E's Back

When looking for clues to the authorship of any passage or chapter in the Book of Genesis the first thing a critical scholar looks for is the name the author uses for God. J always used Yahweh(Jehovah). E never used that name. Why E declined to use the sacred name concerns his historical relationship with that God. But that is a subject for another time. The author did, however, provide us with a legend to explain his choice not to use the name of Yahweh in Genesis; he says that the patriarchs never heard of the name of Yahweh:

Ex. 6:2 - And Elohim spake onto Moses, and said unto him, I am Yahweh, and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac and unto Jacob, by the name of El Shaddai, but by my name, Yahweh, was I not known to them.

Therefore, in order to preserve this literary illusion, E scrupulously avoided using the sacred name anywhere in his writings that preceded this revelation. Any hint of an exception to this rule that a scholar might discover would demand an explanation. One such exception appears in Gen. 22.

The story of the sacrifice of Isaac is an E story. We know this mainly for two reasons. First because its author calls God by the term 'Elohim'. And second, because this is a story about the making of the Covenant between Abraham and Yahweh. It could not have been written by J because we have his version of the making of the Covenant at Gen. 15. But if this truly is an E story how do we explain the use of the sacred name in verses 11 thru 16a?

To understand what's going on here you have to visualize the historical realities of the Bible's construction. There once existed two versions of the history of Israel from creation to the division of the Kingdom of David. One written by J the other by E. They were preserved for hundreds of years in their separate scrolls. One could read either of these scrolls complete and never realize that there were contradictions between them. Then, at a time not certain, someone decided to combine the histories into a single book. Whoever that brilliant person may have been he soon found that this was not going to be an easy task.

Scholars call this man (or these men) the Redactor; "R". He chose to keep both creation stories by running them concurrently. He was able to preserve both flood stories by weaving them together to look like a single story. These are the kinds of choices R had to make and he carried them out with incredible insight and skill. It is awesome to think that this seemingly impossible task was accomplished so flawlessly that it went undiscovered for two thousand years.

But R came up against some challenges that simply defied resolution without drastic surgery. He had J's story of Isaac's life. In that story Isaac grew up, married, had children and lived to a ripe old age. He had to make that story agree with E's story of Isaac's life. In that story Isaac is taken to a mountain while still a boy or a young man and put to death by his father.

How do you fix a problem like that?!

R chose to save the boy's life. It was not the only choice he had but for his own reasons he opted for sending an angel of Yahweh to the rescue. When we remove the passages concerning Yahweh and his angel (11 thru 16a) it is not hard to imagine what E had originally written there.

The evidence that R devised the rescue passages is quite conclusive. To begin with we know that E would never have used the name Yahweh before the revelation of that name to Moses. Additionally we have Abraham's statement that G0D would provide a LAMB for the sacrifice (meaning Isaac himself) while in R's literary device YAHWEH provides a RAM instead. Then, after R's insertions, we pick up again with E's original in which God says "...Because thou hast not withheld thine son.." and "...Because thou hast done this thing...". There is little room for mincing in these words. The deed was done. And finally we have verse 19: "And Abraham returned to his young men...". Not Abraham AND Isaac?

There is other evidence to confirm that R inserted the forged passages. Some of it is spectacular. Stay tuned.

By the way. You won't be able to see this yourself so you'll have to take my word for it - Isaac never appears alive in an E story after Gen. 22.