Let us test these two theories by interrogating the books themselves.

First, then, we find upon the face of the record several reasons for
believing that the books cannot have come, in their present form, from
the hand of Moses.

Moses died in the wilderness, before the Israelites reached the Promised
Land, before the Canaanites were driven out, and the land was divided
among the tribes.

It is not likely that he wrote the account of his own death and burial
which we find in the last chapter of Deuteronomy. There are those, it is
true, who assert that Moses was inspired to write this account of his
own funeral; but this is going a little farther than the rabbins; they
declare that this chapter was added by Joshua. It is conceivable that
Moses might have left on record a prediction that he would die and be
buried in this way; but the Spirit of the Lord could never inspire a man
to put in the past tense a plain narrative of an event which is yet in
the future. The statement when written would be false, and God is not
the author of falsehood.

It is not likely either that Moses wrote the words in Exodus xi. 3:
"Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the
sight of all the people;" nor those in Numbers xii. 3: "Now the man
Moses was very meek above all the men which were on the face of the
earth." It has been said, indeed, that Moses was directed by inspiration
to say such things about himself; but I do not believe that egotism is a
supernatural product; men take that in the natural way.

Other passages show upon the face of them that they must have been added