The evidence that this book also was compiled, by some later writer, from various written documents, is abundant and convincing. There are two distinct introductions, one of which comprises the first chapter and five verses of the second, and the other of which occupies the remainder of the second chapter. The first of these begins thus: "And it came to pass after the death of Joshua that the children of Israel asked of the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them?" The second of these introductions begins by telling how Joshua sent the people away, after his farewell address, and goes on (ii. 8) to say, "And Joshua the son of Nun the servant of the Lord died, being an hundred and ten years old." After recounting a number of events which happened, as it tells us, after the death of Joshua, the narrative goes on to give us as naively as possible an account of Joshua's death. If this were a consecutive narrative from the hand of one writer, inspired or otherwise, such an arrangement would be inexplicable; but if we have here a combination of two or more independent documents, the explanation is not difficult. It is a little puzzling, too, to find the circumstances of the death of Joshua repeated here, in almost the same words as those which we find in the Book of Joshua (xxiv. 29-31). It would seem either that the writer of Joshua must have copied from Judges, or the writer of Judges from Joshua, or else that both copied from some older document this account of Joshua's death. Another still more striking illustration of the manner in which these old books are constructed is found in the account given in the first chapter of the capture of Debir, by Caleb (i. 11-15). Here it is expressly said that this capture took place after the death of Joshua, as a consequence of the leadership assigned by Jehovah to the tribe of Judah in this war against the Canaanites. But the same narrative, in the same words, is found in the Book of Joshua (xv. 15-19), and here we are told no less explicitly that the incident happened during the lifetime of Joshua. There is no doubt that the incident happened; it is a simple and natural story, and carries the marks of credibility upon its face; but if it happened after the death of Joshua it did not happen before his death; one of these narrators borrowed the story from the other, or else both borrowed it from a common source; and one of them, certainly, put it in the wrong place,--one of them must have been mistaken as to the time when it occurred. Such a mistake is of no consequence at all to one who holds a rational theory of inspiration; he expects to find in these old documents just such errors and misplacements; they do not in the least affect the true value of the book; but it must be obvious to any one that instances of this nature cannot be reconciled with the theory of an infallible book, which has been generally regarded as the only true theory.