Welcome to the Book of Joshua. In the Book of Joshua we see God’s faithfulness to his promises to bring his people into the promised land. We see success in the conquest of the land, and we see Israel respond in faithfulness under the leadership of Joshua.
Who wrote Joshua? According to Jewish tradition, Joshua wrote most of the book of Joshua, with some additions and “editing” done by perhaps Eleazar the priest and others. We cannot really know for sure, and at the end of the day it’s no big deal. What is important, is that we can be confidant that in the final account of the book of Joshua, God has preserved His word for us concerning the events of the time.
Scholars also argue over the date that the events in Joshua, the conquest of “Canaan” (“Palestine”), took place. Some scholars, basing their estimates primarily on archeology, favour a date of around 1200 BC. However, the problem of archaeological evidence, is that it is often uncertain or ambiguous. The biblical data, based on 1 Kings 6 and Judges 11:26, seems to point to a time for the initial conquest of around 1400 BC (which would put the Exodus from Egypt at around 1440 BC).