Rambam’s List of the Mesorah
Question
Hi Rabbi, I hope you are well. I’ve got a question that I haven’t received a satisfactory answer to, yet, and am wondering if you might know. In Rambam’s introduction to Mishneh Torah, he lists the mesorah of the Torah She’Baal Peh, and says Pinchas was the link between Yehoshua and Eli (HaKohen). However, there is a gap of over 300 years between Yehoshua and Eli, over which the book of Judges covers the limited leadership in Israel over that period. Did Pinchus live that entire time?
Answers
Yes, it seems that he did. Pinchas appears in Sefer Yehoshua and also in Sefer Shoftim in chapter 11 and 20. There is also no record of another Kohen Gadol until Eli. As well as that, the Gemara, Bava Basra 15a, teaches that “Yehoshua wrote his book (i.e. Sefer Yehoshua)… and Pinchas finished it”. Accordingly, Pinchas lived for approximately three hundred years.
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