Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/72

 ticular, it brought to light a fact which at once explains why Genesis presents a simpler problem to analysis than the rest of the Pent., and furnishes a final proof that the avoidance of by two of the sources was not accidental, but arose from a theory of religious development held and expressed by both writers. For both P (Ex. 6$2ff.$) and E (Ex. 3$13ff.$) connect the revelation of the Tetragrammaton with the mission of Moses; while the former states emphatically that God was not known by that name to the patriarchs. Consistency demanded that these writers should use the generic name for Deity up to this point; while J, who was bound by no such theory, could use from the first. From Ex. 6 onwards P regularly uses ; E's usage fluctuates between and (perhaps a sign of different strata within the document), so that the criterion no longer yields a sure clue to the analysis.

It does not lie within the scope of this Introduction to trace the extension of these lines of cleavage through the other books of the Hexateuch; and of the reflex results of the criticism of the later books on that of Genesis only two can here be mentioned. One is the recognition of the unique position and character of Deuteronomy in the Pent., and the dating of its promulgation in the eighteenth year of Josiah. Although this has hardly any direct influence on the criticism of Genesis, it is an important landmark in the Pentateuch problem, as furnishing a fixed date by reference to which the age of the other documents can partly be determined. The other point is the question of the date of P. The preconception in favour of the antiquity of this document (based for the most part on the fact that it really forms the framework of the Pent.) was nearly universal among scholars down to the publication of We.'s Geschichte Israels, i., in 1878; but it had already been shown to be groundless by Graf[D] and Kuenen in 1866-69.