be said that the inhabitants of Gezer serve under tribute " unto this day'' when Israel was groaning under Canaanitish oppression. Such language could hardly have been used, at least after the time of Othniel. Nor do the other occasions on which the words " unto this day " are used of necessity imply a very remote future.':' Again, it is not denied that the author of the book, whoever he was, must have had access to authentic contemporary information. Is it probable that information of tho precise, yet by no means minute, character that the book contains could have been drawn up in its present form four or five hundred years after the events recorded, when Israel and Judah had been long divided, when the former kingdom had been canied away captive, and when confusion and disorder reigned in the latter ? The last half of the book points clearly to an earlier period, and, ·whether we admit occasional interpolations or not, must have existed at that early period in something very near its present form. The style of the book strongly supports this conclusion. Even those who study it in a translation only cannot fail to be struck with one cha- racteristic it has in common with the books of Moses. This is the peculiar habit the author has of repetition, which marks an age of great literary simplicity. We lose this feature to a very great extent in the later historical books. As greater polish of style was attained, the writer learned how to impart emphasis to his sentences by other means. Thie repetition is chiefly found in the earlier portion of the book, which, tried by this test, should be pronounced the older portion. But it may also be detected in the later. t Verbal criticism is a more difficult task. Yet though we may safely take exception to the theory that it is possible by verbal criticism alone to resolve the Book of Joshua into its component parts, yet there is a whole class of phenomena which have been somewhat unjustly passed over by those who have devoted most time to a verbal analysis. No satisfactory attempt has been made to explain the fact that in the Pentateuch there is but one form for the masculine and feminine of the demonstrative pronoun l(i:,, and that the feminine form first presents itself in Joshua.. A more interesting instance of the gradual development of the inflexions of a lan- guage can scarcely be found. In the Pentateuch, the archaic form SN (these) is often met with for ;i',N. This ancient form leaves ue in Joshua. It may also be asked, if Joshua be a redaction of earlier documents by the hands of the Deuteronomist, why he always used ini• for Jericho in the Pentateuoh and the fuller form in•i• in J oehua ? So we have n:,',oo and N)p in the Pentateuch and n,:,',oo and Nl)i' in Joshua. n•iti"I for" to kindle a fire," and • Ch. iv. 9 ; vi. 25 ; vii. 26; viii. 28; ix. 27 ; xiv. 14. t Cl. eh. xi. 17 with xii. 17; xiv. 13-15 with xv. 18, 14; eh. ui-. '8--46, and the threefold repetition concerning the inheritance of Levi. TO THE BOOK OF JOSHUA. xl
m-ir, "to alight," are not found in the books of Moses, nor is the term i'Yi' for a prince or captain. Such phenomena as these cannot justly be left out of the account in a full investigation of the question of the authorship and date of this book. And their force is being silently recognised in Germany. Later writers, like SUihelin and Bleek, have been forced considerably to modify the violent theories of Ewald and Knobel, and the former, so Keil tells us, in the later editions of his work, has quietly dropped out much which he had embodied in the former. We may regard this as the earnest of a time rapidly approaching, when the advance of criticism in England shall have produced the same result among ourselves.* But we are not without some nearer indications of authorship. The far greater familiarity displayed with the concerns of the tribe of Judah than any other indicates that the author was resident within the limits of that tribe. And not only so, but his acquaintance with the personal history of Caleb (eh. xiv. 18-16; xv. 18-19), and with the city of Hebron in par- ticular (eh. xxi. 11-18), seems to mark him out as a resident there. But Hebron was one of the priestly cities. Combining this with the repeated mention of the fact that no inheritance was given to the tribe of Levi, we infer that the writer was himself a priest. He was not Phinehas himself, for we find by eh. xxiv. 88 that Phinehas dwelt in Mount Ephraim. But the writer may well have been intimately acquainted with him. He refers to the settlement of the Danites at Laiah (eh. xix. 47), with the events resulting from which we know, from the last three or four chapters of the Book of Judges, Phinehaa was largely mixed up. t His description of the scene between the tribes on the occasion of the erection of the alte.r bears evident tokens of the presence of an eyewitness. And such we know Phinehas was; and our author may have heard ·the story from his lips. Living at Hebron, the author would no doubt have been on terms of friendly intercourse with Othniel, and from him had heard the story of the allot- ment of the springs to Achsah. On the whole, therefore, we conclude, as well from the arbitrary assump- tions to which those are driven who assign the book to a later date, as from the internal evidence of the book itself, that it was written within forty or fifty years at the least of the death of Joshua; that its author was one of the priestly race; that he dwelt in the tribe of Judah, and most likely in the city of Hebron ; that by his family connection with Phinehas, and his residence among the relatives of Caleb, he had the fullest opportunity of acquainting himself with the facts ; and that we have therefore in this book • For various indioations of minute personal knowledge of the events described, which are h11rdly compatible with a lo.tar date, see notes on oh. ii. 14; ix. 10; x. 2, 4, 6, 18, 33. t This nlone, unless the passage be interpolnted, disposes of the theory of Joshuo:s authorship. :rii INTRODUCTION