Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/24

* ELMSLEY. 10 ELOHIST AND YAHWIST. Oxford, and in 1823 was made principal of Saint Alban Hall, Oxford, and Camden profes- sor of ancient history at the university. He vis- ited Italy in search of classical manuscripts, and after devoting the winter of 1818 to researches at the Laurentian Library in Florence, assisted Sir Humphry Davy in deciphering the papyri found in Herculaneiim. He is remembered chiefly for his critical edition of several dramas of Eu- ripides and Sophocles. Consult Elmsleiana Critiea (Cambridge, 1833). EL-OBEID, el-6-bad', or IL-OBEID. The capital of Kordofan.. a division of the Egyptian Sudan, in latitude 12 c 20' X. and longitude It consists of a number of villages in- habited by distinct races (Map: Africa, G 3). There are a number of mosques and an old Catholic church. In its general appearance the town is unattractive, and the trade, quite con- siderable before the Mahdi uprising, is now insignificant. The population is estimated at over 18,000. and consists of Arabs and Nubians. ELOBEY, a'lo-ba'e, ISLANDS. Two small islands belonging to Spain, situated off the Guinea coast, Africa, in Corisco Bay, at the mouth of the .Muni River, in latitude 0° 57' X., longitude 9° 30' E. Elobey Grande, the larger. is of much less importance than Elobey Chico, where several factories have been established, the first dating from 1872. Botli islands are tlat, the smaller being well wooded. There is a Spanish missionary school on Elobey Chico. Population, in 1000, 331. ELOCUTION (Lat. elocutio, from eloqui, to speak out. from c, out + loqui, to speak). The art of effective speaking, more especially of pub- lic speaking. It regards solely the utterance or delivery ; w bile the wider art of oratory, of which elocution is a branch, takes account also of the matter spoken. See READING. ELOHIM, el-o-hcm' (Heb.. gods, plural of etiiah, God, Ar. 'il&h, Aramaic elah, Assyr. iln, god). One of the names by which Yahweh, the na- tional deity of the Hebrews, was known. It signi- fies, like el, adon, and in a measure haul, "power,' and the attachment of the plural ending serve-, as it often does in the Semitic languages, which have various peculiar uses different from modern grammatical notion-, to express the idea of greatness, supremacy, and the like. Elohim is, ore, equivaleni to 'the greal Eloah' — the Eloah, or powerful deity par excellence. Already mi tin I, I el-Amarna letters (0.1400 B.C.) we find in letters addressed by Palestinian officials to ian king il&ni, the plural of the As- syrian ilu, 'god.' used much in the same way as Elohim is in the Old Testament. The use, if not tin- introduction, of Elohim as a description of Yahweh (Jehovah) seem to belong to the nor- thern Hebrew domain rather than to the .mil t :ill event-, in northern literary sources we encounter it earlier than in the south. So the col of creation and deluge mi native-, early ind, and traditions of the pa in (he northern king- dom probabl] in the eighth or possibly the ninth Elohim,' •■ hi ri, i he parallel collet ted ... thai originated in the south i- characterized by the use of 'Yah- i ■ ed t hal t lie from ;i desire to m oid t lie onnected with 'Yahweh,' which is more in the nature of a personal name. Subsequently, as the conceptions connected with Jehovah became spiritualized, as it were, largely through the influence of the prophets, the objections to the use of Yahweh disappear, and in the post-exilic period Y'ahweh becomes a common designation, though as a trace of the old feeling against its use, the view arises that Yahweh is too sacred a name to be employed on ordinary occasions, and it gives way to various descriptive epithets and subsequently to disguises. See Elohist and Yahwist. EL'OHIST AND YAHWIST, or Jehovist. Terms adopted by certain modern biblical schol- ars to denote the authors of two literary works which they believe to have been used as his- torical sources in the composition of the Penta- teuch as we have it, and to have been embodied in it. The terms are purely conventional names assigned because the one source is supposed to be characterized by the use of Elohim (q.v.) as the designation of the national deity of the He- brews; the other by the use of Yahweh (see Elo- him, Yahweh), which is the specific, and as it were personal, designation of the national deity. Commonly both the works and their authors are referred to as E ( = Elohist ) and J ( = Jehovist ). According to the views of such critics, the work of the Yahwist is, in all probability, the older. In its original form it represented an attempt to give a history of the Hebrew theocracy down to the permanent occupation of the West Jordan district by the Hebrew tribes. It began with the traditions regarding the beginning of the world, related the current stories of early mankind, etc., the narratives of the patriarchs, the op- pression in Egypt, and the Exodus, the revelation at Jlount Sinai, the wanderings in the wilder- ness, the death of Moses, who is succeeded by Joshua, and under the latter the work of con- quest is actively taken in hand. While, however, presenting an outline of his people's history, the purpose of the original compiler of the legends, traditions, and historical recollections was to make his work serve as an illustration of Yah- wch's relationship to His chosen people, and of His providential guidance as seen in this history. As a religious history, therefore, it begins with creation to show that at the beginning of things Yahweh was already in existence and that it was He who made all things. This Yahwistic com- pilation has. however, passed through several hands. Even as traced in the Pentateuch by means of literary criticism, it no longer appears in its original form (though we can still deter- mine to a certain extent what that form was), but represents the result of rearrangement and adjustment by several hands, so that it has be- come customary among scholars to refer the Yahwistic history not to a single writer, but to a school of Yahwistic writers. In its original form the Vahwistic document was a product of the northern kingdom, but in its revision it has pas-ed through the hands of writers whose point of view was thai of the southern kingdom. These distinctions manifest themselves in certain de- tails "i the storie oi tic patriarchs, and in the greater or lesser prominence accorded to the old sanctuaries of the north and south respec- tivelj It i- not possible to assign any definite date to tl impilation of the yahwistic history. The -I date assigned i- the age of Solomon