Footnote 7 – Patriarchal Burial Site Explored for First Time in 700 Years

Note the conflict about the place of Joshua’s burial between the Book of Joshua, on the one hand, and the apocryphal Testament of Joseph, on the other. This may suggest that the author of the apocryphal testament did not have an authoritative, canonized text of Joshua that in turn would dictate where Joshua was buried. This suggests that the text of Joshua as we know it was probably not fixed and canonized before the second century B.C. In any event, we see how early the traditions concerning additional burials at Machpelah arose.