The book of Joshua is about Moses's successor suitably named Joshua. Moses renamed Hoshea or salvation in Hebrew to Joshua which means “the lord is salvation or help.” This is a variant of the name of God in Hebrew, Yahweh (318, Younger). The Romans would later change this name to Jesus. What of the Book itself The historical context of this book is important to understand how the Hebrews viewed the subject material. Joshua was written alongside Judges, Samuel, kings, and Deuteronomy. These books or the Deuteronomistic history, as they are called, were started in the 17th century under the Judea King Josiah (640-609 BCE) and later completed in the Babylonian Exile(586-538 BCE) (Brettler,314). These books are called the Deuteronomistic History because they are books that primarily retold the history of the Hebrews beginning with Deuteronomy and ending in 2 Kings (Younger, 318). It is important to understand that Joshua also retells that history.
This history was split into three parts, in Joshua. The first being the ancestral period which included the tales of Tarh and his sons Abraham and Nahor before and after they served the Hebrew God. The next period is the Egyptian one. This period primarily focuses on the stories having to do with the Hebrews
…show more content…
This is an almost exact recreation of what God says in Exodus 20:5 “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God”. This parral shows a negative aspect of the Hebrew god, jealousy. The Hebrew God will love his people as long as they do not turn away from him. This restating of jealous God is because those who lived in areas such as Shechem were not at Sini when Moses gave this