unity of authorship is not to be overthrown by proving, or showing it to be probable, that the author made use of written documents for some of the sections, - such, for example, as the official records prepared for the distribution of the land by lot, - in his description of the possession of the different tribes.
Lastly, the historical fidelity of the book of Joshua cannot justly be called in question; and so far as all the narratives and descriptions are concerned, which lie within the sphere of the ordinary laws of nature, this is generally admitted. This applies not only to the description oft he possessions of the different tribes according to their boundaries and towns, which are almost universally acknowledged to have been derived from authentic records, but to such historical passages as the words of Caleb (Jos 14:6.), the address of Phinehas, and the reply of the two tribes and a half (Josh 22), the complaint of the children of Joseph on account of the smallness of the possessions that had fallen to their lot, and Joshua's answer (Jos 17:14.), which are so thoroughly original, and so perfectly appropriate to the persons and circumstances, that their historical credibility cannot be disputed.[1]
It is chiefly at the miraculous occurrences that the opponents of the biblical revelation have taken offence: partly therefore because of the miracles themselves, and partly because the statement that God commanded the destruction of the Canaanites is irreconcilable with correct (?) views of the Godhead, they deny the historical character of the whole book. But the miracles recorded in this book do not stand alone; on the contrary, they are most intimately connected with the great work of divine revelation, and the redemption of the human race; so that it is only through unscriptural assumptions as to the character of God, and His operations in nature and the world of men, that they can be pronounced unreal, or altogether denied.
And the objection, that the destruction of the Canaanites, as an act commanded by God, “cannot be reconciled even with only half correct notions of the Deity,” as Eichhorn maintains, rests upon totally unscriptural and irrational views of God and the divine government, which
- ↑ Even Eichhorn, for example, says in his Introduction, “The words of Caleb, in Jos 14:1., in which he asks for the inheritance that had been promised him, bear too strongly the characteristics of an appeal from the mouth of an old man of eighty years of age, and breathe too thoroughly in every word his spirit, and age, and peculiar situation, for it to be possible that it should be merely the composition of a later writer, who placed himself in imagination in his situation, and put the words into his mouth.”
