Book of Joshua
The
Book of Joshua
is the sixth book of the
Hebrew Bible
and the first book of the
Former Prophets.
It describes the entry of the Israelites into
Canaan under
Joshua, the
conquest and allocation of territory among the tribes,
and concludes with Joshua's death and burial.
The book is anonymous and does not identify its author.
Modern scholarship generally regards it as the product
of a prolonged process of composition and editing
rather than the work of a single author. It is commonly
associated with the
Deuteronomistic
History, whose major stages of composition
and editing are usually placed during the late
monarchic and
Babylonian Exile
and/or subsequent periods. Earlier traditions and
source material incorporated into Joshua may be
considerably older than its final literary form.
The textual history of Joshua is complex. The
Masoretic Text
and the
Septuagint (LXX)
preserve significant textual differences, indicating
that more than one textual form of Joshua circulated
in antiquity.