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 the different tribes according to their respective boundaries and the cities which they contained is unquestionably founded upon contemporaneous writings, and in one passage the writer actually classes himself with those who crossed over Jordan into Canaan under the guidance of Joshua (Jos 5:1, “until we were passed over”); on the other hand we find a number of historical statements in the book, which point beyond the life of Joshua and are opposed to the idea that it was written by Joshua himself. We do not include in these either the closing accounts of the death of Joshua and Eleazar (Jos 24:29, Jos 24:33), or the allusion to the “book of the righteous” (Jos 10:13): for these accounts might have been appended to a writing of Joshua's by a later hand, just as in the case of the Pentateuch; and the book of the righteous is not a work that was composed after the time of Joshua, but a collection of odes in praise of the acts of the Lord in Israel, which were composed by pious minstrels during the conquest of the land, and were added one by one to this collection. Even the frequent repetition of the statement that this or the other has continued “to this day,” furnishes no certain proof that the book was not written in the closing years of Joshua's life, when we consider the purely relative signification of the formula, which is sometimes used in connection with things that only lasted a few years. Apart from such passages as Jos 22:3, Jos 22:17, and Jos 23:8-9, in which no one has discovered any allusion to a later time than that of Joshua, we find the formula “to this day” in Jos 4:9; Jos 5:9; Jos 6:25; Jos 7:26; Jos 8:28-29; Jos 9:27; Jos 13:13; Jos 14:14; Jos 15:63, and Jos 16:10. But if the remark made in Jos 6:25 with regard to Rahab, “she dwelleth in Israel unto this day,” was certainly written during her lifetime, such statements as that the first encampment of Israel in Canaan “is called Gilgal unto this day,” on account of the circumcision of the people that took place there, and that the valley in which Achan was stoned is called Achor “unto this day” (Jos 5:9; Jos 7:26), or that the memorial stones set up in the bed of the Jordan (Jos 4:9), and the heaps of stones raised upon the bodies of Achan and the king of Ai (Jos 7:26; Jos 8:29), remain “unto this day;” that “unto this day” Ai remains an heap (Jos 8:28), the Gibeonites are hewers of wood and drawers of water to the congregation (Jos 9:27), and Hebron is the inheritance of Caleb (Jos 14:14); that the Geshurites and Maachathites have not been expelled (Jos 13:13), nor the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Gezer (Jos 15:63; Jos 16:10), but dwell among and by the side of Israel “unto this day,”