14
The Fundamentals Americans to their president. In ordinary usage, “George V.”, the king,” and “King George” are synonymous in their mean ing. Similarly “Taft,” “the president,” and “President Taft” are used by Americans during his term of office to indicate an identical concept. So it was with the Hebrews. “Jehovah” was the name, “Elohim” the title, and “Jehovah Elohim”—Lord God—signified nothing more. Now on con sulting the evidence it appears that while in Genesis and the first three chapters of Exodus (where this clue was supposed to be most decisive) Jehovah occurs in the Hebrew text 148 times, in 118 of these places other texts have either Elohim or Jehovah Elohim. In the same section, while Elohim alone occurs 179 times in the Hebrew, in 49 of the passages one or the other designation takes its place; and in the second and third chapters of Genesis where the Hebrew text has Jehovah Elohim (LORD God) 23 times, there is only one passage in which all the texts are unanimous on this point. These facts, which are now amply verified, utterly de stroy the value of the clue which the higher critics have all along ostentatiously put forward to justify their division of the Pentateuch into conflicting E and J documents, and this the critics themselves are now compelled to admit. The only answer which they are able to give is in Dr. Skinner’s words that the analysis is correct even if the clue which led to it be false, adding “even if it were proved to be so altogether fallacious, it would not be the first time that a wrong clue has led to true results.” On further examination, in the light of present knowl edge (as Wiener and Dahse abundantly show), legitimate criticism removes a large number of the alleged difficulties which are put forward by higher critics and renders of no value many of the supposed clues to the various documents. We have space to notice but one or two of these. In the Massoretic text of Ex. 18: 6 we read that Jethro says to Moses, “I thy father-in-law Jethro am come,” while in the seventh
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