Partner in the creation of man, and that is his Rebbe, his teacher. As Chazal say, “Whoever teaches the son of his neighbour Torah, it is as if he gave birth to him.” Unfortunately, this is usually not the case. The relationship between Rebbe and talmid is usually not as strong as the relationship between father and son. There are, however, cases where the talmid is such a dedicated talmid (talmid-muvhak), that he can truly be considered the child of his Rebbe.
Yehoshua was such a talmid. Chazal describe him as the disciple par excellence, who never left the side of Moshe, his teacher. Chazal say that when Moshe finished giving a shiur, the Elders would leave. There would be some talmidim still present and then they, too, would leave. Finally, Moshe Rabbeinu would walk and Yehoshua bin Nun would follow him. Because Yehoshua was such a dedicated talmid, he received more from Moshe than any other individual, and eventually became Moshe’s successor.
Consequently, we can actually say about Yehoshua bin Nun that he had another partner in his making. That partner was Moshe Rabbeinu. That is why, the sefer HaMedrash v”Hamaseh says, Yehoshua was called Bin Nun, with a single dot (chirik) under the letter beis rather than the three dots (segol). Yehoshua was the son of Nun, but not fully the son of Nun. The Torah, symbolically, took away from the full “Ben” (with a segol) relationship that Yehoshua had with his father, to show that in this case his teacher had an even greater role in his development than did his father.
