Well, let's take those stone tablets that Mozes brought down from the mountain. What do you think are the chances they would have made it as far as they did if he said: "look guys, here is some stuff I chiseled into a bunch of tablets while I was up on the mountain" vs "this is the word of god"? It's an appeal to authority if there ever was one and by placing the authority in a spot where it can not be directly queried for verification it can literally develop a life of its own, like any good meme on social media today.
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> Well, let's take those stone tablets that Mozes brought down from the mountain.
Yeah, that's one of those obvious examples I was thinking of before, but upon reflection I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to view this as a link in the evolution of ethics and morality into religion. No one is going to follow a ceremonial law as intricate as the one in the Torah unless they already believe in a god or gods.[1]
The utility of religion for control goes almost without saying, but this is a different matter than explaining the religious impulse: control is asserted from the outside, but faith happens from the inside. If it were purely a matter of covering civil laws with a patina of divine approval, the ceremonial aspects of the Torah make little sense. Hammurabi, for example, doesn't bother with them, despite claiming divine authority for handing down his rules.
[1] As an aside, the Old Testament can be read as a failed experiment in establishing monotheistic worship to Israel. If Moses intended to consolidate his authority, or his family's authority, by identifying their ancient god with Yahweh, it's hard to argue that he succeeded.
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