Occasional remarks are found such as «
before there reigned any king over the children of Israel» (Genesis 36:31), which seem to imply that from the standpoint of the writer the monarchy had already been established; and «the Canaanite was then in the land» (Genesis 12:6, 13:7), which implied that it was being written after Hebrew occupation; and finally
repeated instances of the use of the phrase «
on the
other side of the Jordan,» in reference to events occurring in the lifetime of Moses, which led scholars to doubt if Moses could have been the author at least of the whole of the Pentateuch.