It was signified [as] future that the Gospel of CHRIST would succeed the Mosaic Law, and the Church the Synagogue — as Origen copiously teaches (on Joshua, homilies 1 & 2). But more briefly Theodoret, at the beginning of the same book, in these words: “The most wise Paul taught us [that] the Old Testament was a figure. For all these things,” he says, “happened to them in figure; and they were written
(col. 248)
for our correction, upon whom the ends of the ages are come [1 Cor. 10:11]. And, writing to the Galatians, he says thus: ‘It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman, and one by the free. But he who [was] of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh; but he [who was] of the free, by promise — which things are said by an allegory. For these are the two testaments’ — and what follows [Gal. 4:22–24]. Not that he rejects the history, but [that he uses it] as a figure for the truth: Abraham [for] GOD, the two wives for the two testaments, the sons for the [two] peoples. So also in this place, by Moses we ought to understand the Law; by Jesus, the Savior of the same name with him [Joshua]. And that the Law is called ‘Moses,’ we have already shown, using the testimony of divine scripture: ‘They have,’ he says, ‘Moses and the prophets’ [Luke 16:29]; and, ‘Even to the present day, when Moses is read, a veil is placed upon their heart’ [2 Cor. 3:15]. As, therefore, Moses being dead according to the history, Jesus [Joshua] led the people into the promised land: so, the Law being ended, our Jesus [Christ], appearing, opened the kingdom of heaven to the pious people. For ‘the end of the Law is CHRIST, unto justice to every one that believeth’ [Rom. 10:4]. And ‘the Law and the prophets prophesied until John; but from the days of John the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away’ [Matt. 11:12–13]. But how does the name of ‘minister’ fit our Lord JESUS CHRIST? For [Scripture] says of Jesus son of Nave: ‘The Lord said to Jesus son of Nave, the minister of Moses.’ We also hear the Apostle saying: ‘I say that Jesus Christ was the minister of the circumcision for the truth of GOD, to confirm the promises of the Fathers’ [Rom. 15:8]. And again: ‘But when the fullness of time came, GOD sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons’ [Gal. 4:4–5]. Made under the Law, therefore, he is thus declared minister of the circumcision. And [Scripture] says to the Jews in this manner: ‘If you had believed Moses, you would perhaps have believed me also; for he wrote of me’ [John 5:46] — since indeed they said to Jesus son of Nave: ‘As in all things we obeyed Moses, so will we obey thee also’ [Josh. 1:17].”
Similar [things] almost in the Collectanea: Grillus (f. 1056): “As, after Moses’s death, Jesus [Joshua] son of Nave received the command, so, after the death of the legal letter, JESUS CHRIST received the command of the new people”; [likewise] Rupert (ch. 1 on Joshua, bk. 1); St. Augustine (sermon 105 On the Seasons); and, among the recent, Masius (on Joshua ch. 1): “After the death of Moses, after the end of the Mosaic law — which had served GOD as a pedagogue of the sons — Joshua, or JESUS CHRIST, the minister of Moses, was sent by GOD the Father.
For that one was the minister of the circumcision, for the truth of GOD, that he might ratify those [things] which had been promised to the elders by GOD; he was also obedient to Moses’s Law, that he might redeem those who were subject to the Law, and through adoption vindicate [them] into the liberty of sons. Sent, I say, was JESUS CHRIST, that those whom Moses had led around — wandering still through waste, pathless, sterile places — and had not been able to bring into the promised inheritance (that is, [those] who, engaged still in the harsh, difficult, and sterile law, and the shadow of future goods, could not attain to the perfect representation of the things themselves) — [that] He Himself might lead them through the Jordan, that is, baptism (by which, by the power of His blood, we are expiated, and by sacred rites are initiated into the mysteries of the eternal inheritance), into the land promised to the seed of Abraham: where they might possess and enjoy the things themselves, not the shadows of things. For who, from the history of CHRIST and of John, does not understand [that] baptism is not obscurely signified by the Jordan?”
And thus far concerning Joshua [gathered] from the various and scattered places of the Pentateuch; now let us proceed to the [matters] gathered together — and, in the book which bears his name, woven and bound into one continuous [text] — the true JESUS Himself going before us, in [His] prayers and intercessions.