Did Moses fast for 40 days or 80 days?

Here's something I hadn't considered: maybe Moses only fasted for 40 days on the mountain, not 80 days.

This morning, while reading in Exodus, I came to the passage where Moses goes up onto the mountain the first time. This all happens in Exodus 24:9-18. Nowhere (from what I can read) does it mention that Moses fasted that first time up. Joshua was up there too and there's no mention of him fasting either.

Here's the funny thing about reading the Bible: it's such a long document -- a collection of books rather than one large book -- that it can be tough to remember all the small nuances and references within itself. Jordan Peterson noted that the Bible is hyperlinked to itself in thousands of ways, 63,779 cross-references to be exact, according to Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (click to see the article). Below is a the visual representation they came up with to illustrate this fact:

From http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/BibleViz | Click on image to view the source.

I bring this up to show how the memory of the text can fade or be confused with other internal (or even external) references. Perhaps it speaks later in Exodus or in other books that Moses fasted that first time up the mountain. If so, I'll get to it sometime in my current journey through the Bible.

The fastest I have ever completed a reading of the Bible (NKJV) was in 90 days. And even then, it was difficult to remember all the pieces and how they fit together. Also, when taking in that much information in that short of time, much gets lost.

All that said, I didn't see anywhere in Exodus 24:9-18 (or even after all the instructions were given) where it mentioned fasting. In verse 18, it states:

So Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

Later, after Moses came down and was called back up onto (side note: I find it odd that the text uses the word "into" rather than "onto") the mountain, it states in Exodus 34:28:

So [Moses] was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.¹

Now, here's the weird thing: I've read this passage many times. Why do I remember it saying that Moses fasted that first time up on the mountain? Either A) this is the Mandela Effect and the text has been changed, or B) I wasn't paying attention to the text and/or I simply let the teaching of others cloud my mind (no pun intended). Probably "B."

I have not done any research into this. I know I can Google it, but I just wanted to share my pure thoughts -- right after reading the passage -- without running to Google to fill my head with instant information and pass it off as something I've known all along. And while I don't really consider that to be "cheating," it strikes me as fake; prideful.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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¹ or Ten Words