66 myths · Page 1 of 3
Moses' successor who led Israel across the Jordan, conquered the Promised Land, and made the sun stand still at Gibeon.
66 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines joshua, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
After Joshua died, Israel needed a leader. God's method was a purity test followed by lots, and the man selected was almost nobody's first guess.
The Angel of Death came with orders to be generous. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi borrowed the angel's blade, vaulted the wall of Eden, and made heaven honor his oath.
One afternoon in a garden bent every birth after it. God's presence climbed seven heavens away. Six righteous bodies slowly dragged it back down.
After the sea closes over Egypt, two different fears spread outward, one for distant nations, one for kings already in Israel's path.
The Targum filled in what the Hebrew left blank: those forty days were a tutorial, God teaching Torah from His own mouth while the Majesty stayed invisible.
Twelve spies slipped through Canaan's open gates while the cities buried their dead, then came home swearing the land devoured its own people.
The crowd silenced Joshua before he finished a sentence. Caleb found another way in, using a trick that made him look like he was about to betray Moses.
God told Moses to give some of his glory to Joshua, not all. The rabbis built the entire theology of succession from that one missing word.
Moses wanted one of his sons to inherit the burden of leadership. God chose Joshua instead, then made Moses strengthen him in public.
Jochebed walked to Egypt, the Nile, the sea, the desert, and Sinai, asking each landmark where Moses had gone after he died on Nebo.
Moses fell in gratitude when judgment left room for one righteous break, while angels guarded the Name and Joshua faced a new people.
Joshua falls at Moses' feet and names the terror beneath succession, a nation losing the one man who could pray it back from disaster.
From Mount Nebo, God showed Moses every corner of the promised land like a set table. Moses's first question was who would lead after him.
God told Moses his time had come, and gave him one task first: bring Joshua to the Tent and stand beside him. The pillar of cloud would do the rest.
When God told Moses his sons would not succeed him, the reason was not wickedness. It was that they did not watch the fig tree. Joshua had watched it every day.
Moses named Joshua his successor. Joshua declared he had no questions. Within moments he had forgotten hundreds of laws and nearly been killed for it.
Rabbi Yossi finds that the manna kept falling for fourteen years after Moses died, through all of Joshua's conquest and the apportionment of the land.
Moses asked for a leader who goes out before the people, not behind them. Sifrei Bamidbar heard this as a rejection of every safer model of command.
Sacred song does not stay inside the moment that produced it. The rabbis said shira moves freely through past, future, the messianic age, and the world to come.
The wild ox had beautiful horns but little strength. The ordinary ox had strength but no beauty. Joshua had both, and that is what the moment required.
In his last year Moses hands Joshua sealed books, foretells Israel scattered, and swears his kneeling prayer will outlive his open grave.
Joshua stood before the heavenly court in filthy garments while Ha-Satan pressed the charges. The dirt was not his own.
Sifrei Bamidbar refused the idea that the Shekhinah withdrew when the Temple fell. She goes with Israel, the midrash teaches, even into foreign lands.
While ten spies conspired against entering Canaan, Caleb slipped away to Hebron to pray at the patriarchs' graves. He needed help the living could not give.
Ten spies saw the same Canaan and came back broken. Two saw the same land and held. Ben Sira says it was the greatest act of faithfulness in Israel's history.
A harlot on the wall hears the sea split for runaway slaves, hides the spies, and drags every branch of her house out of the doomed city.
Moses blessed Dan as a lion leaping from the Bashan. The Sifrei Devarim reveals this was a prophecy: the tribe would divide and claim two separate territories.
For forty years the cloud stood over Moses. On his last day it rose from his tent and settled over Joshua's, and Moses watched it go.
For thirty-six nights Moses rose at midnight, slipped into Joshua's room, and cleaned the shoes of the man who would replace him.
From Nebo Moses did not only see geography. The Mekhilta says God showed him Joshua, Barak, Sisera, and the future army of Gog waiting in the hills.
