.
The allotment of the tribal territories, the designation of asylum
cities, and the setting apart of cities for the levites and priests,
comes chiefly, as was said above, from a priestly source. How much of
it was in the older history of P (Book of Origins) is doubtful. One,
at least, of the earlier narratives told of the division of the land
by lot, and P, who followed this representation, may have connected
with it some sort of domesday book; but it was probably not so
detailed as that which we now read.
The assignment of forty-eight cities to the priests and levites,
including the most important places in the country, is an extravagance
even for the sacerdotal imagination, comparable to Ezekiel's
partition of the land in parallel strips. It is the counterpart of
Num. xxxv. 1-8, in a late supplement to the priestly laws, and
directly contradicts the older principle (Num. xviii. 21-24) that
neither priests nor levites shall have any landed property. Thus in
Joshua, as in the Pentateuch, the priestly element is neither of one
sort nor of one age: and again the evidence of the Greek version shows
that additions and changes continued to be made in the text till the
neighbourhood of 200 B.C.
There is no evidence that the author of our Book of Joshua was the
same as the author of the present Pentateuch; various indications
point rather to the contrary. Nor can the author of the deuteronomist
history of the conquest be certainly identified with any one of the
hands engaged in the compilation and enlargement of the Book of
Deuteronomy; all that can be affirmed is that he was of the same
spirit, and that literary dependence upon Deuteronomy, and sometimes
on younger parts of it, is visible in many places in Joshua.
The Book of Joshua closes with a farewell address by Joshua to the
tribes of Israel assembled at Shechem, in which, after a brief résumé
of God's dealing with their fathers from the calling of Abraham, the
exodus, and their own more recent experiences down to the present, he
exhorts them to put away the gods which their fathers served "beyond
the river" (in Mesopotamia), and worship Jehovah alone. Thereupon the
people solemnly pledge themselves to serve him only and hearken to his
words (Jos. 24). There is no question that this discourse is derived
from E; a counterpart to it from the hand of the author of the
deuteronomist Joshua stands in c. 23, and corresponds to the address
of Moses in Deut. xxxi. 1-8. The sequel of Jos. xxiv. 28 is found in
Judg. ii. 6-9. The restoration at a late time, of the old fragment
Judg. i. 1-36, and the division of the books at this point, led to the
repetition of the verses in Jos. xxiv. 29 ff. The importance of this
fact is the proof it gives that E narrated the history of the
generations following the death of Joshua as an apostasy from the
religion of Jehovah such as the dying leader had warned the people
against (Jos. xxiv. 19), and thus determined the treatment of the
whole period which we now find in the Book of Judges. The last
injunctions of Joshua in the deuteronomist history (Jos. xxiii. 14-16)
exhibit the same conception of the subsequent history; in Judg. ii.
11-iii. 6, both E and the deuteronomist author are represented.