6. Credibility.—That the narrative contained in this book is to be accepted as a. trustworthy ac count of the transactions it records, is proved alike by the esteem in which it was always held by the Jews ; by the references to events recorded in it in the national sacred songs (comp. Ps. xliv. 2-4 ; lxxviii. 54, 55 ; lxviii. 13-15 ; cxiv. 1-8 ; Hab. 8-1.3), and in other parts of Scripture (comp. Judg. xviii. 31 ; Sam. i. 3, 9, 24 ; iii. 21 ; IS. XXViii. 21; Acts vii. 45; Heb. iv. 8; xi. 30-32 ; Jam. ii. 25); by the traces which, both in the historical and in the geographical portions, may be found of the use by the writer of contemporary documents ; by the minuteness of the details which the author fur nishes, and which indicates familiar acquaintance with what he records ; by the accuracy of his geo graphical delineations, an accuracy which the results of modern investigation are increasingly de monstrating ; by the fact that the tribes never had any dispute as to the boundaries of their respective territories, but adhered to the arrangements speci fied in this book ; and by the general fidelity to historical consistency and probability which the book displays (Havernick, sec. 143, ff.) Some of the narratives, it is true, are of a mira culous kind, but such are wholly in keeping wit!: the avowed relation to the Ahnighty of the people whose history the book records, and they can be regarded as unhistorical only on the assumption that all miracles are incredible ; a question we cannot stop to discuss here [11.11RAcLEs]. In the list of such miraculous interpositions we do not in clude the standing still of the sun, and the staying of the moon, recorded in ch. X. 12, 13. That passage is apparently wholly a quotation from the book of Jashar, and is probably a fiagment of a poem composed by some Israelite on the occasion ; it records in highly poetical lang-uage the gracious help which God granted to Joshua by the retard ing of the approach of darkness long enough to enable him to complete the destruction of his enemies ; and is no more to be taken literally than is such a passage as Ps. cxiv. 4-6, where the Red Sea is described as being frightened and fleeing, and the mountains as skipping like rams ITASHAR, BOOK 0F]. That God interposed on this occasion to help his people we do not doubt ; but that he interposed by the working of such a miracle as the words taken literally would indicate, we see no reason to believe.
The account given, ch. viii. t, ff., of the taking of Ai has been much dwelt upon as presenting a narrative which is unhistorical. It must be con fessed that very considerable obscurity hangs over this portion of the book. It is incredible that Joshua sent two bodies of men, one comprising 3o,000 soldiers, the other 5000, to lie in ambush against the city, while he himself advanced on it with the main body of his army ; and yet this seems to be what the narrative states. What in creases the improbability here is that the larger body is never mentioned as having come into action at all, for the whole exploit was accom plished by the 5000 and those who were with Joshua. If the case were stated thus : That Joshua took 30,000 of his warriors, and of these sent away 50o0 to lie in ambush, while he with the remaining 25,000 advanced against the city ; the narrative would be perfectly simple and cre dible. But as the text stands it is impossible to extract such a statement from it. The difficulty here has been often confessed by interpreters ; but no satisfactory solution of it has been offered. The suggestion that vers. 12 and 13 are a mar ginal gloss which has been supposed to creep into the text, leaves the narrative burdened with the improbable statement that 3o,000 men could ad vance on Ai in daylight, and lie concealed in its immediate neighbourhood for several hours with out their presence being suspected by the inha bitants. Still less probable seems the suggestion that in these verses We have a fragment of an older record ; for unless we suppose the fragment to have inserted itself in the middle of the other narrative, and the whole book to have formed itself by a fortuitous concourse of fragments, much after the manner in which the Epicureans supposed the universe to have been formed from a fortuitous concourse of atoms, we must presume it was in serted intentionally by some intelligent compiler ; and such an insertion is just what no intelligent compiler would make. Keil labours to shew that
from the peculiar style of Shemitic narrative it is competent to supply, in ver. 3, in thought, from the subsequent narrative, that Joshua selected from the 3o,000 whom he took s000, whom he sent away by night ; but there appears to us too much in this of special pleading in order to escape a difficulty to make it acceptable. We prefer to admit our inability to solve the difficulty ; at the same time maintaining that it would be unrea sonable on this account to relinquish our confi dence on the general credibility of the book.
7. Relation to the Pentateuch. —The Pentateuch brings down the history of the Israelites to the death of Moses, at which it naturally terminates. The book of Joshua takes up tbe history at this point, and continues it to the death of Joshua, which furnishes another natural pause. From re semblance between the language and forms of expression used by the author of the book of Joshua, and those found in Deuteronomy, it has been supposed that both are to be ascribed, in part at least, to the same writer. This, of course, proceeds on the supposition that the book of Deuteronomy is not the composition of Moses ; question on which it would be out of place to enter here [DEUTERONOMY ; PF.NTATEUCH]. It may suffice to observe, that whilst it is natural to expect that many similarities of phraseology and language would be apparent in works so nearly contempo raneous as that of Deuteronomy and that of Joshua ; there are yet such differences between them as may seem to indicate that they are not the prodnc tion of the same writer. Thus, in the Pentateuch, we have the word 7ericho always spelt illy, whilst in Joshua it is always ;* in Deuteronomy we have t:!re (iv. 24 ; v. 9 ; vi. 15), in Joshua (xxiv. i9) ; in Dent. the inf. of NT; to teal; is nr. (iv. 1o; v. 26; vi. 24, etc.), in Josh. it is kV (xXii. 25); in Dent. we have warriors de scribed as ,.17 (iii. Is), whilst in Josh. they are called la? 14; Vi. 2, etc.) We have also in Joshua the peculiar formula '12;101 itn, which nowhere occurs in the Pentateuch, but only (Lev. xx. 9, x 12, etc.); the expression(Iii. 13), which occurs again only in Zech. vi. 5 ; the phrase, the heart melted' (ii. ; v. 1; vii. ; etc. In the Pentateuch also we find the usage in respect of the third personal pronoun feminine fluctuating between brrl and ; in the book of Joshua the usage is fixed down to WTI, which became the permanent usage of the language. We find also that in the Penta teuch the demonstrative pronoun, with the article, sometimes appears in the form *_1, while in Joshua and elsewhere it is always r6Nri. The evidence here is the same m effect as would accrue in the case of Latin writers from the use of ipus and ;bre, alms and file.
S. Samaritan Book of 7oshua.—Hottinger, in his Ilistoria Orientalis, p. 60, ff. (comp. also Fabricius, Codex Apocr. Vet. Test., p. 876, ff.), has given an account of this work from Rabbinical sources. It seems to have been originally com posed in Ambic, though alleged to have been translated into Arabic from the Samaritan (see Bodiger in the Hall. Allg. Lit. Zeit. for 1848, No. 217, ff.), and bears evident marks of having been written subsequent to the Coran, probably as late as the 13th century. It contains a compila tion from the canonical books of Moses and Joshua, mixed up with much legendary matter. An edi tion, from the only MS. extant, appeared in 1848 at Leyden, with the title Liber yosme : Chronicum Somaritanzan ; edirfit, latine vertit, etc., T. G. J. Juynboll. It seems never to have been recognised by the Samaritans themselves (De Wette, Elul., sec. 171).
9. Commentaries.—There is an explanation ot the Book of Joshua in the works of Ephraem Syrus (op,. Syr., vol. i.), also Questions on it in the works of Theocloret and Augustine. The Hebrew commentary of Ra-,hi was published with a Latin translation by 13reithaupt, Goth. 1714. The most valuable of the commentaries since the Reformation are those of Masius, i574; Chytrmus, 1592 ; Calvin, 1667 ; Osiander, i681 ; Corn. a Lapide, 1718 ; Maurer, 1831; Rosenmiiller (in lus Scholla, P. ix. vol. i), 1833 ; Bush, 183S ; Keil, 147, translated into English by Martin, 1857.—W. L. A.