of the cities that Moses took. The knowledge therefore that this bed was
at Rabbah, and of the particulars of its dimensions, must be referred to
the time when Rabbah was taken, and this was not till four hundred
years after the death of Moses; for which, see 2 Sam. xii. 26: "And Joab
[David's general] fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and
took the royal city," etc.

As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in time,
place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to Moses, and
which prove to demonstration that those books could not be written by
Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the book of Joshua, and
to shew that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is
anonymous and without authority. The evidence I shall produce is
contained in the book itself: I will not go out of the Bible for proof
against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False testimony is
always good against itself.

Joshua, according to Joshua i., was the immediate successor of Moses; he
was, moreover, a military man, which Moses was not; and he continued as
chief of the people of Israel twenty-five years; that is, from the time
that Moses died, which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C.
1451, until B.C. 1426, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua
died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written
by Joshua, references to facts done after the death of Joshua, it is
evidence that Joshua could not be the author; and also that the book
could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact
which it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is
a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those
recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and the
blasphemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to
the orders of the Almighty.

In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the preceding
books, is written in the third person; it is the historian of Joshua
that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vainglorious that Joshua
should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse of the sixth
chapter, that "his fame was noised throughout all the country."--I now
come more immediately to the proof.

In Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said "And Israel served the Lord all the days
of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived Joshua." Now,
in the name of