Full Text for Exodus- Volume 31 - The Lord's name was not known to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. But it seems from reading the book of Genesis that they did know God's name. How should we understand this? (Video)

ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #31 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> One of the things that struck me was the revelation of the name of the Lord again at the beginning of Chapter 6. In Verse 3 it says that the Lord's name was not known to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. But it seems from reading the book of Genesis that they did know God's name. How should we understand this? >> Well, Josh, you've stumbled upon one of the most important questions in the history of biblical interpretation. There have been several books that I can think of off the top of my head written just on this subject alone. And there are those who would argue that this question that you've just asked is really the foundation of all historical criticism. It's the basis for which historical criticism ends up with the theory that it ends up. And in fact, this involves more than this verse in Exodus 6:3 and the corresponding verse in Exodus Chapter 3. It also involves an important verse in the book of Genesis, Genesis Verse -- Chapter 4, Verse 26. So the question is really: How do we understand Exodus 6:3 in the light of Genesis 4:26? So let's read both of these and see what they say. In Genesis Chapter 4 we read this: "To Seth also a son was born and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name Yahweh." Clear-cut. It seems to indicate without any doubt that people were worshiping Yahweh by name, calling upon the name Yahweh from the time of Seth and Enosh. Very early in the history of mankind. But what does Exodus 6 say, Verse 3? There Yahweh says "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El-Shaddai but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them." So what do we have? It appears that there's a major contradiction here. On one hand Genesis says that people had known the name of Yahweh and had been worshiping God by that name since very early in human history. But in Exodus 6 Chapter 3 (sic) it clearly says that the name Yahweh was not known to the patriarchs. So how do we account for this discrepancy? Well, historical criticism deals with this discrepancy by attributing each of these three passages, Genesis 4, Exodus 3, and Exodus 6 to different sources. And they do it like this: They say Genesis 4 believes that the name Yahweh was known from -- basically from the beginning. And therefore, we'll call this source the Yahwist source. Exodus 3 says that the name Yahweh was revealed to Moses in the first discussion between God and Moses on Mount Sinai. This is the source that, according to critical scholars, most of the time uses the divine name ***Elioheim. So they call this the E source. And finally, they say Exodus 6:3 here, which takes the view that the name of Yahweh wasn't known until the time of Moses until the second conversation between Moses and God, this belongs to the priestly source or P. So the historical critical view is that we have three different statements of when the name Yahweh was known because we have three different sources. And the sources simply had different views about when the name was known. So according to historical criticism, we can distinguish between the sources up to Exodus 6 simply based on which divine name they used. If the name Yahweh occurs in the book of Genesis, it must be the J source. Because according to P, the name wasn't known then. But according to J, the name was known then and so forth. This is the common historical critical view. And some would argue that this question about the relationship between these two texts is the basis of the whole development of the historical critical theory of the text. But it's not the only theory. There's one that we might call a sort of moderate theory or middle of the road theory. And it's probably best presented in a book by Walter Moberly entitled "The Old Testament of the Old Testament." In this view Moberly argues that the name Yahweh was, indeed, revealed for the first time here in Exodus 6. And he accounts for the use of the name Yahweh in earlier texts not by saying they must be from different sources. But rather, by saying that the people after Moses' time were very comfortable with seeing God in those earlier texts as the same God who was revealed to Moses. And so they just applied the name Yahweh to that God sort of anachronistically, if you will. Moberly draws a parallel between this and Christian usage. He notes that Christians are very comfortable talking about Christ in the Old Testament, even though the name Jesus Christ doesn't actually occur in the Old Testament. So Moberly says just as Christians are comfortable seeing Christ in the Old Testament, those who followed after the time of Moses were quite comfortable seeing Yahweh in the Gods who went by another name as they were revealed to the patriarchs and so forth. Now, there are many conservatives who are pretty comfortable with Moses -- I'm sorry; with Moberly's answer to this question. And I think this is a satisfactory solution that avoids the problem of the historical critical approach to the text. I'm not entirely convinced that's the best answer, though. For one thing, I'm troubled by when the name Yahweh is used in direct quotations in the book of Genesis. I think it's fine in narratives to see the name Yahweh sort of projected backwards into the text like we might talk about Christ in the Old Testament. But I'm not convinced that when the text tells us that it's quoting exactly what someone says, that it's appropriate for us to suggest that that's been edited to insert the name Yahweh instead of what other name of God might have been there in that text. There is another slight variation on this. And that's to argue that the name of Yahweh was known to Seth and Enosh and those in the early period but somehow it was forgotten or lost so that by the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they didn't know the name Yahweh anymore. So when it occurs there in those texts, it's a projection backwards, like Moberly suggests. But the solution is that the name Yahweh was actually known in an even earlier period. The problem with that view -- and I guess I like that view a little better than Moberly's except that it does meet the same problem, the problem with the direct quotation where the direct quotation occurs in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and uses Yahweh. There I think we have a bit of a problem. So I think perhaps we should look for yet another solution. The most common traditional conservative view, the one that you find in most conservative commentaries, is to suggest that the name Yahweh was, indeed, known from the time of Seth and Enosh. And what's being said here in Exodus 6 Verse 3 is not just that the vocab term Yahweh was being introduced for the first time, but actually what's happening here was that a new understanding of who Yahweh is being revealed. So that the text means that when God says he didn't appear to them as Yahweh, he's saying that they didn't understand what the name Yahweh meant. They hadn't understood who Yahweh was. They may have known the vocab term, but they didn't understand the significance of the name Yahweh. Well, that's a possible answer. But the problem with most conservative commentaries is they just stop at that point. They don't answer the obvious question that follows from that. Namely, if we claim that a new understanding of Yahweh's character is being revealed in this text, then we have to be able to answer the question: What is that new character that's being revealed? In other words, show me from the text that we're learning something new about God that we didn't know before. Well, let's see if we can do that. Let's turn to this text, Exodus 6, and look at Chapters -- rather, Verses 6 to 8. There we read, "Say, therefore, to the people of Israel 'I am Yahweh and I will bring you out from under the burden of the Egyptians. And I will deliver you from slavery to them. And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm with great acts of judgement. And I will take you to be my people and I will be your God. And you will know that I am Yahweh, your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. And I will give it to you for a possession. For I am Yahweh.'" Well, what do we learn from this text? Three times in this text we read "I am Yahweh." And between those three times we have a series of verbs and statements that describe Yahweh as the redeemer. I will bring you out. I will deliver you. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. I will take you to be my people and I will be your God. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. And I will give it to you. So here Israel is, indeed, learning something new about the character of Yahweh. They are learning that he is the redeemer. There was no revelation of Yahweh as the redeemer in the book of Genesis. They knew Yahweh as a caregiver, as a guide, as a protector. But they did not know Yahweh as redeemer yet. It's the revelation of Yahweh as redeemer that dominates the first part of the book of Exodus here as we learn for the first time that God is redeemer by the fact that he comes down to Egypt and redeems Israel. So can we make a reasonable argument that there is some new aspect of Yahweh's character that is being revealed here? I believe that we can. I believe that we can demonstrate from the text that there's a close association between the name Yahweh and the redemptive mission that God is defining for Moses in this text. And by the way, there's one other thing that perhaps we should mention about this text in relation to Exodus 3 and Exodus 6. Remember that the name Yahweh was introduced in Exodus 3, as well. And when we talked about that text, we emphasized that that text looked backwards toward the book of Genesis. It emphasized the continuity of what God was doing with what he had done before. And what he had promised to the patriarchs. Here in Exodus 6, the divine name is revealed. But the emphasis is not on the continuity with what God had done in the past. The emphasis is on the new thing that God is doing in the future here. So I think another aspect to understanding the relationship between these two texts is to recognize that while God reveals his name in Exodus 3, it's not the main point in the text. And he does it in the context of connecting backwards. Here in Exodus 6 the revelation of the name is the main point of the text. And God does it from the perspective of looking forward to the new thing that he is doing for his people Israel. Namely, accomplishing their redemption. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***