Verse 13. If this means that the whole of the fighting men of the Jews numbered only 40,000, they must have sadly dwindled away, as in Numbers, chap. i., vv. 3 and 46, they are stated at 603,550. Verse 23. 'For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan from before you as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up from _before us until we were passed over_,' yet in chap, v., v. 4, we are told that all the people that came out of Egypt died in the wilderness. *Chapter v., v. 1. 'Until we were passed over.' Bishop Tomline remarks on this passage:-- 'The use of the word "we" proves that this book was written by Joshua, or by some one else alive at the time. 'This inference is obvious, and cannot be objected to if it can be shown that the words of the text, _until WE were passed over_, are {98} a correct translation of the corresponding words in the original Hebrew Bible. This, however, is not the case. The passage before us is one of the parts of the Bible which has been corrupted by time, and the error has arisen in the present instance from the great similarity between the Hebrew words, [------] Aberanoo, "we passed over," and [------] Abekoom, "he caused them to pass over." These words are very similar, and though the common text of the Hebrew Bible now reads Aberanoo, which gives the sense of "we passed over," yet this was not the old reading of the passage, but Aberoom, "he [i.e., God] caused them to pass over," and among the various readings of the text Aberoom actually is found: but the Hebrew letter [--] has been carelessly divided into two letters, [--] vau and [--] nun, by the copyist, and the translators of the Bible, not perceiving the error, and perhaps tempted to make a choice which tended to attach to the book the value of a contemporary record, have given the passage that interpretation which has misled so many critics and on which is built so fallacious a theory. 'That the error is such as I described it, and consequently that the theory built upon it is fallacious, must inevitably result from the accuracy of our present statement, which becomes almost a matter of certainty from the concurrence of the Septuagint and Vulgate translations. 'In the German translations of the Bible the error has been corrected, and the proper reading of the word restored. 'It appears, then, that this passage, which has been made the basis for the belief that the Book of Joshua is a contemporary writing, has been incorrectly translated in our common English Bibles, and consequently the opinion "built upon it must fall to the ground".' Verse 9. On page 35 is quoted Voltaire's criticism on this text, 'I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you.' It is evident that it refers to the circumcision, which was an established ceremony amongst the Egyptians from the earliest ages.