JOSHUA, BOOK OF. The Hebrew Canon of the Old Testament (q.v.) groups the Book of Joshua. not with the books of the Pentateuch, but with the Prophets. The book of Joshua is the first of the " Former Prophets." In the Greek Bible it bears the title 'Iria-ovg or 'IgTotic vioc Nat'l', in the Syriac " The Book of Joshua, the son of Nun, the disciple of Moses." Modern scholars con nect the book with the Pentateneh, and speak of the six books as the Hexateuch. The book continues the account of the great movement which began with the exodus from Egypt. The Sources of " Joshua " represent a continua tion of the sources used in the Pentateuch. The book deals with the conquest and division of Canaan ender the leadership of Moses' successor. Joshua. The con tents may be divided as follows : (1) Chapters i.-xii. the advance of Israel and the conquest of Canaan; (2) Chapters xiii.-xx.i. the allotment of the land among the tribes; (3) Chapters xxii.-xxiv. accounts of the final measures taken by Joshua, of his farewell address, and of his death and burial. The conclusion of the book therefore resembles that of the book of Deuteronomy. Joshua of course is only the hero of the book and not the author. The greater part of the book was com mitted to writing long after the events happened which it purports to describe. We have evidence of this in the frequent recurrence of the formula " unto this day " (cp. iv. 9, v. 9, vi. 25, vid. 26, vitt 29, ix. 27, etc.). The book in fact was not the work of a single author, but is com posed of a number of different works. There are con
flicting statements and duplicate accounts (cp. xi. 21 f. with xv. 13 ff.; xiv. 6 ff. with xv. 13 ff.). On the whole the book of Joshua represents the conquest of Canaan as having been effected by a united Israel under the leader ship of Joshua; but a different conception of the conquest has also found its way into the book. In chapters xiii. xix. " there are considerable fragments of an account of the conquest which, like Judg. i., represented it, not as the work of Joshua at the head of all Israel, but as slowly and incompletely achieved by the several tribes; and in 1.-xii. it is possible to distinguish an older and simpler account of the invasion from a later version of the same story in which a tendency to magnify the events and exaggerate the miraculous character of the history is conspicuous" (G. F. Moore in Emile'. Bibl.). It has been possible, in fact, to detect and distinguish the same documents P (Priestly writer), J (Jehovist), E (Elohist), and D (Deuteronomist), which are found interwoven in the books of the Pentateuch, and the basis of the book is a deuteronomic history of Joshua. The book is much more deuteronomie than the first four books of the Penta teuch. See Encjicl. Bibl.; W. H. Bennett, Joshua, in "Sacred Books of the Old Testament "; C. Steuernagel, Des Bitch Josua, 1899; Carpenter and Harford-Battersby: G H. Box; O. C. Whitehouse.