Introduction
to Joshua:
The books
of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings are called “the Early Prophets” in the
Hebrew Scriptures. They cover the transition from the Mosaic period to the
establishment of the people in the Promised Land, their infidelities and
identity dissolution under the judges and ultimately the establishment of the
monarchy. Some scholars place
Deuteronomy in with these books as the first of the series, but not all agree.
The introductory note in the Jerusalem
Bible says that in “their final form . . .these books are the product of a
school, of a number of devout men profoundly influenced by the outlook of
Deuteronomy, men who meditated on the
history of their nation and extracted a religious lesson from it. At the same time they have handed on not only
an account of the outstanding events in the history of Israel but also
traditions or texts that date back to the heroic age of the Conquest” (268). The events described probably occurred, to
the extent they are genuinely historical, around the last thirty years of the 13th c. BC. The conquest is a simplified picture of a
very complex history.
Joshua 1 - The book starts with
the Israelites preparing to cross the
Jordan into the Promised Land. The
borders are meant to be from the mountains of Lebanon on the north to the
desert of Zin on the South, from the Euphrates on the East to the Great Sea on
the West. “As I was with Moses, so I
will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you,” the Lord promises him
(1:5).
The
Lord warns them through Joshua of the importance of being firm and steadfast in
observance of the law: “This book of the
law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night,
so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in
it. For then you shall make your way
prosperous, and then you shall be successful” (1:8).
The
Reubenites, Gadites, and half-tribe of Manasseh will leave their dependents
behind east of the Jordan, but the men will go and help their brother tribes
win the land to the west and then return.
They all promise to obey Joshua.
Joshua 2 – A Jerusalem Bible note says chapters 2 through 9 are a collection of
traditions from the Benjaminite shrine at Gilgal and have no literary
relationship with those found in the first 4 books of the Pentateuch. The first military act is to send spies into the land to reconnoiter. They are sheltered by a “harlot” named Rehab. The fact that she is called a harlot may have
designated only that she let rooms or kept an inn, but of course it might have
meant that she was in fact a harlot and the men went to her presumably to
escape detection. She lies for them to
the local authorities and exacts from them a promise that she and her household
will be spared when the Israelites enter the land. She must tie a crimson cord in the window to mark
her house (2:18).
Reflection: While the Lord promises to fight our fights
and protect us from our enemies, we too must be held to account for the zeal to
which we cling to his precepts and guidance.
We too must be careful not to veer to the right or to the left, but stay
close to our guide and mainstay. And
here too we see that the Lord’s work often depends on the simple rectitude of
those whom society does not esteem. The salvation story is built upon the weak,
the outcast, the peripheral. It is
not the strength of people in the eyes of society that makes them strong in the
Lord, but simple adherence to his way.
Origen (185-254 AD)
De Principiis (First
Principles)
Book II - On Christ
3 – “Now, in the same way
in which we have understood that Wisdom was the beginning of the ways of God,
and is said to be created, forming beforehand and containing within herself the
species and beginnings of all creatures, must
we understand her to be the Word of God, because of her disclosing to all other
beings, i.e., to universal creation, the nature of the mysteries and secrets
which are contained within the divine wisdom; and on this account she is
called the Word, because she is, as it were, the interpreter of the secrets of
the mind.” He refers to the beautiful words of John’s Gospel.
4 – The Son “is also the
truth and life of all things which exist . . . For how could those things which
were created live, unless they derived their being from life? Or how could
those things which are, truly exist, unless they came down from the truth? Or
how could rational beings exist, unless the Word or reason had previously
existed? . . . But since it was to come to past that some also should fall away from life, and bring death upon
themselves by their declension—for death is nothing else than a departure from
life—and as it was not to follow that those beings which had once been created
by God for the enjoyment of life should utterly perish, it was necessary that,
before death, there should be in existence such a power as would destroy the
coming death, and that there should be a resurrection, the type of which was in
our Lord and Savior, and that this resurrection should have its ground in the
wisdom and word and life of God.”
“[S]ince
some of those who were created were not to be always willing to remain
unchangeable and unalterable in the calm and moderate enjoyment of the
blessings which they possessed, but, in consequence of the good which was in
them being theirs not by nature or essence, but by accident, were to be
perverted and changed, and to fall away from their position, therefore was the
Word and Wisdom of God made the Way. And it was so termed because it leads to
the Father those who walk along it.”
So whatever be have
predicated about the Wisdom of God will also be “applied and understood of the
Son of God,
in virtue of His being the Life, and the Word, and the Truth and the
Resurrection . . .” and none of these titles refer to anything corporeal.
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