236 VERY REY. THE DEAX OF CANTERBURY^ OX POSITION AND 



years pieviouslT Dahse published an article entitled " Textual 

 and Critical Objections in Eeference to the Starting Point of the 

 Present Pentateuchal Criticisro," and since then he has pursued 

 the same line of inquiry with a thoroughness and a masterly 

 scholarsliip wliich are acknowledged by Dr. Skinner, as well as by 

 his German critics. The cardinal point of liis criticism had 

 been indicated already by Klostermann and Lepsius, and by the 

 much lamented Enghsh scholar Kedpath, and it has been recently 

 acknowledged by AVellhausen to constitute " a sore point " in 

 his theory. It consists in the simple, and it must be added, 

 astonishing, fact that the theory has been worked out on the 

 basis of a Hebrew text which had not been critically examined. 

 It starts from Astruc's observation that varying designations 

 of God — Elohim, Jehovah or Jahve, and the two combined, are 

 used in the Pentateuch ; and the inference was drawn that 

 two documents had been combined, one by a writer who 

 preferred the term Jehovah, the other by one who preferred the 

 name Elohim, and this usage was deemed so characteristic that 

 the one writer has always been called by the critics the Jehovist 

 and the other the Eloliist. Sometimes the two divine names 

 were combined, and sometimes there appeared exceptions to the 

 general usage in each dociunent ; and to meet these exceptions 

 it was assumed that there must have heen a third person con- 

 cerned in the process, who combined the documents and edited 

 them, and who is generally styled the Picdactor. It is also 

 alleged that the documents thus crenerallv distinguished from 

 each other by the use of the di\ine names are marked by other 

 uniform characteristics, in matters of style and vocabulary. 

 But the primary criterion for the division was at first, and 

 has continued to be. the use of the divine names ; and 

 Dr. Wildeboer, one of the most eminent critics, is quoted by 

 Dr. Troelstra — in his valuable tract on The Name of God in 

 the Pentateuch, lately pubHshed by the S.P.C.K. — as saying that 

 the emplo^Taent of distinct words or expressions furnishes an 

 altogether insutficient ground for the theory of sources, and " that 

 one has then only a firm foundation when, in the history of the 

 period before the revelation to ^Vloses, the author uses for the 

 name of God, Jahve or Eloliim." 



Xow the surprising fact brought to light by the present 

 situation is that the critics have to confess that the Massoretic 

 Hebrew text, on the basis of which these observations and 

 deductions were made, had been assiuned to be trustworthy 

 for the purpose, although the text of the Septuagint offers so 

 many variations from the Massorelic text in the use of the 



