Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.

All the history, in all the podcast, we left the Israelites secure in their subjugation of Canaan.

The book of Joshua is remembered as the story of a great conquest, but that is only the first 12 chapters.

The next 12 are given over to a detailed description of the lands that Joshua assigns to the various tribes.

Now while there are cities and boundaries named a plenty,

the geography is confused.

Often, the cities allocated do not match the boundaries drawn.

The Book of Joshua was completed no earlier than the last decades of the kingdom of Judah.

There are a few obvious clues.

The specific cities awarded to Judah correspond exactly to the cities controlled by the late

Judean king Josiah.

It is also possible that the tribal allocations described in Joshua correspond to administrative

areas remembered from Solomon's time.

The book certainly preserves a few ancient realities.

It tells us that the Ark and the Tent of Meeting were established at the city of Shiloh in the tribe of Ephraim.

The ark stayed there through the dark centuries of the judges until captured by the Philistines during the time of the prophet Samuel.

One thing that archaeology can confirm is that Shilno reached its peak just in the time of the judges.

But it seems to have been deserted from the time of David on.

So the book of Joshua has reliably preserved at least this one memory.

Now, you really should look at the map I have on my website,

www.w.Historyin the Bible.com to understand this. So let's look at the tribal allocations.

We'll start in the middle with the tribe of Benjamin, youngest of Israel's sons.

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