Wonderful [things], in his Iuchasin [Yuhasin] book (fol. 154 & 155), R. Abraham Zacuth recites, and from it [so does] R. Godolias [Gedaliah] in [his] Schalscheleth [Shalshelet], or his Catena (fol. 96b & 97). Which [things], because [they are] pleasant, and unheard-of to Latin ears, I shall strive to translate out of the Hebrew; and afterward, to inquire whether [they are] sufficiently consonant with the truth. Thus, therefore, [it] is there written:
Samuel Scholem said: “I found and saw, in the book of the Chronicles of the Cuthaeans, or Samaritans, a narration which they themselves saw in a certain Midras [Midrash], or Explication, of the Jews. It is of this kind. When Joshua had subdued the land of Israel, and had slain one-and-thirty Kings, [it] happened that, of those [kings], to one certain King there was a son, a King of lesser Armenia, who was named Scholach [Shobach]. And this [one] stood up, and gathered the Kings of the Persians and of the Medes, [to the] number [of] 45. And these took with them Japheth the giant, or that most robust [man], who was wont to brandish [his] spear against many; and likewise [they] gathered an army [as numerous] as the sand which is on the sea-shore: and [they] sent a letter to Joshua, of which this is the copy: ‘From the distinguished and fortunate gathering of the Persians and Medes, to thee, O Joshua son of Nun, greeting. Thou …
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[…art] of the evening [i.e., thy day wanes]. We have learned what [things] thou didst against our kinsmen, whom thou didst slaughter in the devastations of our palaces, and sparedst none, from the boy to the old man: thou didst slay the Fathers with the sword, and all their famous cities. And therefore hear this, and know: [that] we, from this day, are about to come to thee within thirty [days], [and] also to lay hold of thee, in the borders of thy inheritance, in Mount Ephraim. We are 45 strong Kings: and to each of us [there are] 60,000 strong [men], who [are] all equipped with darts and arms, holding the sword, and skilled in the art of war. In our aid also is Japheth the giant, of whom [we] have made mention before. Therefore be prepared: and prepare arms for thyself: and say not, ‘I shall do [it] afterward.’ Because against thee we come quickly, quickly.”
But they handed over this letter to a certain prudent and wise messenger; who went off, and found Joshua sitting on his royal throne, with the whole people standing around him. And Joshua commanded that [messenger] to be brought into his sight; to whom, however, [he] did not attend, until [he] had put an end to [the business of] judging the affairs of the Israelites. But then [he] received that writing from the messenger’s hand, and read it in the house of God, in fasting, weeping, and mourning. And [he] kept it in his [own] house, until the festal day of Pentecost, which was then nearest, had passed. For [he] did not wish, at that time, to create any trouble for the people; but, as I was saying, [he] meanwhile kept that letter with himself: and when the feast of Pentecost had elapsed, [he] assembled the whole gathering of the people, and, with it listening, read through that letter, and said: “Behold, how many battles have I fought hitherto? and how many Kings have I conquered? Yet none of them disturbed me. But now, in this case, dread [pavor] and trembling invade me.” When those men had heard these [things], and had been affected with grief, the reins of all wavered [all were shaken]; [their] knees were knocked one against another; [they] cast down [their] heads to the ground, and said to Joshua: “As we obeyed Moses, so also will we obey thee, O Prince. Take the volume [scroll], put the finger [to it], and write in that manner and style by which men are wont [to write], and answer to those [enemies] who hate us — namely, with wicked and contumacious words, which [are] harsh, or, as [it were], like wormwood [absinthium], bitter.” Joshua answered them: “Stand still, and I will take care that you hear the form [formula] of the letter which I have composed for them: and if [it] seem right to you, I will send [it] to them.” And all the people said: “Open thy mouth, and let thy words become illustrious.” Then [he] read, and said:
“In the name of the God of Israel, who weakens the proud strong [ones], afflicts the impious [and] contumacious with death, scatters the guilty sinners [who are] confederate, [and] joins [again] the scattered just and holy [ones] — the God of Gods himself, and Lord of Lords, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: the Lord, a man of war [a warrior]. From me, Joshua, [this is] the word of God; and from the holy Church [assembly], the elect, and the blessed gathering of Israel, [the] sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — to a harmful people, to their deadly gathering, who worship idols, and adore vain [things]: [there is] no salvation [for you]. God said: Know that [you] have done ill, because [you] have roused a sleeping lion, and awakened the lion. For [he] will be made bloody, or will grow red, to give the sword into their hand. I, I have kept watch in justice, to render upon your head your [own] recompense. And what [reason is there for] you to come into the holy place? and will you come, and contaminate the famed land? Prepare yourselves, and go not out from your place, because within one week of days I shall come to you, and will destroy the strong, and flight shall perish for you [there shall be no escape]. Behold, you glory that you are 45 Kings, and that of each of you [there] are sixty thousand strong [men]. But I shall not glory that Kings of the earth are with us, but [that] the exalted Angels [are] — of whom one overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah; one brought on the deluge; one divided the earth into 70 Peoples [nations]. And the people which [is] with me is 60,000 in the strength of strong [men]. And these crossed the sea and the dry land: and before them God went across by night, and by day in a pillar of cloud, and a pillar of fire. And out of these, twelve thousand chosen [men] slew five Kings of Madian, and killed Baalam [Balaam] son of Behor [Beor], and all the males: and none of them was left remaining. But a certain Priest, whose name [is] Phinees, holds sonorous trumpets in [his] hand, and with them [he] sounds [the clang]; [and] straightway [he] compels all our enemies to fall [headlong]. Have [you] not heard about Pharaoh and all his multitude? [They] were fixed [stuck] in the sea, and we crossed over as [if] on dry land. Was [it] not announced to you what we did to Amalech [Amalek] and his people? Have [you] not seen what [things] we inflicted on Scon [Sihon] and Hogo [Og], the two Kings of the Amorites? And if that robust Japheth [is] with you, with us [is] the most robust of the robust, exalted above every exalted [one].”
And the sons of Israel heard these words, and stood in their station: and Joshua dismissed that messenger into his [own] land. He indeed came to those by whom [he] had been sent, and reported to them what [he] had seen: namely, the order [arrangement] of the People, and the description of Joshua’s stature, which was of five cubits; and how [he], clothed with hyacinth and purple, had on [his] head a royal crown, on which the name of God was inscribed. When [they] had heard those [things], [they] fell to the ground, and said: “What is this, which we have done? We have surrounded ourselves with all this evil.”
Afterward Joshua rose up with 12 thousand in the strength of strong [men], and within six days set out against them. And when Schobach himself saw the order [array] of the army, [he] greatly wondered: his mother was a witch [malefica], Naga, who said to them: “Fear not. Because within seven iron walls I will enclose those Israelites, so that [they] may not know the place where [they] are.” And she made her incantations and conjuring-tricks [praestigiae], and shut them in within seven walls. When Joshua saw this, [he] cried out with his heart to the Lord, and took counsel in his mind, and wrote to Ianiach [Janiah], of the tribe of Ruben, who was King over the two tribes and [the] one half-tribe which [were] across the Jordan — that [he] should come with his forces, and should bring the Priest Phinees, who should hold the trumpets of the clang [clangor] in [his] hand. But there came to Joshua, about evening time, one dove [columba]; and Joshua tied under its wing this [letter] which [he] had written. And the dove rose up, and went off to Ianiach; who, when [he] had seen it, laid hold of it by the wing, and received the letter: and, it [having been] read, [he] rose up in his place, and raised a great outcry, and, riding on his horse, cried out in all his camps: “The sword to the Lord!” And from every part [they] gathered to him, and [he] sent [them forth], and called [the host] Prince. But both set out together. And when Sobachi’s [Schobach’s] mother saw those forces, [she] said to her son: “I have seen a star ascending from the East: and [there] is no wisdom, nor counsel in my wisdom, because I am compelled [to keep my] strength away from before that star [I cannot prevail against it].” And when her son Sobach had heard this, [he] was greatly angered, and ordered her to be cast down from the wall. But Ianiach came, and drew up [his] battle-line against Sobach, and killed him. And Phinees also came, to clang with the trumpets: and in that very clangor the walls were broken, or opened up — first one, then all the others. And [they] went out (the Israelites, namely, who before had been enclosed within the walls by Magic), and slew all those who hated them — up to me, the one, who survived them [and] was left remaining, and escaped. But Samuel Scholem said: “And I found a sign of this matter in the verse: ‘Until the Lord give rest to your brethren, as [he gave] also to you’ [Josh 1:15].” The end.
But if, from this end, we draw the beginning of that [second part] which I set forth in the second place [whether true], these [things] will indeed always seem wonderful: but [such] as pertain rather to Jewish Hagadoth [Haggadot — legendary lore] and the feigned fables of the Rabbis. For, first: who [is] that one [man], who records himself to have escaped safe out of so many thousands? and to whom
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[…and to whom] does he record [it]? Secondly: Who [were] the so many and so great Kings of the Medes and Persians at that time? Whence [was there] so great concord and society among them? Thirdly: How, to a war so grave, [raised] so quickly, against a nation which had come not long before into those Canaanite shores, did one King of Armenia — and indeed of lesser [Armenia] — stir up so many? Fourthly: Why did [the tale] omit the King of greater Armenia? Why did it rouse no Western King or people? Fifthly: But [there is] too great a Lethe [oblivion] poured into the letter of those Kings: since the King of lesser Armenia himself is by no means mentioned in it, but only the Kings of the Medes and Persians [are] recorded. And yet [it] is he who was stirring up the war; who had sought the aid of others; to whom the others were present only as auxiliaries. Sixthly: In that expedition Joshua is described [as] nearly too arrogant and over-confident, since [he] both led so few thousands with him against 2,700,000, and suffered himself to be so easily shut in. Seventhly: Too great a force is attributed to magical discipline and impiety, when [it is said that] so easily 12,000 of the Israelites are shut in by walls, like sheep [in] a sheepfold [caulis]. Who [ever] read [or] heard [that] so great a power was granted to any Magi in any war? What camps, forces, and battle-lines of men would be safe, if [magical] tricks [praestigiae] availed so much? Who would not rather wish for magi, than soldiers and Leaders, for victory? Eighthly: Joshua would have been [made] much inferior to his [own] Moses. For that [Moses] indeed withstood the Magi of Pharaoh in all [things] most successfully (Exod. ch. 7, 8). But this [Joshua] would have been conquered even by one little woman [muliercula], and would have been shut up, with all his forces, in an iron prison. Ninthly: But even if [there] were seven times seven iron and brazen walls, by which the Israelites were circumscribed and wholly encompassed — would not twelve thousand men, and those strong, robust, and vigorous, impeded by no manacles, bound by no fetters and the rest, have been able to overthrow those [walls], to cast [them] down, and to pour [them] out? Tenthly: In bk. 1 of Paralipomenon [1 Chronicles], ch. 5, the Rubenite lineage is described. But in it [there is] no Ianiah [Janiah]. Eleventhly: From the very phrases of the letters, too, one might perhaps not wrongly gather [that] this is a fabricated [commentitia] narration. For not a few [phrases], out of books which are later than those Joshuan times, seem ready [at hand] — as “lupus vespertinus” [evening wolf] from Jeremiah 5:6, Habakkuk 1:8, Sophonias [Zephaniah] 3:3; [as] Psalm 103:20; “verba instar absynthii amara” [words bitter like wormwood] from Proverbs 5 (as [is] noted, s.v. gid, in Elias the Tishbite [Elijah Levita’s Tishbi]); “perire fugam ab aliquo” [that flight should perish for someone] from Psalm 141:5.
But with this weapon of words I do not fight: that [point] I should rather [wish] to be regarded [in] the Twelfth place — [namely, that] it would not have come to pass that so admirable a history [would] not have been related in Joshua’s book, or at least in some part of the divine volume, if nothing in it erred from the truth. But [as to the fact] that Samuel Scholem says [that] he found an argument and sign of this [matter] in a verse whose words are these, “Until the Lord give rest” [Josh 1:15] — [that] is a sign entirely worthy of Rabbinic acumen. For those [Rabbis] are wont to carve out, most ingeniously indeed, whatever dreams [somnia] they please, out of some pasuk [פסוק] or verse of Scripture. [For] what [is] this inference, if indeed [it be one]? “In Joshua ch. 1, v. 15, in Hebrew [it] is said, ‘Hadescher ianiach Adonai’ etc., that is, ‘until the Lord make you rest’” [quousque quiescere vos faciat Dominus]. Therefore [there] was someone by the name Ianiach [Janiah]! and he indeed a Rubenite, and a Prince: and [one] who should snatch Joshua himself and his forces out of the greatest peril: and that by the marvelous flying of a dove, and its indication. These are the logi [λόγοι, “sayings”] of the Haggadic [Hagadothaei] Rabbis: which, however — for the sake both of truth and of pleasant delight — I wished to lay open and shake out [excutere].