[4][5][6] Extant ancient manuscripts of a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint (originally was made in the last few centuries BCE) include Codex Vaticanus (B;

[1][9] Verses 17–36 of Judges 1 include a list of Canaanite cities which were or were not captured as a result of the failures and successes of the military campaigns of the various Israelite tribes in their attempts to conquer Canaan.

[1][9][10] Compared to the other tribes, the Judahites[note 2] are portrayed as supremely capable conquerors, and even where Judah fails, an excuse is given – the occupants had iron chariots.

[1][9] One curious feature of the list is that it mentions eleven Israelite tribes, namely Kayin (the Kenites), Simeon, Judah, Caleb, Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Napthali, and Dan.

[12] Throughout the centuries, various Christian editions of the Bible sought to resolve this problem in numerous ways, including implying that verse 8 referred to an earlier successful Judahite attack on Jerusalem, but that the city was lost again to the Jebusites later on; or that verse 8 merely describes a siege, not a capture; or that the Judahites only seized the civilian part of the city, but the Jebusites held out in Jerusalem's castle or fortress until David finally took it.

'[12] George Foot Moore (1895) argued that Judges 1's account of the Israelite conquest of Canaan was 'of vastly greater historical value' than Joshua 10–11, as a 'gradual and partial' subjugation of the land was consistent with everything else known about subsequent Israelite and Canaanite history in the centuries thereafter, while 'the whole political and religious history of these centuries would be unintelligible if we were to imagine it as beginning with such a conquest of Canaan as narrated in the Book of Joshua'.

[2] However, Wright contended that his colleagues too readily wrote off Joshua 10–11 as unhistorical due to focusing on verses 10:40–41: 'Undoubtedly it was an exaggeration to say that every single inhabitant was killed.

'[2] He also accused Moore and other scholars of oversimplifying the reliability of Judges 1, as it is often fragmentary, self-contradictory, and 'not in such absolute contradiction to Joshua and the Deuteronomic point of view as is so commonly assumed.

'[2] A. Graeme Auld (1998) concluded that Judges 1 was not an early document, but composed on the basis of several notes scattered throughout the Book of Joshua, and that the author attributes the northern tribes' troubled history to their failures during the conquest period.

[10] Similarly, K. Lawson Younger (1995) made the case that the composition of Judges 1 was dependent on text taken from Joshua 13–19 and reused for the author's own purposes: 'Judges 1 recapitulates, recasts and extends the story of the process of Israel's taking possession of the land of Canaan.

In sum, according to Judges Judah is supremely qualified to be in charge of a political entity that includes all tribes of Israel, in other words, of the Israelite monarchy.

This stance is in its turn consistent with the Deuteronomistic political philosophy, hinging upon the idea that only the Judahite Davidic dynasty is entitled to reign in Israel (2 Samuel 7) and viewing the Northern Kingdom (whose mainstay was the house of Joseph) as a renegade province (see especially 2 Kings 17,21–23).