Documentary Hypothesis: The Revelation of YHWH’s Name Continues to Enlighten

Many theories have been suggested, but none has garnered wide approval.

In much of the biblical period, the name YHWH was likely pronounced as written. In the late biblical period, however, it became taboo to pronounce the name, and it was replaced with a surrogate. The literature from the Dead Sea Scrolls already shows this tendency very clearly, though Adonai was only one of several surrogates used.

Conjectures sur les mémoires originaux, dont il paraît que Moïse s’est servi pour composer le livre de la Genèse.

In his five-volume Introduction to the Old Testament (Einleitung in das Alte Testament), pub. 1780-1783.

In his two-volume Contributions towards an Introduction to the Old Testament (Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament), pub. 1806-7.

D does not include, however, the very final verses of Deuteronomy.

In his The Sources of Genesis and the Nature of their Composition Re-examined (Die Quellen der Genesis und die Art ihrer Zusammensetzung. Von neuem untersucht), pub. 1853.

For a clear analysis of some of Hupfeld’s contributions to source criticism, see the opening chapters of Joel Baden, J, E, and the Redaction of the Pentateuch (FAT 68; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009).

For a color-coded, graphic display of all four sources in one version of the Documentary Hypothesis (the exact details of the divisions differ from scholar to scholar), see: Richard Elliott Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed (New York: Harper Collins, 2003).

This is the text in the Masoretic Text and Samaritan Pentateuch, but the Septuagint has Elohim (θεός).

Presumably, he is referring to Yeshua ben Yehudah (in Arabic: Abu al-Faraj Furqan ibn Asad), the 11th century Karaite biblical exegete.

This method of answering the problem is very similar to some modern attempts to explain the appearance of the term Philistine in the Abraham story.

This interpretation was inspired by Rashi’s gloss of the verse, “I appeared – to the patriarchs,” although it seems quite certain that this was not Rashi’s intention in that comment.

R. Abraham does not reference Rashbam by name and it is possible that he has another commentator in mind, but with the same interpretation. In addition to these two, R. Abraham also references a comment by Yonah ibn Janach (c.990-c.1050), who says that the phrase is an oath, not a statement of fact. Unfortunately, I do not know where R. Abraham gets this from since in ibn Janach’s work, under the root ידע, he interprets the phrase as meaning “revealed” and interprets the verse to mean that God revealed Godself to Moses more fully than he did to the Patriarchs but that, nevertheless, they knew the name YHWH.

This approach seems very close to that of ibn Ezra, Ramban and ibn Kaspi.

Cassuto is famous for being an opponent of the Documentary Hypothesis.

For a modern defense of the traditional view, see Rabbi Yehuda Rock, “Knowing the Name of God.”

The sources referenced above where God uses the name El Shaddai all come from the P source as well.

That P believes the special name was only introduced now represent how the period of the exodus and after was fundamentally differentiated from what preceded it, both because of the uniqueness of Moses and the reality of the looming covenant at Sinai and construction of the Tabernacle, in which YHWH would dwell among the people of Israel.

According to many source critical scholars, in E, while the characters use only the name Elohim when speaking about God, until the revelation of the name YHWH in Exodus 3, the narrator’s voice sometimes uses YHWH even earlier than this. Other scholars debate this point. A unique view is that of Tzemah Yoreh (The First Book of God, BZAW 402 [Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010], 6), who argues that the revelation of the name YHWH to Moses in Exodus 3 is a Yahwistic redaction of E, and that E uses only Elohim and never YHWH throughout its entire corpus.