The serious character of the problems of early Israelite history can be perceived from the renewed endeavours to present an adequate outline of the course of events; for a criticism of the most prominent hypotheses see Cheyne, _Ency. Bib._ art. "Tribes" (col. 5209 seq.); a new theory has been more recently advanced by E. Meyer (_Die Israeliten u. ihre Nachbarstämme_, 1906). But Joshua as a tribal hero does not belong to the earliest phase in the surviving traditions. He has no place in the oldest surviving narratives of the exodus (Wellhausen, Steuernagel); and only later sources add him to Caleb (Num. xiv. 30; the reference in Deut. i. 38 is part of an insertion), or regard him as the leader of all the tribes (Deut. iii. 21, 28). As an attendant of Moses at the tent of meeting he appears in quite secondary passages (Exod. xxxiii. 7-11; Num. xi. 28). His defeat of the Amalekites is in a narrative (Exod. xvii. 8-16) which belongs more naturally to the wilderness of Shur, and it associates him with traditions of a movement direct into south Palestine which finds its counterpart when the clan Caleb (q.v.) is artificially treated as possessing its seats with Joshua's permission. But points of resemblance between Joshua the invader and Saul the founder of the (north) Israelite monarchy gain in weight when the traditions of both recognize the inclusion or possession of Judah, and thus stand upon quite another plane as compared with those of David the founder of the Judaean dynasty. Instead of rejecting the older stories of Joshua's conquests it may be preferable to infer that there were radical divergences in the historical views of the past. Consequently, the parallels between Joshua and Jacob (see Steuernagel's _Commentary_, p. 150) are more significant when the occupation of central Palestine, already implied in the book of Joshua, is viewed in the light of Gen. xlviii. 22, where Jacob as conqueror (cf. the very late form of the tradition in Jubilees xxxiv.) agrees with features in the patriarchal narratives which, in implying a settlement in Palestine, are entirely distinct from those which belong to the descent into Egypt (see especially, Meyer, op. cit. pp. 227 seq., 414 seq., 433; Luther, ib. 108 seq.). The elaborate account of the exodus gives the prevailing views which supersede other traditions of the origin both of the Israelites and of the worship of Yahweh (Gen. iv. 26). Several motives have influenced its growth,[6] and the kernel--the revelation of Yahweh to Moses--has been developed until all the tribes of Israel are included and their history as a people now begins. The old traditions of conquest in central Palestine have similarly been extended, and have been adapted to the now familiar view of Israelite origins. It is this subordination of earlier tradition to other and more predominating representations which probably explains the intricacy of a book whose present text may