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Switch editorYou have switched to source editingCloseYou can switch back to visual editing at any time by clicking on this icon.Visual editingSource editingMorePreviewAdvancedSpecial charactersHelpHeadingLevel 2Level 3Level 4Level 5FormatInsertLatinLatin extendedIPASymbolsGreekGreek extendedCyrillicArabicArabic extendedHebrewBanglaTamilTeluguSinhalaDevanagariGujaratiThaiLaoKhmerCanadian AboriginalRunesÁáÀàÂâÄäÃãǍǎĀāĂ㥹ÅåĆćĈĉÇçČčĊċĐđĎďÉéÈèÊêËëĚěĒēĔĕĖėĘęĜĝĢģĞğĠġĤĥĦħÍíÌìÎîÏïĨĩǏǐĪīĬĭİıĮįĴĵĶķĹĺĻļĽľŁłŃńÑñŅņŇňÓóÒòÔôÖöÕõǑǒŌōŎŏǪǫŐőŔŕŖŗŘřŚśŜŝŞşŠšȘșȚțŤťÚúÙùÛûÜüŨũŮůǓǔŪūǖǘǚǜŬŭŲųŰűŴŵÝýŶŷŸÿȲȳŹźŽžŻżÆæǢǣØøŒœßÐðÞþƏəFormattingLinksHeadingsListsFilesDiscussionReferencesDescriptionWhat you typeWhat you getItalic''Italic text''Italic textBold'''Bold text'''Bold textBold & italic'''''Bold & italic text'''''Bold & italic textDescriptionWhat you typeWhat you getReferencePage text.<ref>[https://www.example.org/ Link text], additional text.</ref>Page text.[1]Named referencePage text.<ref name="test">[https://www.example.org/ Link text]</ref>Page text.[2]Additional use of the same referencePage text.<ref name="test" />Page text.[2]Display references<references />↑ Link text, additional text.↑ Link text== Composition == [[File:Prise de Jéricho.jpg|thumb|''The Taking of Jericho'' ([[Jean Fouquet]], c. 1452–1460)]] === Authorship and date === The Book of Joshua is an [[anonymous work]]. The [[Talmud#Babylonian Talmud|Babylonian Talmud]], written in the 3rd to 5th centuries CE, attributed it to [[Joshua]] himself, but this idea was rejected as untenable by [[John Calvin]] (1509–[[1564|64]]), and by the time of [[Thomas Hobbes]] (1588–1679) it was recognised that the book must have been written much later than the period it depicted.<ref name= DePury />{{rp |26–30}} There is now general agreement that it was composed as part of a larger work, the [[Deuteronomistic history]], stretching from the [[Book of Deuteronomy]] to the [[Books of Kings]],<ref name= Younger />{{rp|174}} composed first at the court of king [[Josiah]] in the late 7th century BCE, and extensively revised in the 6th century BCE.<ref name= DePury />{{rp |63}} === Historicity === {{See also|History of ancient Israel and Judah}} {{See also|Cities in the Book of Joshua}} [[File:Shemesh Givon Dom 1.jpg|thumb|"''Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon''" (sculpture by [[Shmuel Bar-Even]])]] The prevailing scholarly view is that Joshua is not a factual account of historical events.{{sfn|Killebrew|2005|p=152|ps=: "Almost without exception, scholars agree that the account in Joshua holds little historical value vis-à-vis early Israel and most likely reflects much later historical times.<sup>15</sup>"}}<ref name="Coote">{{cite book|last1=Coote|first1=Robert B.|title=Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible|publisher=Eerdmans|year=2000|isbn=978-90-5356-503-2|editor1-last=Freedman|editor1-first=David Noel|page=275|chapter=Conquest: Biblical narrative|editor2-last=Myers|editor2-first=Allen C.|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qRtUqxkB7wkC&pg=PA275}}</ref><ref name= McConville2010>{{Cite book |last1= McConville|first1=Gordon|last2= Williams|first2=Stephen|title= Joshua |publisher= Eerdmans |year= 2010|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=U_8LhXUU6NQC |isbn= 978-0-8028-2702-9}}</ref>{{rp |4}} The apparent setting of Joshua in the 13th century BCE<ref name= McConville2010 /> corroborates with the [[Late Bronze Age collapse|Bronze Age Collapse]], which was indeed a time of widespread city-destruction. However, with a few exceptions ([[Tel Hazor|Hazor]], [[Tel Lachish|Lachish]]), the destroyed cities are not the ones the Bible associates with Joshua, and the ones it does associate with him show little or no sign of even being occupied at the time.<ref name=MillerHayes>{{Cite book|last1 =Miller|first1 =James Maxwell |last2=Hayes|first2=John Haralson|title=A History of Ancient Israel and Judah|publisher= Westminster John Knox Press|year=1986|isbn= 978-0-664-21262-9 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=uDijjc_D5P0C}}</ref>{{rp |71–72}} The archaeological evidence shows that [[Jericho]] and [[Ai (Canaan)|Ai]] were not occupied in the Near Eastern [[Late Bronze Age]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Bartlett|first1=John R.|url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordhandbookbi00roge_252|title=The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies|date=2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-925425-5|editor1-last=Rogerson|editor1-first=J.W.|location=Oxford|page=[https://archive.org/details/oxfordhandbookbi00roge_252/page/n81 63]|chapter=3: Archeology|editor2-last=Lieu|editor2-first=Judith M.|url-access=limited}}</ref> Ai was first excavated by [[Judith Marquet-Krause]].<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Wagemakers |first=Bart |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZNAVBAAAQBAJ&dq=judith+marquet-krause&pg=PA47 |title=Archaeology in the 'Land of Tells and Ruins': A History of Excavations in the Holy Land Inspired by the Photographs and Accounts of Leo Boer |date=2014-02-28 |publisher=Oxbow Books |isbn=978-1-78297-246-4 |pages=47 |language=en}}</ref> According to some scholars,{{Who|date=December 2022}} the story of the conquest represents the nationalist [[propaganda]] of the 8th century BCE kings of [[kingdom of Judah|Judah]] and their claims to the territory of the [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|Kingdom of Israel]];<ref name="Coote" /> incorporated into an early form of Joshua written late in the reign of king [[Josiah]] (reigned 640–609 BCE). The book was probably revised and completed after the [[Siege of Jerusalem (587 BC)|fall of Jerusalem]] to the [[Neo-Babylonian Empire]] in 586 BCE, and possibly after the return from the [[Babylonian exile]] in 538 BCE.<ref name="Creach" />{{rp|10–11}} In the 1930s [[Martin Noth]] made a sweeping criticism of the usefulness of the Book of Joshua for history.<ref name= Albright1939>{{cite journal|last1=Albright|first1=W. F.|title= The Israelite Conquest of Canaan in the Light of Archaeology |journal=Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research |volume=74|date=1939 |issue= 74|pages=11–23|doi= 10.2307/3218878 |jstor= 3218878|s2cid=163336577}}</ref> Noth was a student of [[Albrecht Alt]], who emphasized [[form criticism]] (whose pioneer had been [[Hermann Gunkel]] in the 19th century) and the importance of [[Origin myth|etiology]].<ref name= Albright1939 /><ref>Noort, Ed. 1998. "4QJOSHª and the History of Tradition in the Book of Joshua," ''Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages'', '''24''' (2): 127–144.</ref> Alt and Noth posited a peaceful movement of the Israelites into various areas of Canaan, in contradiction to the Biblical account.<ref name= Rendsburg>{{cite journal|last1= Rendsburg|first1=Gary A.|title= The Date of the Exodus and the Conquest/Settlement: The Case for the 1100S|journal=Vetus Testamentum |date=1992 |volume= 42 |issue=4|pages=510–527|doi= 10.2307/1518961 |jstor= 1518961}}</ref> American archaeologist [[William F. Albright]] questioned the "tenacity" of etiologies, which were key to Noth's analysis of the campaigns in Joshua. Archaeological evidence in the 1930s showed that the city of [[Ai (Canaan)|Ai]], an early target for conquest in the putative Joshua account, had existed and been destroyed, but in the 22nd century BCE.<ref name= Albright1939 /> Some alternate sites for Ai, such as Khirbet el-Maqatir or Khirbet Nisya, have been proposed which would partially resolve the discrepancy in dates, but these sites have not been widely accepted.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hawkins |first1= Ralph |title= How Israel Became a People |date=2013 |publisher= Abingdon |isbn= 978-1-4267-5487-6 |page= 109|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=7QU7GFNe7nsC&pg=PT156 |access-date= 26 January 2017}}</ref> In 1951, [[Kathleen Kenyon]] showed that Jericho was from the [[Middle Bronze Age]] (c. 2100–1550 BCE), not the [[Late Bronze Age]] (c. 1550–1200 BCE). Kenyon argued that the early Israelite campaign could not be historically corroborated, but rather explained as an etiology of the location and a representation of the Israelite settlement.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Kenyon|first1=Kathleen M.|title=Jericho|journal=Archaeology|date=1967|volume=20|issue=4|pages=268–275|jstor= 41667764}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1= Kenyon |first1=Kathleen M. |title= Some Notes on the History of Jericho in the Second Millennium B.C.|journal= Palestine Exploration Quarterly|date=2013|orig-date=1951|volume= 83 |issue=2|pages=101–138|doi=10.1179/peq.1951.83.2.101}}</ref> In 1955, [[G. Ernest Wright]] discussed the correlation of archaeological data to the early Israelite campaigns, which he divided into three phases per the Book of Joshua. He pointed to two sets of archaeological findings that "seem to suggest that the biblical account is in general correct regarding the nature of the late thirteenth and twelfth-eleventh centuries in the country" (i.e., "a period of tremendous violence").<ref name=Wright>{{cite journal|last1=Wright|first1=G. Ernest|title= Archaeological News and Views: Hazor and the Conquest of Canaan|journal=The Biblical Archaeologist|date=1955|volume= 18 |issue=4|pages=106–108|doi= 10.2307/3209136|jstor= 3209136|s2cid=165857556}}</ref> He gives particular weight to what were then recent digs at Hazor by [[Yigael Yadin]].<ref name=Wright /> Archaeologist [[Amnon Ben-Tor]] of the [[Hebrew University of Jerusalem]], who replaced Yadin as the supervisor of excavations at Hazor in 1990, believed that recently unearthed evidence of violent destruction by burning verifies the Biblical account of the city's conquest by the Israelites.<ref name="huji2">{{cite web|title=The Hazor Excavations Project|url=http://unixware.mscc.huji.ac.il/~hatsor/hazor.html|access-date=2015-09-03|publisher=unixware.mscc.huji.ac.il|archive-date=2019-05-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190507092552/http://unixware.mscc.huji.ac.il/~hatsor/hazor.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> In 2012, a team led by Ben-Tor and Sharon Zuckerman discovered a scorched palace from the 13th century BC in whose storerooms they found 3,400-year-old ewers holding burned crops.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Ben-tor|first=Amnon|date=2013-01-01|title=Who Destroyed Canaanite Hazor?|url=https://www.academia.edu/35948616|journal=BAR}}</ref> Sharon Zuckerman did not agree with Ben-Tor's theory, and claimed that the burning was the result of the city's numerous factions opposing each other with excessive force.<ref>[http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/a-3-400-year-old-mystery-who-burned-the-palace-of-canaanite-hatzor-1.453095 A 3,400-year-old mystery: Who burned the palace of Canaanite Hatzor], [[Haaretz]]</ref> In her commentary for the ''Westminster Bible Companion series,'' Carolyn Pressler suggested that readers of Joshua should give priority to its theological message ("what passages teach about God") and be aware of what these would have meant to audiences in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE.<ref name="Pressler">{{Cite book|last=Pressler|first=Carolyn|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7W4-RjlzWy4C&pg=PA1|title=Joshua, Judges and Ruth|publisher=Westminster John Knox Press|year=2002|isbn=978-0-664-25526-8}}</ref>{{rp|5–6}} [[Richard D. Nelson|Richard Nelson]] explained that the needs of the [[Centralisation|centralised]] monarchy favoured a single story of origins, combining old traditions of an [[The Exodus|exodus from Egypt]], belief in a [[national god]] as "divine warrior," and explanations for ruined cities, [[social stratification]] and ethnic groups, and contemporary tribes.<ref name="Nelson">{{Cite book|last=Nelson|first=Richard D|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Iwfg_zQHRR4C&pg=PR5|title=Joshua|publisher=Westminster John Knox Press|year=1997|isbn=978-0-664-22666-4}}</ref>{{rp|5}} ===Manuscripts=== [[File:Washington Manuscript I - Deuteronomy and Joshua (Codex Washingtonensis).jpg|thumb|Washington Manuscript I, a Greek manuscript featuring the end of [[Deuteronomy]] and beginning of Joshua]] Fragments of Joshua dating to the [[Hasmonean]] period were found among the [[Dead Sea Scrolls]] (4QJosh<sup>a</sup> and 4QJosh<sup>b</sup>, found in [[Qumran Caves|Qumran Cave 4]]).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive/manuscript/4Q47-1?locale=en_US|title=The Dead Sea Scrolls – 4Q Joshua|website=The Dead Sea Scrolls – 4Q Joshua}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MmHnBQAAQBAJ|title=The Rewritten Joshua Scrolls from Qumran: Texts, Translations, and Commentary|first=Ariel|last=Feldman|date=2014|publisher=De Gruyter|isbn=978-3-11-029005-9}}</ref> The [[Septuagint]] (Greek translation) is found in manuscripts such as [[Biblical Manuscripts in the Freer Collection|Washington Manuscript I]] (5th century CE), and a reduced version of the Septuagint text is found in the illustrated [[Joshua Roll]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/language-culture/discrepancies-in-manuscripts-show-how-old-testament-scribes-edited-the-book-of-joshua|title=Discrepancies in manuscripts show how Old Testament scribes edited the Book of Joshua|date=January 29, 2018|website=University of Helsinki}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|title=The septuagint-version of the book of Joshua|first=Martin|last=Rösel|authorlink=Martin Rösel|date=January 1, 2002|journal=Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament|volume=16|issue=1|pages=5–23|via=Taylor and Francis+NEJM|doi=10.1080/09018320210000329|s2cid=161116376}}</ref> The earliest complete copy of the book in [[Biblical Hebrew|Hebrew]] is in the [[Aleppo Codex]] (10th century CE).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-sep-28-adfg-aleppo28-story.html|title=Scholars search for pages of ancient Hebrew Bible|date=September 28, 2008|website=Los Angeles Times}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.aleppocodex.org/links/9.html|title=The Aleppo Codex|website=www.aleppocodex.org|access-date=2020-09-03|archive-date=2012-01-15|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120115105923/http://www.aleppocodex.org/links/9.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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