* In v.l»b the omiMion of the words is very plain ; the Inflnlt. »»Ti.i^ cannot be construed without them. VOL. II. — 50
Joshua to allow us to a.ssign to its author the ims.iages in question. We have therefore iic aJternative but to regard tln.ni as the work of J, or at least of the series of writers desi'oiated by that letter. So, for instance, Kittel, Driver (in Smith's Dirt, of the Bible', vol. i. pt. ii. p. 1810), and e-specially Budde (ZATW vii. 155 Ii'.), who assigns them, not to the original J, but to the Jahwistic redactor. And to the .same hand we must assign, of course, a niunber of other passages in the Bk. of Joshua which, though they are not found among the parallels present in Jg 1, plainly supplement the latter, and are ruled by the samt conception of the conquest, viz. that it was partial, for there were many Canaanit-e communities and
f roups of communities whom the tribes could not rive out. These are Jos 13" 17'*"'*, and probably the simpler forms of the doublets in the JE portions of chs. 1-12, and among them we must also include the additional matter which ch. 19^' contributes to the story of Dan as related in Jg l**- ". Sc-o, further, art. JtJDGES (Book CF), where on several points a different view is maintained from that represented in the present article.
viii. The Historical Value of the Book OF Joshua. — We have seen — upon evidence all'orded by itself, philologic-il and textual— tliat the final redaction of the book must be placed very late in the history of Israel : certainly after Ezra's time, perhaps not till the 3rd cent. B.C. We have seen, too, that this redaction includes widely differing accounts of how the conquest and division of the land were accomplished : a Deuter- onomic writer and the Priestly writer represent it to have been thorough, and effected in one generation by the whole nation acting together ; the Jahwistic document (with ch. 1 of the Bk. of Judges) represents it as the work of separate tribes, and to ha\e been far from complete. When we accept the latter alternative, not only as that of the older record, but as the only one in harmony with the data of the subsequent "history under the Judges and Kings, our difficulties are not at an end. For, first, the Jahwistic document cannot be proved to be earlier than the 9th cent. B.C. ; and, second, before being used by the editor of the whole book, it has been combined with the Elohist document in a form which contains such varying accounts of the ditt'erent episodes of the Conquest as were likely to arise in the many centuries of tradition between the Conquest and tiie dates of the two constituent documents. These present, too, other difficulties. They are defective : it is remark- able that neither says a word about the conquest of the midlands of Western Palestine, the lands afterwards occupied by Manasseh and Ephraim, although one of them (E) appears to have related the celebration of a solemn sennce at Shechem, the centre of that region, soon after the crossing of Jordan and in obedience to a word of Moses ; while both of them appear to contain a few data that could not have been inserted till long after Israel's settlement in W. Palestine.* All these facts, presented to us, be it obser>'ed, by the biblical record itself, oblige us to subject the JE narrative to examination upon the ordinary prin- ciples of historical criticism. The first question we have to ask is: are there anj' signs in JE of the employment of older documents? In the early books of the UT such ancient material is usually found in the citation of poetical fragments. Of such the Bk of Joshun contains only one(10'*-'*)
* e.g. in the history of tlie treaty with Gibeon, though, «■ we shall see, thjre Is no reason for dcnving the main fact ol such a treaty Lj the time of Joehua. 'The conlnuliction witil Uter history, which is alleged by some to e\ist in Jos S^ — ths atiandonnient of the site of Jericho (cf. Jg 3'^, which represents Jericho as an Inhabited town) — may b« explained by 4 changs ol site.
"86
JOSHUA
JOSHUA
wlik-li may be assifoicd (tIiou;.'h tliis is not the iiniiiiiin of all critics) to J. 'Thus Joshua s]iako toJuliovah . . . and said in pi escuce of all Israel —
Sun stay upon Gibeon, and moon on Che valte> ot Aijalon. Anii llic aun sUiytil, oiid the moon elood till lae people took vengeance of their enemies.
Is it not written in the Book of Jashur!'* This ancient fragment witnesses tt> two f ac ts : (a) that Israel had to light at this jiarticu.'ar point of their advance into W. Palestine, und (6) the presence there of Joshua. But tiie fragment stands alone in the book ; oi. all other points we have to argue upon considerations of a general kind.
The first point which app<ars to be sufficiently establislieil is the national unity of Israel, before and when they crossed tlu Jordan. This, it is true, has been denied. Stade (Oyj i. 134 IF.) and others suppose that the Ijraelite occupation of \V. I'alestino proceeded grt.dually and peacefully — by the drifting across Jordan, one by one, of various Israelite clans, befoie the prf^ssure of their iniieasing numbers and in desire for room and food. But the theory of a peaceful invasion is contradicted no less by the general force of tradi- tion than bj' the historic p/obabilitks ; while the national unity is certified, not only ly the earliest nieiuories of the people (BU. of Jg, passim) and tlie unanimous voice of later tradition, but by the fact that tlie gieat cause and reason of such a unity, the possession by the tribes of a common faith and a common shrine, had already been achieved by the labours of Moses. The later unity of Israel, accomplished among the separ- ating influences of \V. Palestine, geogi'apliical, social, religious, would not have been pos.sible unless Israel had already been united before enter- ing these. Nor do the accounts in the Bks. of Jos and Jg relate, before the capture of Jericho, anythinj,^ contradictory to the theory of such a unity ; it is only from Jericho onwards that J describes the tribes as separately undertaking the conquest of their respective territories. More- over, although .1 represents separate conquests after Jericho, it assumes, and even explicitly states, that these were preceded by a common understand- ing of how the work of conquest was to be divided and the territories assigned (Jos 15" IV""^', Jg 1'). If we accept this evidence of J (as against Dt and P), that tlie conquest was achieved by separate tribes, we should surely receive its testimony that the tiirection and plan proceeded from a common centre ; especially when the unity of Israel, at the time of crossing Jordan, is rendered so probable by the considerations quoted above. (See Smith, HGUL, Appen. II. ; McCurdy, BPMii. 112).