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,