Excerpt from Our Old Bible: Moses on the Plains of Moab Objection to Moses writing of himself in the third person. He supposes the book to have been written three or four hundred years after the death of Moses, and represents the author as composing it after the manner of a drama, and introducing Moses once and again as a speaker. With the natural vigour of his intellect, not strained by critical studies, he held it as certain, that if he could disprove its antiquity and Mosaic authority, all its claim to inspiration would be gone. But it was answered that for a writer to speak of himself in the third person was a form employed by the best ancient authors. That it was used by Moses himself is clear from his summary of Israel's journey ings near the end of the preceding book of Numbers. In the beginning of the thirty-third chapter we read These are the journeys of the children of Israel, which went forth out of the land of Egypt with their armies under the hand of Moses and Aaron. And Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys by the commandment of the Lord and these are their journeys according to their goings out (v. 1, Then follow the exact words of Moses; which he wrote by the command of God (v. But he does not write as we might have expected, And we departed from Rameses in the first month, but And they departed, and so throughout the chapter speaking of the progress of the nation as their goings, and not as ours, although all the while he was himself their leader. But to modern ears, as well to ancient, if we mistake not, the form which the Hebrew lawgiver has adopted in his introduction to the noble record of the nation's history and teaching and laws is preferable to any other; These are the words which I spake unto all Israel on this side' Jordan in the wilderness would even to us have been neither so good nor so natural a title for his great work as the one which he has himself. Preferred These are the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.