Dating the book of joshua

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Is it because his life unfolds in the midst of noise and fury? His personality is too dark, involved in too many battles, too many confrontations. Only one incident could, without surprising us, have a negative connotation: Joshua learns that two young men, Eldad and Medad, are walking around the encampment, prophesizing to the people. The questionnaire the scouts receive from Moses reads like an espionage document. Their accounts are desperate and hopeless: They say the country runs with milk and honey, but the people who live there are powerful.

The man of blood and glory, he is the one sought out when someone is needed to throw himself into the fray, to push back or attack the enemy. Admirable is his devotion to Moses: Always stationed at the entrance to his tent, Joshua is the guardian of the door. Annoyed by their lack of respect, Joshua hastens to inform Moses and suggests that he imprison them. That said, Moses always has confidence in Joshua, and we do too. When Moses names him military commander and sends him to fight against the Amalekites, he goes. The commander in chief wants to know “whether the population is strong or weak, few in number or many, if the country is good or bad, if the towns are open or fortified, the land fertile or barren, if there are trees or not” (Numbers –20). The text gives us the opinion of the majority and that of the minority: ten against two. They are stronger than we are, the towns are large and fortified, the people are gigantic.

Consequently, his retelling of history is coloured by a hope for the repossession of his homeland.

The original conquest of the Promised Land is told with great zeal, and the historian repeatedly emphasizes the help of in the conquest.

There is every reason for concluding that the uniform tradition of the Jews is correct when they assign the authorship of the book to Joshua, all except the concluding section; the last verses (-33) were added by some other hand.

Samuel anointed David as a "youth" (15 years old) about the time he killed Goliath.

"Then Saul said to David, you are but a youth while he has been a warrior from his youth." 1 Samuel .

The tablets contain many appeals to the king of Egypt for help against the inroads of the Hebrews, but no help seems ever to have been sent.

Is not this just such a state of things as might have been anticipated as the result of the disaster of the Exodus?