Joshua, Prophet, Righteous, Forefather
Born Goshen (Lower Egypt), Ancient Egypt
Died Canaan
Venerated in Judaism, Christianity, Islam
Major shrine
Tomb of Joshua or Joshua's Hill
Feast
• July 26: Armenian Apostolic
• September 1: Roman Catholicism
• September 1: Eastern Orthodox Church
• April 14: all saint Sinai monk
Attributes
Often depicted with Caleb, carrying the grapes out of Canaan
Joshua or Yehoshua (Hebrew: Y?hošua) functioned as Moses' assistant in the books of Exodus and Numbers and later succeeded Moses as leader of the Israelite tribes in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua. His name was Hoshea (Hošea?), the son of Nun of the tribe of Ephraim, but Moses called him "Yehoshua" (translated as "Joshua" in English), the name by which he is commonly known in English. According to the Bible, he was born in Egypt prior to the Exodus
The Hebrew Bible identifies Joshua as one of the twelve spies of Israel sent by Moses to explore the land of Canaan. In Numbers 13:1, and after the death of Moses, he led the Israelite tribes in the conquest of Canaan and allocated lands to the tribes. According to biblical chronology, Joshua lived sometime during the Bronze Age. According to Joshua 24:29, Joshua died at the age of 110.
Joshua holds a position of respect among Muslims. Muslims also see Joshua as the leader of the faithful following the death of Moses. In Islam, it is also believed that Yusha bin Nun (Joshua) was the "attendant" of Moses mentioned in the Quran before Moses met Khidr. Joshua plays a role in Islamic literature, with significant narration in the hadith.
Name - Joshua
The English name "Joshua" refers to the Hebrew language Yehoshua, interpreted in Christian theology as "Yahweh is salvation." This requires a different vocalization of the second name component, reading it as related to Hoshea—the name used in the Torah before Moses added the divine name. However, the modern linguistic analysis of the name is "Yahweh is lordly."
"Jesus" is the English derivative of the Greek transliteration of "Yehoshua" via Latin. In the Septuagint, all instances of the word "Yehoshua" are rendered as "??s???" (Iesous), the closest Greek pronunciation of the Aramaic: ???? Yeshua. Thus, in modern Greek, Joshua is called "Jesus son of Naue" (t?? ?a??) to differentiate him from Jesus. This is also true in some Slavic languages following the Eastern Orthodox tradition (e.g., "????? ?????," Iisús Navín, in Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian, but not Czech).
Biblical narrative
History of ancient Israel and Judah
The history of ancient Israel and Judah begins with establishing a presence in Canaan by the Twelve Tribes of Israel, who collectively formed the Israelite nation. During the Iron Age, the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah were two related Israelite societies that existed in the ancient Levant.
According to the Hebrew Bible, a United Israelite Monarchy existed as early as the 11th century BCE under the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon; the country later split into two separate kingdoms: Israel (containing the cities of Shechem and Samaria) in the north and Judah (containing Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple) in the south.
The historicity, extent, and power of the United Monarchy are debated. However, historians and archaeologists agree that a post-split Israel and Judah existed by c.?900 BCE: and c.?700 BCE, respectively.
The Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE. While the Kingdom of Judah remained intact, it became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire. However, Jewish revolts against the latter led to the destruction of Judah in 586 BCE under the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. According to the biblical account, Nebuchadnezzar II's armies successfully besieged Jerusalem between 589–586 BCE, which led to the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the exile of the Jews to Babylon; this event was also recorded in the Babylonian Chronicles. The Jewish exile in Babylon ended around 538 BCE with the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, after which the Persian king Cyrus the Great issued a proclamation known as the Edict of Cyrus that authorized and encouraged exiled Jews to return to the Land of Israel.
Cyrus' proclamation began the exiles' return to Zion, inaugurating the formative period in which a more distinctive Jewish/Judahite identity was established in the Persian province of Yehud. During this time, the destroyed Solomon's Temple was replaced by the Second Temple, marking the beginning of Second Temple Judaism.
During the Hellenistic period, Yehud was absorbed into the subsequent Hellenistic kingdoms that followed the conquests of Alexander the Great. The 2nd century BCE saw a successful Jewish revolt against the Seleucid Empire and the subsequent formation of the Hasmonean kingdom—Israel's last nominally independent kingdom. The Hasmonean kingdom gradually lost its independence from 63 BCE onwards with its conquest by Pompey, becoming a client state of the Roman Republic and later of the Parthian Empire.
Following the installation of client kingdoms under the Herodian dynasty, the Roman province of Judaea was wracked by civil disturbances, which culminated in the First Jewish–Roman War. The Jewish defeat to the Roman Empire in this conflict saw the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. The name Judaea (Iudaea) ceased to be used by the Greco-Romans. After the Bar Kokhba revolt of 135 CE, the majority of Jews in the Levant were expelled, after which the Romans renamed Judaea Syria Palaestina.
The Exodus
Joshua was a significant figure in the events of the Exodus. Moses charged Moses with selecting and commanding a militia group for their first battle after exiting Egypt against the Amalekites in Rephidim, in which they were victorious.
He later accompanied Moses when he ascended biblical Mount Sinai to commune with God, visualize God's plan for the Israelite tabernacle and receive the Ten Commandments. Joshua was with Moses when he descended from the mountain, heard the Israelites' celebrations around the Golden Calf, and broke the tablets bearing the words of the commandments. Similarly, in the narrative, which refers to Moses being able to speak with God in his tent of meeting outside the camp, Joshua is seen as the custodian of the tent ('tabernacle of meeting') when Moses returned to the Israelite encampment. However, when Moses returned to the mountain to re-create the tablets recording the Ten Commandments, Joshua was not present; like the biblical text states 'no man shall come up with you."
Later, Joshua was identified as one of the twelve spies sent by Moses to explore and report on the land of Canaan, and only he and Caleb gave an encouraging report, a reward for which would be that only these two of their entire generation would enter the promised land.
According to Joshua 1:1, God appointed Joshua to succeed Moses as leader of the Israelites and gave him a blessing of invincibility during his lifetime. The first part of the book of Joshua covered the period when he led the conquest of Canaan.
Conquest of Canaan
At the Jordan River, the waters parted, as they had for Moses at the Red Sea. The first battle after the crossing of the Jordan was the Battle of Jericho. Joshua led the destruction of Jericho, then moved on to Ai, a small neighboring city to the west. However, they were defeated with thirty-six Israelite deaths. The defeat was attributed to Achan taking an "accursed thing" from Jericho and was followed by Achan and his family and animals being stoned to death to restore God's favor.
The Israelites faced an alliance of five Amorite kings from Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon. At Gibeon, Joshua asked the LORD to cause the sun and moon to stand still so that he could finish the battle in daylight. According to the text, the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down for about a whole day. This event is most notable because "There has been no day like it before or since, when the LORD heeded a man's voice, for the Lord fought for Israel." The LORD also fought for the Israelites in this battle, for he hurled huge hailstones from the sky, which killed more Canaanites than those which the Israelites slaughtered. From there on, Joshua was able to lead the Israelites to several victories, securing much of the land of Canaan. He presided over the Israelite gatherings at Gilgal and Shiloh, which allocated land to the tribes of Israel (Joshua 14:1–5 and 18:1–10), and the Israelites rewarded him with the Ephraimite city of Timnath-here or Timnath-Serah, where he settled (Joshua 19:50).
According to the Talmud, Joshua enumerated only those towns on the frontier in his book.
Death
Joshua's Tomb in Jordan
When he was "old and well advanced in years," Joshua convened the elders and chiefs of the Israelites and exhorted them to have no fellowship with the native population because it could lead them to be unfaithful to God. At a general assembly of the clans at Shechem, he took leave of the people, admonishing them to be loyal to their God, who had been so mightily established in their midst. As a witness of their promise to serve God, Joshua set up a great stone under an oak by the sanctuary of God. Soon afterward, at the age of 110, he died and was buried at Timnath-Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.
Historicity
The prevailing scholarly view is that Joshua is not a factual account of historical events. The apparent setting of Joshua is the 13th century BCE which was a time of widespread city destruction. However, with a few exceptions (Hazor, Lachish) the destroyed cities are not the ones the Bible associates with Joshua. The ones it does associate with him show little or no sign of even being occupied at the time. Given its lack of historicity, Carolyn Pressler, in her commentary for the Westminster Bible Companion series, suggests 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. Richard Nelson explained that the needs of the centralized monarchy favored a single story of origins, combining old traditions of an exodus from Egypt, belief in a national god as a "divine warrior," and explanations for ruined cities, social stratification, and ethnic groups, and contemporary tribes.
In the 1930s, Martin Noth made a sweeping criticism of the usefulness of the Book of Joshua for history. Noth was a student of Albrecht Alt, who emphasized form criticism and the importance of etiology. Alt and Noth posited a peaceful movement of the Israelites into various areas of Canaan, contra the Biblical account.
William Foxwell 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, an early target for conquest in the putative Joshua account, had existed and been destroyed in the 22nd century BCE. Some alternate sites for Ai have been proposed to resolve the discrepancy in dates partially, but these sites have not been widely accepted. 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.
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"). He gives particular weight to recent digs at Hazor by Yigael Yadin.
The Book of Joshua holds little historical value. The archaeological evidence shows that Jericho and Ai were not occupied in the Near Eastern Late Bronze Age.[43] The story of the conquest perhaps represents the nationalist propaganda of the 8th century BCE kings of Judah and their claims to the territory of the Kingdom of Israel, 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 fall of Jerusalem to the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE and possibly after the return from the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE.
In rabbinical literature
In Rabbinic literature, Joshua is regarded as a faithful, humble, deserving, wise man. Biblical verses illustrative of these qualities and their reward are applied to him. "He that waits on his master shall be honored" is construed as a reference to Joshua, as is also the first part of the same verse, "Whoso keeps the fig-tree shall eat the fruit thereof." That "honor shall uphold the humble in spirit" is proved by Joshua's victory over Amalek. Not the sons of Moses—as Moses himself had expected—but Joshua was appointed as Moses' successor.
God would speak to Moses' face to face as someone would speak to his friend. Then he would return to the camp. However, his attendant, Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not leave the tent. Joshua never moved from the tent. Didn't Joshua leave the tent to eat, sleep or attend to his needs? This praise shows that Joshua had complete faith in Moses, the Tzaddik. One who has this faith is cognizant of the Tzaddik in everything he does; he remains steadfastly with the Tzaddik whatever he does.
According to rabbinic tradition, Joshua, when dividing the Land of Canaan among the twelve tribes of Israel, planted Sea squill (Hebrew: ????) to mark off the butts and bounds of tribal properties.
Moreover, on dividing the land of Canaan amongst the tribes of Israel, Joshua made the tribes agree to ten conditions, the most important of which is the common use of the forests as pasture for cattle and the common right to fishing in the Sea of Tiberias. Prickly burnet (Sarcopoterium spinosum) and the camelthorn (Alhagi maurorum) could be freely collected as firewood by any member of any tribe in any tribal territory.
In prayer
According to Jewish religious tradition, upon making Aliyah by crossing the Jordan River to enter the Land of Israel, Joshua composed the Aleinu prayer thanking God. This idea was first cited in the Kol Bo of the late 14th Century. Several medieval commentators noticed that Joshua's shorter birth name, Hosea, appears in the first few verses of Aleinu in reverse acrostic. The Teshuvot HaGeonim, a Geonic responsum, discussed that Joshua composed the Aleinu because although the Israelites had made Aliyah to the Promised Land, they were surrounded by other peoples. He wanted the Jews to draw a clear distinction between themselves, who knew and accepted the sovereignty of God, and those nations of the world which did not. In the modern era, religious Jews still pray the Aliyah-inspired Aleinu three times daily, including on the High Holidays. The Aleinu prayer begins: "We must praise the Master of all, to exalt the Creator of the Universe, who has not made us like the nations of the world and has not placed us like the families of the earth, who have not designed our destiny to be like theirs, nor our lot like that of all their multitude.
In Christianity
Joshua is considered a type of Jesus Christ. Most modern Bibles translate Hebrews 4:8–10 to identify Jesus as a better Joshua, as Joshua led Israel into the rest of Canaan. However, Jesus leads the people of God into "God's rest."
