Page:Genesis I-II- (IA genesisiii00grot).pdf/42
best evidence we find of this is in Ex., VI. 14, where the verse closes with the words, "and my name Yahveh I have not made known to them," and in First Kings, XVIII., 21, Elijah addresses the people in a harangue, where he proposes to test the power of the national gods and says: "If Yahveh is the powerful one, follow him, and if Baal, follow him," and throughout the whole transaction we find Yahveh, and Baal placed in opposition as two personalities, claiming a certain title, one of which was named Baal and the other Yahveh. The English word "Lord" translates the term Adonai, which the Israelites substitute for Yahveh, as that holy name was declared by priestly authority unpronounceable. Another important deviation from the authorized version is that ha-adam is consistently translates "the man" throughout, whereas the authorized version, from Gen. II., 19, to the end of the history of the first man, uses the proper name "Adam," for which there is no warrant whatever, as the Hebrew word is the same as before. The reasons of King James's translators were undoubtedly doctrinal, and these can have no weight in true criticism. Other minor differences need not be specified, since they are often modernizations of the obsolete forms of the version. They have all been made for the sake of accuracy, not forgetting that, with many people, early influences have invested the antiquated English of the Version with a certain sacredness, which dims the impartial judgment and prevents the reader from applying the Holy Writ, the critical acumen, and also the candor with which books, not invested with such sacredness, are read and criticised.
If we now turn to the contents of the above text and translation, we wonder how they ever could have been conceived to be one continuous narrative. That we have there two distinct narratives of the Creation would never have been doubted, had they been found inserted in any other ancient book. They differ in almost every particular, in the arrangement, in the facts, in the name of the Deity, in their object and, lastly, in the