Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/70

 Dahse urges (p. 308) that MT betrays an equally marked preference for, and has frequently substituted it for ; but that is much less intelligible. For although the pronunciation of as  might have removed the fear of the Tetragrammaton,—and that would be a very good reason for leaving where it was,—it suggests no motive at all for inserting it where it was not. There is force, however, in Gray's remark on a particular case (Num. p. 311), that "wherever [] $\overline$ appears in G it deserves attention as a possible indication of the original text." (4) The documentary theory furnishes a better explanation of the alternation of the names than any other that has been propounded. Redpath's hypothesis of a double recension of the Pent., one mainly Yahwistic and the other wholly (?) Elohistic, of which one was used only where the other was illegible, would explain anything, and therefore explains nothing; least of all does it explain the frequent coincidence of hypothetical illegibility with actual changes of style, phraseology, and standpoint. Dahse (following out a hint of Klostermann) accounts for the phenomena of MT (and [E]) by the desire to preserve uniformity within the limits of each several pericope of the Synagogue lectionary; but why some pericopes should be Yahwistic and others Elohistic, it is not easy to conceive. He admits that his view cannot be carried through in detail; yet it is just of the kind which, if true, ought to be verifiable in detail. One has but to read consecutively the first three chapters of Genesis, and observe how the sudden change in the divine name coincides with a new vocabulary, representation, and spiritual atmosphere, in order to feel how paltry all such artificial explanations are in comparison with the hypothesis that the names are distinctive of different documents. The experience repeats itself, not perhaps quite so convincingly, again and again throughout the book; and though there are cases where the change of manner is not obvious, still the theory is vindicated in a sufficient number of instances to be worth carrying through, even at the expense of a somewhat complicated analysis, and a very few demands (see p. xlviii f.) on the services of a redactor to resolve isolated problems. (5) It was frankly admitted by Kuenen long ago (see Ond. i. pp. 59, 62) that the test of the divine names is not by itself a sufficient criterion of source or authorship, and that critics might sometimes err through a too exclusive reliance on this one phenomenon. Nevertheless the opinion can be maintained that the MT is far superior to the Vns., and that its use of the names is a valuable clue to the separation of documents. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction; and, however surprising it may appear to some, we can reconcile our minds to the belief that the