covenant.  We have seen that Moses wrote the second covenant, and all the laws connected with it.  From Exodus, ch. 24, we learn that he wrote also the book of the first covenant containing, we may reasonably suppose, all of God’s legislation up to that time.  The inference is irresistible that he wrote also the laws that followed in connection with the first covenant.  It is an undeniable fact that these laws underlie the whole constitution of the Israelitish nation, religious, civil, and social.  They cannot, then, have been the invention of a later age; for no such fraud can be imposed, or was ever imposed upon a whole people.  They are their own witness also that they were given by the hand of Moses, for they are all prefaced by the words, “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying.”  When we consider their fundamental character, their extent, and the number and minuteness of their details, we cannot for a moment suppose that they were left unwritten by such a man as Moses, who had all the qualifications for writing them.  Why should not the man who received them from the Lord have also recorded them—­this man educated at the court of Egypt, and learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, who had already written “the book of the covenant,” and afterwards wrote the journeyings of the Israelites, Numb. ch. 23, and the book of Deuteronomy?  An express statement from Moses himself is not needed.  The fact is to be understood from the nature of the case, and to call it in question is gratuitous skepticism.

8.  The form of the Mosaic laws that precede the book of Deuteronomy is in perfect harmony with the assumption that Moses himself not only received them, but wrote them.  They bear the impress of having been recorded not continuously, but from time to time, as they were communicated to him.  In this way the historical notices which are woven into them—­the matter of the golden calf, Exodus, ch. 32, the death of Nadab and Abihu, Leviticus, ch. 10, the blasphemy of Shelomith’s son, Leviticus, ch. 24, and the numerous incidents recorded in the book of Numbers—­all these narratives find a perfectly natural explanation.  Some of these incidents—­as, for example, the blasphemy of Shelomith’s son—­come in abruptly, without any connection in the context; and their position can be accounted for only upon the assumption that they were recorded as they happened.  In this peculiar feature of the Mosaic code before Deuteronomy, we have at once a proof that Moses was the writer, and that the historical notices connected with it were also recorded by him.  The result at which we arrive is that the whole record from God’s appearance to Moses and his mission to Pharaoh has Moses himself for its author.  The authorship of the preceding part of the Pentateuch will be considered separately.