Elohist

And, uh, one of the theories, uh, behind biblical scholarship is that each of these sections of the Bible is written by another author who chooses to define, to refer, to represent the divine, um, through this other word, and that, as a result, has an ideology.

And the Elohist author is different from the, uh, Yahwist author, uh, in the way they perceive the world.

Um, Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that anything that, uh, that the, the limits of our world are the limits of our language, and if we can't say something, that thing doesn't exist.

But if we can say something, that things exist in the way we're- we're- we're saying it or- or we're stating it.

For those of us with Sunday school backgrounds, all of this makes sense.

However, historic scholarship demonstrates that these first five books were compiled from at least four distinct anonymous sources, respectively the Yahwist, the Eloist, the Deuteronomist, and the priestly sources.

all woven together by later biblical revisers between 450 and 350 BCE or AD, depending on your preference.

The New Testament is no better, as scholars have discovered that the canonical Gospels ostensibly penned by the original Fab Four, Marthew Mac, Bart and Finn.

So I would suggest that there is no Zitz im Leben for this as a moral tale or as a story bringing a religious imperative.

Bible scholars talk about the redaction of the Bible being organized by Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and priestly authors.

And they talk about the agendas reflected by these different layers of redaction.

And so they say some of the editors, they've written this, they've presented this story in a way that will endorse the the kingship, the monarchy, the Jewish monarchy, or they've written this in a way that endorses the Deuteronomistic laws, or they've written this in a way that authenticates the priesthood.

These legends have not hitherto received full justice, even when it has been recognized that they are legends.

Even the most superficial reader can distinguish for himself the chief original sources in Genesis from which the present redaction was constructed, now commonly called the writings of the Elohist, of the Jahvist, and of the Priestly Code.

Since the sources of the Elohist and the Jahvist were written down in the ninth or eighth century BC, some commentators have been disposed to think that the legends themselves originated in the main in the age of the Israelitish kingdom, and furnished therefore no revelations of primitive history.

But in reality, these legends are much older.

The tribal and race names which they preserve are almost all forgotten in other records.

Chapter five of The Legends of Genesis by Hermann Gunkel, translated by W.H. Carruth.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter five, Jahvist, Elohist, Jehovist, Later Collections.

John Bergsma and Brent Petry, I wanna actually quote from their book, uh, uh, The Catholic Introduction to the Old Testament, 'cause they're talking about this, uh, movement within the scholarship of the Old Testament, and they say, "Scholars at the end of the 19th century, under the influence of the philosopher George Ha- George W.F. Hegel and the naturalist Charles Darwin, were starting to view all of reality from an evolutionary perspective.

Uh, Wellhausen presented a coherent and apparently scientific account of the evolutionary development of Israelite religion from the simple personal faith of Abraham recounted by the Yahwist, to the formal distant God of the Elohist, to Deuteronomy's stringent imposition of covenant categories and law, to the immense complexity of the rituals, regulations, and liturgical apparatus of the priestly source.

This simple to complex view of development fit the prevailing Darwinian worldview and received an extremely favorable reception by many scholars of the day-

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