influence of Egypt upon Israel are not necessarily evidence that such
influence was exerted before the Exodus. It may have come much later,
through the close connection of the Israel of David and Solomon, first
with Phenicia and then with Egypt.

If we suppose Moses to have been a man of the stamp of Calvin, there is
no difficulty in conceiving that he may have constructed the substance
of the ten words, and even of the Book of the Covenant, which curiously
resembles parts of the Book of the Dead, from the foundation of Egyptian
ethics and theology which had filtered through to the Israelites
in general, or had been furnished specially to himself by his early
education; just as the great Genevese reformer built up a puritanic
social organisation on so much as remained of the ethics and theology of
the Roman Church, after he had trimmed them to his liking.

Thus, I repeat, I see no _a priori_ objection to the assumption that
Moses may have endeavoured to give his people a theologico-political
organisation based on the ten commandments (though certainly not quite
in their present form) and the Book of the Covenant, contained in our
present book of Exodus. But whether there is such evidence as amounts to
proof, or, I had better say, to probability, that even this much of
the Pentateuch owes its origin to Moses is another matter. The mythical
character of the accessories of the Sinaitic history is patent, and
it would take a good deal more evidence than is afforded by the bare
assertion of an unknown writer to justify the belief that the people who
"saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the voice of the trumpet
and the mountain smoking" (Exod. xx. 18); to whom Jahveh orders Moses to
say, "Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.
Ye shall not make other gods with me; gods of silver and gods of gold ye
shall not make unto you" (_ibid._ 22, 23), should, less than six weeks
afterwards, have done the exact thing they were thus awfully forbidden
to do. Nor is the credibility of the story increased by the statement
that Aaron, the brother of Moses, the witness and fellow-worker of the
miracles before Pharaoh, was their leader and the artificer of the
idol. And yet, at the same time, Aaron was apparently so ignorant of
wrongdoing that he made proclamation, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to
Jahveh," and the people proceeded to offer their burnt-offerings
and peace-offerings, as if everything in their procee