Kings. For in titles of books, the subject is marked as often as the writer. The history of Livy denotes the writer, but the history of Scanderberg is denominated from the subject. We read in the last chapter of Deuteronomy (verse 6), concerning the sepulchre of Moses, “that no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day,” that is, to the day wherein those words were written. It is therefore manifest, that those words were written after his interment. For it were a strange interpretation to say Moses spake of his own sepulchre, though by prophecy, that it was not found to that day wherein he was yet living. But it may perhaps be alleged, that the last chapter only, not the whole Pentateuch, was written by some other man, but the rest not. Let us therefore consider that which we find in the Book of Genesis (12:6), “And Abraham passed through the land to the place of Sichem, unto the plains of Moreh, and the Canaanite was then in the land”; which must needs be the words of one that wrote when the Canaanite was not in the land; and consequently, not of Moses, who died before he came into it. Likewise (Numbers 21:14) the writer citeth another more ancient book, entitled, “The Book of the Wars of the Lord,” wherein were registered the acts of Moses at the Red Sea and at the brook of Arnon. It is therefore sufficiently evident, that the five Books of Moses were written after his time, though how long after it be not so manifest.
But though Moses did not compile those books entirely, and in the form we have them, yet he wrote all that which he is there said to have written: as for example, the Volume of the Law, which is contained, as it seemeth, in the 11th of Deuteronomy, and the following chapters to the 27th, which was also commanded to be written on stones, in their entry into the land of Canaan. And this also did Moses himself write ( Deut. 31:9–10), and delivered to the priests and elders of Israel, to be read every seventh year to all Israel, at their assembling in the Feast of Tabernacles. And this is that law which God commanded, that their kings, when they should have established that form of government, should take a copy of from the priests and Levites: and which Moses commanded the priests