Suggest an Edit — Joshua

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Biography

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Joshua, son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, is the Israelite leader who, according to the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament, succeeded Moses and brought the people into the land of Canaan. The books of Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua present him as Moses' attendant and military commander. He is said to have been born in Egypt during the Israelite sojourn there. His given name Hoshea was changed by Moses to Joshua (Hebrew Yehoshua), a theophoric name meaning that the Lord saves. He first appears as the commander who fought Amalek at Rephidim while Moses, Aaron, and Hur stood on the hill. He went with Moses toward Sinai, waited below the mountain, and remained associated with the tent of meeting. These traditions locate him in the generation of the Exodus, conventionally placed by various scholars in the late second millennium BCE, though no independent ancient inscription records his birth or career, and the historical reconstruction of that era remains contested.

When Moses sent twelve men to spy out Canaan, Joshua represented Ephraim. He and Caleb son of Jephunneh of Judah opposed the majority report that the land could not be taken. Numbers records that of that generation only those two were to enter the land. Deuteronomy and the opening of the Book of Joshua describe Moses laying hands on Joshua and charging him to be strong and to lead the people across the Jordan. After Moses' death in Moab, Joshua is portrayed as the one who directed the crossing of the Jordan, the circumcision at Gilgal, the observance of Passover in the land, and the first campaigns in Canaan.

The conquest narrative centers on Jericho, whose walls are said to have fallen after a ritual procession, then Ai, the covenant ceremony at Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, the Gibeonite treaty obtained by ruse, and the battle in which the sun is said to have stood still over Gibeon. Subsequent chapters describe southern and northern coalitions defeated and a summary of kings overcome. Modern archaeology has not produced a simple confirmation of a rapid, unified military conquest of the kind the book describes; Jericho and other sites have complex occupational histories that many scholars find difficult to match with a single fifteenth- or thirteenth-century campaign. The biblical text itself mixes military, liturgical, and theological themes, presenting Joshua as the instrument of a divine gift of the land rather than merely as a warlord.

After the wars, Joshua is said to have cast lots for the tribal inheritances, to have received Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim as his own holding, and to have set up the tent of meeting at Shiloh. In old age he gathered the tribes at Shechem, recited a historical credo from Abraham through the Exodus, and bound the people to serve the Lord, setting up a stone as witness. The Book of Joshua states that he died at the age of one hundred and ten and was buried at Timnath-serah (also called Timnath-heres) in Ephraim. The same chapter notes the burial of Joseph's bones at Shechem and the death of Eleazar the priest. Extra-biblical sources do not independently date these events, and Scripture does not name a wife or children.

Jewish tradition ranks Joshua among the prophets and as Moses' foremost disciple. Christian churches have long commemorated him among the righteous of the Old Testament. The Eastern Orthodox Church keeps his feast on 1 September; he is also found in the Roman Martyrology on that date. There was no papal canonization of the later medieval type. He was not a bishop of Rome, not a patriarch of an episcopal see, and not a member of a religious order. His later Christian cult is modest compared with New Testament saints; he is remembered as the successor of Moses, the leader of the entry into the land, and, in some patristic reading, a type of Jesus, whose name in Greek, Iesous, is the same as Joshua.

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