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, יהוה 143 t. + אלהים
177 t. + י׳ א׳ 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 κς and θς greater than between יהוה and אלהים, or even
between י׳ and א׳, and (b) a change of divine names more apt to occur in
translation than in transcription, but (c) the distinction between a
proper name יהוה and a generic אלהים is much less likely to have been
overlooked in copying than that between two appellatives κύριος and
θεός. An instructive example is 426, where G κύριος ὁ θεός 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 θεός for יהוה 21 times, and
κύριος ὁ θεός 19 times (40 in all), there are only 4 cases of κύριος and 6 of
κύριος ὁ θεός for אלהים (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 θεός over the less familiar κύριος.
