Conquering the Land of Canaan

Joshua 1-24

Book of Joshua the second work in the Deuternomic History. It is the telling of the origin of the tribal divisions of the land of Israel in the days before the monarchy. The setting of the story is the land of Canaan in the 13-12th century B.C. This is the time that scholars put Moses and the Exodus in relation to the kings and places mentioned in the Torah.

There is very little archelogical evidence for the existence of the actual Joshua or the battles that are supposedly attributed to him. In fact, the famous battle of Jericho could not have fallen to the trumpets of the priests because archeology shows that by the time Joshua would have shown up with the the tribes of Israel Jericho would have been long destroyed and abandoned by an earlier conquestor.

What is interesting about this period in Ancient history and the geographical location is that the two major empires of the time were in steep decline. Egypt to the south and the Hittite empire of the north were both failing and so the vassals and territories that they controled suddenly became up for grabs. There were many wars among the Canaanites and group of sea warring tribes that were known as the Phillistines.

The Book of Joshua is believed to have incorporated much older stories of the conquest of Israel that were documented in the Bejamin region of Israel and in the 900s B.C. was given the character that united all the ancient tribes of Israel under one leader, Joshua.

This story of Joshua and the conquest and division of the land was a very old story even before the reforms of King Josiah in the mid 600s B.C. It was during this period of reform that the book is believed to have been influenced by the Deuteronomist theology, Israel obeying their elohim (god) Yahweh and avoiding the other elohim or baal (false gods) of the Canaanite cultures that they were about to be immersed in. Joshua was given a new introduction that linked it to the end of the book of Deuteronomy and also a recap of the Law given in those writings. .


By the end of the book you see the division of the land to the tribes of Israel, but also much more land still to be taken. The major theme of this book is the allegiance to the elohim of Israel, Yahweh, and the warnings of the consequences of turning their back on Him. They are in a land where they are surrounded on all sides by those that would destroy them if not for the protection of their god.

This would have been an important message for the subjects of King Josiah in the 7th century B.C. soon after the Assyrian Empires destruction of Israel (northern kingdom) and the religious reform that Josiah enacted in Judah (southern kingdom).