his presently led me to observe other marks that the
narrative has been made up, at least in part, out of old poetry.
Of these the most important are in Exodus xv. and Num. xxi., in the
latter of which three different poetical fragments are quoted, and
one of them is expressly said to be from "the book of the wars of
Jehovah," apparently a poem descriptive of the conquest of Canaan by
the Israelites. As for Exodus xv. it appeared to me (in that stage,
and after so abundant proof of error,) almost certain that Moses' song
is the primitive authority, out of which the prose narrative of the
passage of the Red Sea has been worked up. Especially since, after the
song, the writer adds: v. 19. "For the horse of Pharaoh went in with
his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought
again the waters of the sea upon them: but the children of Israel went
on dry land in the midst of the sea." This comment scarcely could
have been added, if the detailed account of ch. xiv. had been written
previously. The song of Moses _implies no miracle at all_: it is
merely high poetry. A later prosaic age took the hyperbolic phrases
of v. 8 literally, and so generated the comment of v. 19, and a still
later time expanded this into the elaborate 14th chapter.

Other proofs crowded upon me, that cannot here be enlarged upon.
Granting then (for argument) that the four first books of the
Pentateuch are a compilation, made long after the event, I tried for a
while to support the very arbitrary opinion, that Deuteronomy (all but
its last chapter) which seemed to be a more homogeneous composition,
was alone and really the production of Moses. This however needed some
definite proof: for if tradition was not sufficient to guarantee the
whole Pentateuch, it could not guarantee to me Deuteronomy alone. I
proceeded to investigate the external history of the Pentateuch, and
in so doing, came to the story, how the book of the Law was _found_
in the reign of the young king Josiah, nearly at the end of the Jewish
monarchy. As I considered the narrative, my eyes were opened. If
the book had previously been the received sacred law, it could not
possibly have been so lost, that its contents were unknown, and the
fact of its loss forgotten: it was therefore evidently _then first
compiled_, or at least then first produced and made authoritative to
the nation.[6] And with this the general course of the history best
agrees, and all the phenomena o