in E. Where parallels are sufficiently distinct to show a tendency, it is found in several instances that J's objectivity of treatment has succeeded in preserving the archaic spirit of a legend which in E is transformed by the more refined sentiment of a later age. The best example is J's picture of Hagar, the intractable, indomitable Bedawi woman (ch. 16), as contrasted with E's modernised version of the incident (218ff.), with its affecting picture of the mother and child all but perishing in the desert. So again, E (ch. 20) introduces an extenuation of Abraham's falsehood about his wife which is absent from the older narrative of J (1210ff.).
It is not surprising, considering the immense variety of material comprised in both documents, that the palpable literary differences reduce themselves for the most part to a preference for particular phrases and turns of expression in the one recension or the other. The most important case is, of course, the distinctive use (in the pre-Mosaic period) of Yahwe in J and Elohim in E.[1] But round this are grouped a number of smaller linguistic differences which, when they occur in any degree of profusion in a consecutive passage, enable us to assign it with confidence to one or other of the sources.
The divine names.—While the possibility of error in the Massoretic
textual tradition is fully recognised, cases of inadvertence in the use of
- ↑ This, it is true, is more than a mere matter of phraseology; in the case of E, it is the application of a theory of religious development which connected the revelation of the name Yahwe with the mission of Moses (Ex. 313-15). It is now generally held that the original E continued to use Elohim after the revelation to Moses, and that the occurrences of Yahwe in the later history belong to secondary strata of the document. On either view the choice of the general name of deity is difficult to account for. Procksch regards it as due to the influence of the great monotheistic movement headed by Elijah; but that is not probable. The inspiring motive of Elijah's crusade was precisely jealousy for Yahwe, the national God of Israel. Gu., on the other hand, thinks it arose from the fact that the legends were largely of Canaanite and polytheistic origin; and it is certainly the case that in the patriarchal history E contains several strong traces of a polytheistic basis of the narratives (2810ff. 322. 3 357 etc.). But that Elohim had a monotheistic sense to the mind of the Elohistic writers is not to be doubted (against Eerdmans).
