That there was error on a great scale in all this, was undeniable; and I began to see at least one _source_ of the error. The celebrated miracle of "the sun standing still" has long been felt as too violent a derangement of the whole globe to be used by the most High as a means of discomfiting an army: and I had acquiesced in the idea that the miracle was _ocular_ only. But in reading the passage, (Josh. x. 12-14,) I for the first time observed that the narrative rests on the authority of a poetical book which bears the name of Jasher.[5] He who composed--"Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon!"--like other poets, called on the Sun and Moon to stand and look on Joshua's deeds; but he could not anticipate that his words would be hardened into fact by a prosaic interpreter, and appealed to in proof of a stupendous miracle. The commentator could not tell what _the Moon_ had to do with it; yet he has quoted honestly.--This presently led me to observe other marks that the narrative has been made up, at least in part, out of old poetry. Of these the most important are in Exodus xv. and Num. xxi., in the latter of which three different poetical fragments are quoted, and one of them is expressly said to be from "the book of the wars of Jehovah," apparently a poem descriptive of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. As for Exodus xv. it appeared to me (in that stage, and after so abundant proof of error,) almost certain that Moses' song is the primitive authority, out of which the prose narrative of the passage of the Red Sea has been worked up. Especially since, after the song, the writer adds: v. 19. "For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them: but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea." This comment scarcely could have been added, if the detailed account of ch. xiv. had been written previously. The song of Moses _implies no miracle at all_: it is merely high poetry. A later prosaic age took the hyperbolic phrases of v. 8 literally, and so generated the comment of v. 19, and a still later time expanded this into the elaborate 14th chapter.