6: cf Num.xxxiii.31, 38).
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.