An examination of the stories associated with the different names of God used in the Bible reveal that the different names correspond to separate and internally consistent original sources which were then conflated into a single manuscript we now know as the Bible. For a brief introduction to this concept you can consult the short pieces on the Elohim and Yahweh, and the two stories of the flood or the two stories of creation both of which are good examples of ‘historical' differences, as well as contradictions in ideology found when comparing Elohim versions of a certain event with the corresponding Yahweh narrative. Separating the names of the deity in these cases reveals two entirely separate, coherent and internally consistent narratives.
In Genesis chapter 4 verse 25 after the genealogical list of the descendants of Cain, the source seems to return to the original Yahwist account, as is indicated by the familiar play on words. We jump back to the time of Adam and Eve. Eve had another son and named him Seth ('appointed') for God had appointed him as a replacement for Abel, whom Cain killed. Seth became the father of Enosh, and in the most interesting line in this section of Genesis, we are told that at that time people began calling on the name of Yahweh. This line was written by the ancient Yahweh school of prophecy, and it was going to prove problematic for the priestly redactors who had the task of editing together the variant source materials of the Bible into a single composite work.
An analysis of the Bible reveals that separate and often contradictory sources were composed by people who belonged to different sects in the earliest forms of Judaism (and Christianity as well). This should come as no surprise because even today you find Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism, and there are often further subdivisions within divisions in every religious movement on the earth. It is a common fundamentalist distortion of the scriptures which suggests that the Bible, from start to finish, preserved a kind of unity of ideology that could only prove ‘its divine origins'. What they mean is that the extremely conservative, right wing fundamentalist view point was ‘divine' and they then attempt to suggest that the Bible gives a big thumbs up to the fundamentalist viewpoint by being consistently right wing in religion, from cover to cover. This is false and one of the purposes of my composition of this daily Bible study is to reveal the sources, in particular the nullified, denied, hidden radical sources that also compose the Bible. (See my piece on Jeremiah for a brief introduction to this radicalism in prophecy, and then for an introduction to radicalism in the early church, consult the short piece, a summary of the gospel of Mark.
The Bible is ‘contradictory' because, then as now, religion has always been composed of variant movements and sects, and it is the fact that these variant movements were all edited together in the finished manuscript which is responsible for the Bible being inconsistent and found to contain contradictions. The insistence by the religious right that the Bible is unified, and contains no sources, is just a political argument, and an attempt to push their agenda and ideology, and ONLY their agenda and ideology, front and center under the ruse that the Bible is a uniformly right wing document, thus giving them the singular authority of exclusive, and exclusionary, divine blessing. Any radical or liberal or left leaning voices found on the pages of the Bible are simply nullified and silenced to maintain this fiction, in a manner similar to the way the church silenced such living voices throughout history (whenever the church found itself in a position of power which would allow such power plays). I point this out (and do so many times on this site) because the discussion that follows assumes that an individual is familiar with the concept that the Bible is composed of source materials that were edited together.
According to the Yahweh source, at the very beginnings of human history people began calling on the name of Yahweh. According to the Yahwist tradition, in their version of the stories of the Patriarchs, the earliest ancestors of the Jewish people also called upon the name of Yahweh.
"Thence he (Abraham) went to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with
Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to Yahweh and called on the
name of Yahweh."
(Genesis chapter 12 verse 8)
"So he built an altar there and called upon the name of Yahweh, and pitched his
tent there. And there Isaac's servants dug a well."
(Genesis chapter 26 verse 25)
The Bible is edited in a very strange fashion. On the one hand evidence can be found that an attempt was made to harmonize inconsistent sources. The sources were nevertheless preserved and this fact rendered the attempted harmonizations fruitless. (See the story of David and Goliath for one example of this strange and unsuccessful attempt to harmonize conflicting stories.) In editing the various traditions that compose the book of Exodus an attempt was made to harmonize the conflicting accounts associated with the variant names for the deity among the various early traditions through editorial interpolations which purported to explain the diversity. For example, in a first example of this sort of thing, in Exodus chapter 3, Moses meets with the Elohim (plural) and asks what the name of the deity is to whom he is speaking. His question assumes a polytheistic environment in which many gods exist, making it necessary to find out the name of the deity to whom one is speaking. In response he is given the compound name ‘Yahweh the Elohim'. The phrase translated ‘I AM' is a word play on the name ‘Yahweh'. An attempt is made in this passage to bind together both the name of the priestly deity (the Elohim) and the name of Yahweh.
"The Elohim said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'"
The Elohim also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel, ‘Yahweh, the Elohim of your fathers, the Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Isaac, and the Elohim of Jacob, has sent me to you': this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
(Exodus chapter 3 verse 14)
A second passage is found in Exodus which is a doublet of Moses and the encounter with the deity. In this passage an attempt is made to explain the variant traditions associated with the different names for the deity by suggesting, incongruously, that in past times the deity was only known by the name ‘El Shaddai' and kept the name Yahweh secret, not revealing it to the Patriarchs. The term ‘Elohim' is plural (‘the gods') as revealed in the phrase ‘let us make humans in our image' associated with the name in Genesis chapter 1. There is a singular form of the term (‘Eloha') which appears infrequently in the Bible, most notably in the late wisdom tradition in the book of Job. The term ‘el' is another singular form often used in compound terms. (In English we might say ‘God the god (‘el') of Israel.' The word ‘el' is a generic designation, borrowed from the Ugaritic, and simply means ‘a god' (any god) and ‘Shaddai' means ‘almighty'. The compound term is used in the following passage from Exodus as an editorial bridge and is intended to explain why the name ‘Yahweh' begins to take precedence in the narratives from this point and also to explain (unsuccessfully) why there were multiple names for the deity (while avoiding admitting that there were multiple traditions). This is another odd example of the types of attempted harmonizations of conflicting sources we often find in the Bible, and that it does not succeed in harmonizing anything is best demonstrated by taking a look back over Genesis where we are told that almost from the time of Adam everyone, including the Patriarchs was calling on the name of Yahweh. We can also make note of the fact that the Elohim traditions were obviously the production of a completely different community.
"And the Elohim said to Moses, "I am Yahweh.
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."
(Exodus chapter 6 verse 2)
A Unified Field Theory
The Unified Field Theory
is also available as a zip file -> unified.zip
Introduction :The Pioneer Effect and the New Physics. A brief description of the new physics required to explain the 'Pioneer Effect', which is the constant deceleration of space craft as they fly through space.