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 יהוה 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. 62ff.) and E (Ex. 313ff.) 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.[1] 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 יהוה from the first.[2] From Ex. 6 onwards P regularly uses יהוה; E's usage fluctuates between א׳ and י׳ (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.[3] 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.[4]
- ↑ A curious attempt to turn the edge of this argument will be found in the art. of H. M. Wiener referred to above (BS, 1909, 158 ff.).
- ↑ For a partial exception, see on 426.
- ↑ De Wette, Beiträge zur Einleitung in das AT (1806-7); Riehm, Gesetzgebung Mose's im Lande Moab (1854); al.
- ↑ Die geschichtliche Bücher des ATs (1866). Graf did not at first see it necessary to abandon the earlier date of the narratives of P; for an account of his subsequent change of opinion in correspondence with Kuenen, as well as the anticipations of his final theory by Vatke, Reuss, and others, we must refer to Kue. Hex. xix ff., or Ho.'s Einleitung, especially p. 64 ff.
