The Book of Joshua

A name that proclaims salvation

The hero and the title of the book bear the Hebrew name Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ), a long form later contracted to Yeshua. The name is a small sentence: it joins the divine name YHWH to the verb yasha, "to save", and means "the Lord saves" or "the Lord is salvation"^[1]. The Book of Numbers notes that Moses himself renamed his lieutenant: "Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name of Joshua" (Num 13:16), turning a name meaning "salvation, deliverance" (Hoshea) into a confession of faith about the true author of salvation^[2].

This detail of naming governs the whole Christian reception of the book. When the Jews of Alexandria translated the Bible into Greek — the Septuagint, from the 3rd century BC onwards — they rendered Yehoshua as Ἰησοῦς, Iēsous. And that is exactly the name the angel will dictate to Mary: "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Mt 1:21)^[3]. In the Greek Bible read by the Fathers, Joshua and Jesus bear the same name (Iēsous)^[4] — the conqueror of Canaan and the Saviour of the world share the same name and the same mission of salvation. In Latin, the Vulgate distinguishes the two: Josue for the son of Nun, Iesus for Jesus. This article will return at length to this shared name, the key to the spiritual reading of the book.

Place in the canon

In the Catholic Bible, the Book of Joshua is the sixth book of the Old Testament and the first of the historical books, that great series running from Joshua to Esther which tells the history of Israel from the entry into Canaan to the Persian period^[5]. It comes immediately after Deuteronomy, whose narrative it continues: Deuteronomy ends with the death of Moses on the threshold of the land (Dt 34); Joshua opens with the divine order to cross over.

The Jewish canon classes it differently, and more profoundly: it opens the section of the Nevi'im Rishonim, the "Former Prophets" (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings)^[6]. This classification is no accident: for Israel's tradition, these books are not mere historiography but a prophetic re-reading of history, judging kings and people by the standard of fidelity to the Covenant. The table below locates Joshua within the two great architectures of the canon.

Text and language: a book in two versions

The Book of Joshua is written in biblical Hebrew, like almost the whole of the Old Testament. But it poses a first-order textual problem: the Greek Septuagint offers a version noticeably shorter (by a few per cent, according to specialists' counts) and sometimes differently ordered than the received Hebrew Masoretic text^[7]. Far from being a scholars' curiosity, this gap confirms that the book went through several stages before reaching its fixed form. The Dead Sea manuscripts attest to this: the 4QJosh^a fragment from Qumran presents a text distinct from both, placing for instance the building of the altar on Ebal at a different point in the narrative^[8]. Catholic textual criticism is not alarmed by this: the Church has always known that the Word of God reaches us through a living transmission. The Council of Trent defined the canon of the Scriptures and declared the Vulgate authentic (Session IV, 8 April 1546); Dei Verbum teaches that "the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures" (§ 11). This recognised authority of the text does not require an impossible material uniformity among all manuscript witnesses.

The tradition: Joshua and the hand of the elders

Ancient Jewish tradition attributes the book to Joshua himself, at least in substance. The Babylonian Talmud, in the famous passage of the tractate Baba Batra distributing the biblical books among their authors, reports, in an opinion debated among the masters, that "Joshua wrote his book" — at once specifying that the verses recounting his own death (Josh 24:29-30) were added by the high priest Eleazar, and the one recounting Eleazar's death (Josh 24:33) by his son Phinehas^[9]. The book itself supports this tradition: it notes that "Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God" (Josh 24:26) after the assembly at Shechem, and it repeatedly uses the formula "to this day", the mark of an ancient core kept alive by a living memory.

The traditional Catholic position applies to the Book of Joshua, by an analogous principle, the reply formulated for the Pentateuch by the Pontifical Biblical Commission under Saint Pius X (27 June 1906) — a reply bearing only on the Pentateuch^[10]: it holds to the substantial authenticity of the Book of Joshua, while admitting later additions and retouchings under inspiration. In other words: a core goes back to Joshua's time and to witnesses of the conquest; the final text was shaped later, without this affecting its inspiration or its truth.

Critical exegesis: from the Hexateuch to the Deuteronomistic History

Modern exegesis has proposed a different model. In the 19th century, Joshua was readily attached to the Pentateuch to form a "Hexateuch" (six books), extending to it the supposed documentary sources of Genesis. This hypothesis was largely abandoned after the decisive work of the German scholar Martin Noth. In his Studies in the History of Tradition (1943), Noth argued that Joshua does not belong to the Pentateuch but forms, with Deuteronomy, Judges, Samuel and Kings, a vast "Deuteronomistic History": a theological re-reading of Israel's history composed during the Exile (6th century BC) to explain the catastrophe of 587 by the people's unfaithfulness to the Covenant^[11].

This hypothesis, refined since by Thomas Römer and his successors, remains dominant in universities^[12]. It contains its share of truth: the Book of Joshua undeniably bears the imprint of Deuteronomy — the same insistence on the Law, on the unity of the sanctuary, on blessing conditioned by fidelity. But a Catholic is not bound to adopt all its conclusions, especially when they slide from a literary observation (the book has a Deuteronomic theology) to a philosophical postulate (therefore everything in it is late and largely fictional). The hermeneutic of continuity invites us to distinguish what is widely held by contemporary exegesis — a late final shaping, a strong theological intention — from what belongs to a sceptical presupposition about the historical value of the narrative.

Getting the balance right: the Catholic position

The conciliar constitution Dei Verbum offers the key to this balance. To interpret Scripture correctly, it teaches, attention must be paid to literary genres and to the ways of perceiving, speaking and narrating proper to the sacred writer's time^[13]. Ancient conquest narrative has its conventions — round numbers, typical scenes, epic exaltation of victory — which are not lies but a way of telling the truth of a people about its God. Recognising these conventions is not yielding to scepticism: it is reading the book as it meant to be read.

The book is composed of three great parts of unequal length, framed by Joshua's investiture (ch. 1) and his spiritual testament (chs. 23-24). The following table gives an overall map before the details.

First part: entering and conquering (chapters 1-12)

Joshua's investiture and the crossing of the Jordan

The book opens with a word from God investing Joshua with Moses' mission and repeating, three times, the same encouragement that has become one of the best-loved verses of the Bible:

"Have I not commanded you: 'Be strong and courageous!'? Do not fear, do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." — Joshua 1:9^[14]

The entry into the Promised Land begins with a miracle recalling the Exodus: as the Red Sea had opened before Moses, the Jordan stands still before the Ark of the Covenant and the people cross over on dry ground (Josh 3-4). Twelve stones drawn from the riverbed are raised at Gilgal as a memorial for future generations. The parallel is deliberate: Joshua is presented as the new Moses, and the crossing of the Jordan as a second birth of Israel on its own soil^[15].

Rahab and the fall of Jericho

Before the assault, Joshua sends two spies to Jericho, the first Canaanite city on the way. They are welcomed and hidden by Rahab, a prostitute who then makes a profession of faith astonishing in the mouth of a pagan woman:

"The Lord your God is God, in heaven above and on earth below." — Joshua 2:11^[16]

In exchange for life spared for her and her household, Rahab hangs a scarlet cord from her window which will save her house (Josh 2:18). The taking of the city has nothing of an ordinary siege about it: for seven days the people circle the walls in silence behind the Ark; on the seventh day, at the sound of the trumpets and the shout of all Israel, "the wall fell flat" (Josh 6:20)^[17]. The message is crystal clear: it is not war that gives the city, it is God. Jericho is the first-fruits city, devoted wholly to the Lord — hence the tragic episode of the ban, to which this article will return.

Ai, Gibeon and the great coalitions

The conquest at once suffers an instructive setback: before the small town of Ai, Israel is repulsed, because one man, Achan, violated the ban by taking spoil from Jericho for himself (Josh 7). The defeat is not military but spiritual: one man's sin strikes the whole people. Once the fault is punished, Ai is taken (Josh 8).

Then comes the ruse of the Gibeonites: fearing Jericho's fate, these Canaanites disguise themselves as travellers from afar and extract a peace treaty from Joshua. Bound by their oath sworn "in the name of the Lord", the Israelites spare Gibeon (Josh 9) — a striking illustration of the sacred character of the sworn word, which binds even when obtained by fraud. It is to defend these new Gibeonite allies that Joshua fights the great southern battle against a coalition of five Amorite kings (Josh 10), during which the famous episode of the sun standing still occurs. The conquest ends with the northern campaign against Hazor and King Jabin (Josh 11). Chapter 12 finally draws up the list of the thirty-one kings defeated, like a recapitulating trophy.

Second part: receiving the land as an inheritance (chapters 13-21)

The second part radically changes tone: epic gives way to sacred geography. Over nearly nine chapters, the book details the division of the country among the tribes of Israel, frontier by frontier, town by town. This section, often skipped by hurried readers, is theologically decisive: it shows that the land is an inheritance (nahala) distributed by lot "before the Lord" (Josh 18:6), and not booty seized by the strongest. Each tribe receives its share from God's hand.

Two institutions of mercy and justice structure this division: the six cities of refuge (Josh 20), where the unintentional killer can flee blood vengeance pending a fair trial, and the forty-eight cities of the Levites (Josh 21), scattered among all the tribes so that the service of God irrigates the whole territory. The part closes on a major note of fulfilment:

"Not one of the commitments made by the Lord in favour of the house of Israel remained without effect: all came to pass." — Joshua 21:45^[18]

Third part: choosing to serve (chapters 22-24)

The book closes with three chapters turned towards the future of the faith. The Transjordanian tribes, sent back home, raise a great altar near the Jordan; at once suspected of schism, they explain that it is a witness to unity and not a rival sanctuary — the crisis is defused by dialogue (Josh 22). Then Joshua, grown old, delivers two farewell discourses in which he begs the people to remain faithful and not to mix with the nations or their gods (Josh 23).

Everything culminates in the great assembly at Shechem (Josh 24), the true summit of the book. Joshua there retells the history of salvation, from Abraham to the conquest, as a story of pure grace from God; then he places the people before a decisive and free choice:

"If it is displeasing to you to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve [...]. As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." — Joshua 24:15^[19]

The people answer with the oath of the Covenant, and Joshua "wrote these words in the book of the law of God" and sets up a great stone as witness (Josh 24:26-27). The book ends with three tombs — Joshua, the bones of Joseph brought up from Egypt, and the high priest Eleazar — sealing the whole history of the promise into the received land.

Three major difficulties hold the attention of every serious reader: a cosmic miracle, an archaeological debate, and a formidable moral problem.

The sun standing still at Gibeon

At the heart of the southern battle, Joshua addresses to God a prayer that has remained famous:

"Sun, stand still over Gibeon, moon, over the valley of Aijalon! And the sun stood still, and the moon remained motionless, until the people were avenged of their enemies." — Joshua 10:12-13^[20]

Must we understand that the Earth stopped turning? Catholic tradition obliges nothing of the sort. Several readings are legitimate and defensible. First, the text specifies that these verses are drawn from the "Book of Jashar" (Sefer ha-Yashar), a collection of epic poetry: we may therefore see in them a poetic language celebrating a victory so swift that it fits into a single lengthened day^[21]. Second, some exegetes propose an atmospheric phenomenon — a providential hailstorm (mentioned just before, Josh 10:11) darkening the sun. Finally, a Catholic may quite simply hold to a real miracle: the God who created the heavenly bodies can suspend their apparent effect. What matters, and what the text hammers home, is not astronomy but theology: "There was no day like that one, neither before it nor after it, that day when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel" (Josh 10:14). This verse is not to be read as a cosmology treatise: Scripture, as Leo XIII recalled in Providentissimus Deus after Saint Augustine, was not given to teach men the intimate constitution of visible objects; the sacred writers speak in the language in use in their time, as is still done in everyday life^[22].

The archaeology of the conquest

The Book of Joshua is one of the most disputed terrains of biblical archaeology. The most famous case is Jericho, whose narrative promises walls felled by God's power alone. Excavations have fuelled a debate of more than a century, summarised in the following table.

The debate is not settled^[23]. Kathleen Kenyon, a pioneer of stratigraphy, concluded that at Joshua's supposed time Jericho was no more than a largely abandoned site — which would make the narrative an embellished memory. Bryant Wood challenged her method, reproaching her for dating a layer by what she had not found (the absence of a Cypriot ware) rather than by what she had unearthed; the radiocarbon datings published in 1995 (charred-cereal samples from the burn layer, c. 1562 BC) were invoked in support of Kenyon's chronology (~1550), without closing the debate^[24]. The same kind of discussion surrounds Ai (the site of et-Tell seems unoccupied at the time) and Hazor, whose violent destruction at the end of the Late Bronze Age is by contrast well attested by the excavations of Yigael Yadin and Amnon Ben-Tor^[25].

What should we conclude? Caution. Archaeology proceeds by fragile arguments from silence — a mislocated site, an eroded layer, a wide dating range suffice to blur the picture. The biblical narrative itself suggests a gradual and incomplete conquest (Josh 13:1; 23:12-13; Judg 1), far from the lightning blitz sometimes attributed to it. A Catholic can serenely hold to the substantial truth of Israel's entry into Canaan, without having to embrace either the naive concordism that pins every verse to a ruin, or the scepticism that dissolves the event for want of having found everything.

The problem of the ban (herem)

This is the gravest difficulty of the book, and the most frequent objection of the Bible's critics. Several times, the text reports that conquered cities are devoted to the ban (herem), "man and woman, young and old, [...] putting them all to the sword" (Josh 6:21)^[26]. How could a good God have ordered the extermination of entire peoples? The question is too serious to be evaded; the Church herself asks that it be faced head-on.

First point: acknowledge the difficulty. Benedict XVI devoted an entire paragraph of his exhortation Verbum Domini to these "obscure pages" of the Bible. There he urges scholars and pastors "to help all the faithful to draw near to these pages too, through a reading that discloses their meaning in the light of the mystery of Christ", recalling that "biblical revelation is deeply rooted in history" and that "God's plan is manifested progressively and realised slowly through successive stages, despite the resistance of men"^[27]. The narrative also reflects the warfare conventions of the ancient Near East, where the hyperbole of total extermination was a literary victory genre common to several peoples — the Mesha Stele (9th c. BC) uses the same word herem for Moab's conquests^[28].

Second point: the theological meaning. The ban is not, in the Bible, a racial impulse or an appetite for plunder — on the contrary, spoil is forbidden (hence Achan's punishment). It means that victory and its fruits belong to God alone, and it protects Israel from a mortal peril: apostasy by idolatrous contagion, which later history will show did indeed ruin the people. The condemnation targets the practices of the Canaanite nations — child sacrifice, ritual prostitution — which the Bible holds to be an abomination (Dt 12:31)^[29].

Third point: the Christian reading. The Church has always read these pages in the light of Christ, who reveals God's definitive face and abolishes violence as a religious means: "You have learned that it was said: You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say to you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you" (Mt 5:43-44). The Catechism teaches that the Old Testament contains "the imperfect and the provisional" which Christ comes to bring to fulfilment^[30]. That is why the great Tradition, from Origen to our day, reads the herem first in a spiritual sense: the peoples to be exterminated without pity are, for the Christian, his vices and sins, which no complacency must spare. Joshua's war thus becomes the type of the interior spiritual combat.

Joshua, type of Christ

No Father of the Church read the Book of Joshua with greater depth than Origen (~185-253). In his twenty-six homilies on the book — preserved in Latin in Rufinus' translation, and published in the Sources Chrétiennes collection^[31] — the Alexandrian starts from the shared name Joshua = Jesus to make the whole book a prophecy in images of Christ and the Christian life. In his editor's presentation, through the gestures and deeds of Jesus son of Nave are manifested, as in a figure, the mysteries of Jesus, Son of God^[32]. It is not Moses — the Law — who brings the people into the land of rest, but Joshua: in Origen's reading, it is Joshua who, after Moses, takes the people in charge and becomes the guide of the new road towards Heaven^[33].

The great theologian Jean Daniélou, in Sacramentum futuri, showed that this Joshua-Jesus typology is one of the oldest and most universal in Christian tradition, attested as early as the Epistle of Barnabas and in Saint Justin in the 2nd century^[34]. It is already begun by the New Testament itself: the Epistle to the Hebrews observes that "if Joshua had given them rest, David would not speak after that of another day" — "a sabbath rest still has to come for the people of God", the one Christ opens (Heb 4:8-9)^[35].

The Promised Land, type of Heaven and of baptism

In this reading, each element of the narrative takes on a spiritual depth. The Promised Land into which Joshua leads the people is the type of Heaven, the true "rest" promised to the redeemed. The crossing of the Jordan, a passage through the waters to be born into the new land, is read by the Fathers as a type of baptism — all the more so as it is in this same Jordan that Jesus, the new Joshua, will be baptised^[36]. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, treating the prefigurations of baptism, explicitly ranks the crossing of the Jordan among the Old Testament images of entry "into the Promised Land, image of eternal life" granted by the sacrament^[37]. As for the long war of conquest, it figures the spiritual combat every baptised person must wage, all life long, against sin — the only enemy now to be devoted to the ban.

Rahab, type of the salvation of the nations

The prostitute Rahab enjoys a remarkable fortune in Christian tradition, matching the paradox she embodies: a pagan, a sinner, become by her faith a model for believers. The New Testament cites her three times with approval. The Epistle to the Hebrews places her in the great gallery of heroes of faith:

"By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace." — Hebrews 11:31^[38]

The Epistle of James holds her up as an example of a living, active faith (Jas 2:25)^[39], and Matthew's Gospel inscribes her, unheard of, in the very genealogy of Jesus (Mt 1:5): this Canaanite woman is the ancestress of Boaz, hence of David, hence of Christ^[40]. The Fathers saw in her the type of the Church gathered from the nations: as Rahab was saved by the scarlet cord hung from her window, sinful humanity is saved by the Blood of Christ. The red cord thus became, from Saint Clement of Rome (c. 96), one of the oldest patristic symbols of Redemption^[41].

Beyond history and typology, the Book of Joshua offers today's believer a spirituality of courage and fidelity. Its first watchword — "Be strong and courageous" — is not a martial slogan: it is at once tied to meditation on the Word ("This book of the Law shall not leave your lips; you shall murmur it day and night", Josh 1:8) and to God's presence ("I will be with you", Josh 1:5). Biblical courage is not self-confidence, but confidence in the One who accompanies.

Its last word, the call of Shechem — "choose this day whom you will serve" — makes the book a great treatise on believing freedom. Faith is never a suffered inheritance: it is a choice ever renewed, personal and communal. "As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord": this word of Joshua, committing a whole household, remains today the profession of faith of fathers and mothers, and of all who would build their life on rock rather than sand. The book that opened with the order to cross a river thus closes on the decision that runs through all Christian existence: freely choosing to serve God.

• Bible, Book of Joshua (24 chapters) — to be read in a Catholic translation: Jerusalem Bible, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, or Douay-Rheims.
• For the biblical collection as a whole and the question of the canon, see The Bible and the synthesis article Old Testament.
• For the immediate sequel of Israel's history in Canaan, see the Book of Judges, then the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings.
• For the books of the Law that come before, see Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy.
• Origen, Homilies on Joshua, Sources Chrétiennes 71, ed. Annie Jaubert, Cerf, 1960 — the great spiritual reading of the book.
• Jean Daniélou, Sacramentum futuri: Études sur les origines de la typologie biblique, Beauchesne, 1950.
• Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini (2010), § 42 — on the "obscure pages" of the Bible.