To the former part of the question the text answers so as to speak of Joshua alone. But the interpreters add two other [things]. One [is] Masius’s: [that] Joshua did this likewise by the authority and command of God. “Nay, that this Commander had that command from God,” he says, “I think no one ought to doubt, since in all things he was once bidden to hang wholly on the mouth of Eleazar the High Priest, as [on] the interpreter and minister of God.” The other [is] Abulensis’s and Cajetan’s: [that] Joshua erected those stones, not by himself, but through others to whom he gave the charge of it — just as (1 Kings [Reg.] 6) [it] is said [that] Solomon “built” the house of the Lord; and [Cajetan] adds two reasons: 1. because he could not have erected them alone; 2. because [it] did not befit the Prince of the people to set his hands to manual works of this kind. But the former [reason] has force only if [it] be granted [that] these stones were very large, or that no new strength was divinely granted to Joshua. The latter, however, is true, [as] concerning ordinary works of the hands. Yet sometimes, and in some place — whether for the worship and glory of God, or to give some example to others, or on account of necessity, or [for] some other good end of this kind — [it is] most excellent, and not altogether unusual, [for] princes to lower themselves to such works. Of Constantine the Great, on the 18th of November, when he was dedicating the Vatican [basilica], the Church reads these [words]: “Constantine the Great, the Emperor, came on the eighth day after receiving baptism, and, laying aside his diadem, and lying on the ground, poured out a flood of tears. Then, taking up a mattock and a two-pronged hoe, he dug up the earth; and thence, twelve baskets of earth being carried off, for the honour’s sake, in [memory] of the 12 Apostles, and the place of the Basilica of the Prince of the Apostles being marked out, he built the Church.” But which [was] greater in power and command — Constantine or Joshua? And which [is] baser: to roll and fix twelve stones, or to take a mattock, dig the earth, [and] place baskets on [one’s] shoulders and carry [them]? And — to say nothing of others — [that] the Supreme Pontiff Leo himself laboured in the fortifying of the city of Ostia, and did the work with his own hands, Baronius teaches (vol. 9). [Joshua] could therefore, and perhaps wished to—
(col. 451)
—[Joshua could, if not alone, at least with others,] spend labour on setting up these stones, to proclaim the deeds and power of God.
But how long these [stones], [once] set up, stood, two [things] too are handed down. One [comes] from the text itself: “they are,” it says, “there unto the present day” (v. 9). But Masius and Abulensis gather from these words [that] this book was not written by Joshua. But — as I also noted in the Prolegomena — [it] can be answered [that] similar [phrases] were added afterward by Samuel or some prophet. For in the very books of Moses the same must be admitted. Besides, could not Joshua himself rightly write this, [even] several years later? He set up those stones at the [time of the] first crossing into the land of Canaan; but if, after 12, 14, 20, or more years, he should say [that] those stones still remained, what [would be] absurd [in that]? The other [thing] is said by others: [that] they stood even in the times of Christ the Lord [himself]; but of this [in] the next question.