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 is a great mass of "words," chiefly oracles but including also decisions, laws, ordinances, lists of materials, votive offerings, itineraries, censuses, genealogies, poems, ritual directions ostensibly in chronological order with a rather slight thread of narrative of events, or annals. It is not quite clear whether the author or authors of Exodus mean it to be understood that the various documents were kept separately in the ark or were written up on a roll, but Ex. 17:14 ("book") points to the latter as do (the analogies of the leather roll of Thutmose and the roll of Deuteronomy, which was to be put "by the side" of the ark. It does make clear however that the authors of Deuteronomy and Joshua regarded the book of Deuteronomy as an abstract intended for engraving on stone.

(3) Confronting the Hebrew Book of the words of days, with the annals of Thutmose III and the registerial systems