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The Fundamentals intensely religious books and laws, but were at the same time deliberate inventors and falsifiers of history as well as deceiv ers of the people. What such views imply regarding the character of God who is behind it all we shall consider later. Space does not permit me to more than refer to the J. E. P. analysis. That certain documents existed and were ultimately combined to make up the five books of Moses no one need doubt. It in no way detracts from their inspiration or authen ticity to ■do so, nor does it in any way deny the essentially Mosaic origin of the legislation. But the J. E. P. analysis on the basis of the different names for God I found to require such an arbitrary handling and artificial manipulation of the text, to need the help of so many Redactors whose methods and motives are wholly inexplicable, with a multitude of ex ceptions to account for, that I was convinced the analysis could not be maintained. Astruc’s clue in Exodus 6 :3, which was the starting point for the analysis, cannot be made to decide the time of the use of the names of God, for the text is not perfectly certain. There is considerable difference between the two readings, “was known,*” “made myself known.” Even if God had not previously revealed Himself by the name Jahveh, that does not prove the name unknown or that God was not known by that name. And even if he had so revealed Him self, the earlier record would not be less authentic, for they were either written or rewritten and edited after the revela tion to Moses in the light of a fuller revelation. Thus it was made perfectly clear that El, Elohim, El-Elyon, El-Shaddai, were identical with Jahveh. The methods of the critics in regarding the earlier his tories as little more than fiction and invention, to palm off certain laws as genuinely Mosaic, found some lodgment in my mind for a time. But the more I considered it, the more I was convinced that it was the critics who were the inventors and falsifiers. They were the ones who had such a facile imagination, they could “manufacture” history at their “green
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