(S. A. C.)
[1] Heb. Jĕhōshūa; later Jēshūa; Gr. Ἰησοῦς, whence “Jesus” in the A.V. of Heb. iv. 8; another form of the name is Hoshea (Num. xiii. 8, 16). The name may mean “Yah(weh) is wealth, or is (our) war-cry, or saves.” The only extra-biblical notice of Joshua is the inscription of more than doubtful genuineness given by Procopius (Vand. ii. 20), and mentioned also by Moses of Chorene (Hist. Arm. i. 18). It is said to have stood at Tingis in Mauretania, and to have borne that those who erected it had fled before Ἰησοῦς ὁ ληστής. For the medieval Samaritan Book of Joshua, see T. Juynboll, Chronicum Samaritanum (1846); J. A. Montgomery, The Samaritans (1907), pp. 301 sqq.
[2] Traces of composite material may be recognized—(a) where, in place of boundaries, P has given lists of cities which appear to be taken from other sources (cf. the instructions in xviii. 9), and (b) in the double headings (see Addis, The Hexateuch, i. 230, note 1, and the commentaries).
[3] The close relation between what may be called the Deuteronomic history (Joshua-Kings) and its introduction (the legal book of Deuteronomy) independently show the difficulty of supporting the traditional date ascribed to the latter.
[4] G. F. Moore (Ency. Bib., col. 2608, note 2) draws attention to the instructive parallel furnished by the Greek legends of the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus (the “return” of the Heracleidae, the partition of the land by lot, &c.).
[5] The historical problems are noticed in all biblical histories, and in the commentaries on Joshua and Judges. Against the ordinary critical view, see J. Orr, Problem of the O.T. (1905) pp. 240 seq. This writer (on whom see A. S. Peake, The Interpreter, 1908, pp. 252 seq.) takes the book as a whole, allowance being made for “the generalizing tendency peculiar to all summaries.” His argument that “the circumstantiality, local knowledge and evidently full recollection of the narratives (in Joshua) give confidence in the truth of their statements” is one which historical criticism in no field would regard as conclusive, and his contention that a redactor would hardly incorporate conflicting traditions in his narrative “if he believed they contradicted it” begs the question and ignores Oriental literature.
[6] E.g. the vicissitudes of Levitical families, other migrations into Palestine, &c. The story of Joseph has probably been used as a link (see Luther, op. cit. pp. 142 seq.).
JOSHUA THE STYLITE, the reputed author of a chronicle which narrates the history of the war between the Greeks and Persians in 502-506, and which is one of the earliest and best historical documents preserved to us in Syriac. The work owes its preservation to having been incorporated in the third part of the history of pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Maḥrē, and may probably have had a place in the second part of the Ecclesiastical History of John of Asia, from whom (as Nau has shown) pseudo-Dionysius copied all or most of the matter contained in his third part. The chronicle in question is anonymous, and Nau has shown that the note of a copyist, which was thought to assign it to the monk Joshua of Zuḳnīn near Āmid, more probably refers to the compiler of the whole work in which it was incorporated. Anyhow the author was an eye-witness of many of the events which he describes, and must have been living at Edessa during the years when it suffered so severely from the Persian War. His view of events is everywhere characterized by his belief in overruling Providence; and as he eulogizes Flavian II., the Chalcedonian patriarch of Antioch, in warmer terms than those in which he praises his great Monophysite contemporaries, Jacob of Sĕrūgh and Philoxenus of Mabbōg, he was probably an orthodox Catholic.