Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/69

 and did not expect to find traces of composition in the history contemporaneous with Moses. We shall see presently that there is a deeper reason why this particular clue to the analysis could not at first be traced beyond the early chapters of Exodus.

While the earlier attempts to discredit Astruc's discovery took the direction of showing that the use of the two divine names is determined by a difference of meaning which made the one or the other more suitable in a particular connexion, the more recent opposition entrenches itself mostly behind the uncertainties of the text, and maintains that the Vns. (especially G) show the MT to be so unreliable that no analysis of documents can be based on its data: see Klostermann, Der Pentateuch (1893), p. 20 ff.; Dahse, ARW, vi. (1903), 305 ff.; Redpath, AJTh, viii. (1904), 286 ff.; Eerdmans, ''Comp. d. Gen. (1908), 34 ff.; Wiener, BS'' (1909), 119 ff.—It cannot be denied that the facts adduced by these writers import an element of uncertainty into the analysis, so far as it depends on the criterion of the divine names; but the significance of the facts is greatly overrated, and the alternative theories propounded to account for the textual phenomena are improbable in the extreme. (1) So far as I have observed, no attention is paid to what is surely a very important factor of the problem, the proportion of divergences to agreements as between G and MT. In Genesis the divine name occurs in one or other form about 340 times (in MT, 143 t. + 177 t. +  20 t.). The total deviations registered by Redpath (296 ff.) number 50; according to Eerdmans (34 f.) they are 49; i.e. little more than one-seventh of the whole. Is it so certain that that degree of divergence invalidates a documentary analysis founded on so much larger a field of undisputed readings? (2) In spite of the confident assertions of Dahse (309) and Wiener (131 f.) there is not a single instance in which G is 'demonstrably' right against MT. It is readily conceded that it is probably right in a few cases; but there are two general presumptions in favour of the superior fidelity of the Massoretic tradition. Not only (a) is the chance of purely clerical confusion between $\overline$ and $\overline$ greater than between and, or even between and, and (b) a change of divine names more apt to occur in translation than in transcription, but (c) the distinction between a proper name  and a generic  is much less likely to have been overlooked in copying than that between two appellatives and . An instructive example is 4$26$, where G is 'demonstrably' wrong. (3) In the present state of textual criticism it is impossible to determine in particular cases what is the original reading. We can only proceed by the imperfect method of averages. Now it is significant that while in Gen. G substitutes for  21 times, and 19 times (40 in all), there are only 4 cases of and 6 of for  (10 in all: the proportions being very much the same for the whole Pent.), G thus reveals a decided (and very natural) preference for the ordinary Greek over the less familiar.