When the scouts returned from their reconnaissance trip to the Promised Land, they said to Moses: “. . . we came to the land you sent us to. It does indeed flow with milk and honey. However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful . . . “ (vv. 27-29). The Torah then relates (v. 30) that Caleb hushed the people before Moses, saying, “Let us by all means go up.” But the other scouts refused to be persuaded by Caleb and responded, “We cannot attack that people for it is stronger than we” (v. 31).
The rabbis of the Tosefta, a companion volume to the Mishnah, interpret these verses a little differently.
Joshua said, “We came to the land you sent us to.”
Caleb said, “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it.”
The scouts said, “However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful.” (Tosefta Sotah 9:2)
The ancient rabbis are claiming that it was not eleven scouts (all but Caleb) who said, “we came to the land you sent us to,” but Joshua alone who said that the land is flowing with milk and honey. These rabbis also claim that it was the other ten scouts, not including Caleb or Joshua, who went on to say, “However, the people there are powerful.” In this reading, ten scouts refused to go up to the land, whereas two implored the others to continue the journey.
Why did these ancient rabbis introduce Joshua into a text that makes absolutely no mention of him? Why do they portray him as acting as nobly as Caleb? Probably because they wanted to shine a positive light on Moshe’s successor. They thus portray Joshua, like Caleb, as someone with great faith in God and no fear of the people, even though this is not what the verses of Chapter 13 are saying.
The aggrandizement of Joshua, however, leads to the diminution of Caleb. He becomes merely a sidekick of Joshua, rather than the hero the verses suggest that he is. The plain sense meaning of the Torah is that Caleb grasped the “power of one,” that he understood that the other scouts were misguided, foresaw the dire consequences of their stance, and bravely tried to change their minds. True he did not succeed. But he made a valiant attempt. We should therefore return Caleb to his rightful place in Jewish history. No longer should he be an unsung hero.

Rabbi Judith Hauptman is professor emerita of Talmud and Rabbinic Culture at JTS.

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