As regards (b), external evidence has already suggested to scholars that there were Israelites in Palestine before the invasion; internal historical criticism is against the view that all the tribes entered under Joshua; and in (a) there are traces of an actual settlement in the land, entirely distinct from the cycle of narratives which prepare the way for (b).
The story of its conquest is fully narrated in the first seven chapters of Joshua.
Only the two of us, dear Joshua and I, know our secret and so will it remain.
In this respect it reached its height in the second half of the 18th century, and is specially associated with Colley Cibber, Samuel Johnson, Cumberland the dramatist, David Garrick, Samuel Richardson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Beau Nash, Miss Chudleigh and Mrs Thrale.
When we put aside one or two exceptionally fine pieces, like the hymn of the soul in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, the highest degree of excellence in style is perhaps attained in staightforward historical narrative - such as the account of the PersoRoman War at the beginning of the 6th century by the author who passes under the name of Joshua the Stylite, or by romancers like him who wrote the romance of Julian; by biographers like some of those who have written lives of saints, martyrs and eminent divines; and by some early writers of homilies such as Philoxenus (in prose) and Isaac of Antioch (in verse).
