Knowing God By Name

Adonai · 'elohim

D.  The Elohistic Interpretation of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH)

In a section of his account of the exodus,  the Elohist introduces 
an interpretation of the divine Name.  The central importance of this 
passage for the understanding Israelite history, tradition and religion 
has generated much discussion and debate.  The heart of the episode 
reads as follows:

Then Moses said to El(ohim), "I am to go, then, to the sons of Israel 
and say to them, 'The god of your fathers has sent me to you.'  
But if they ask me what his name is, what am I to tell them?  
And El(ohim) said to Moses, "I am becoming what I am Becoming.  
This," he added, "is what you must say to the sons of Israel: 'I am 
Becoming has sent me to you.'"  

And El(ohim) also said to Moses, "You are to say  to the sons of Israel: 
'YHWH, the god of your fathers, the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, 
and the god of Jacob, has sent me to you."  This is my name for all time; 
by this Name I shall be invoked for all generations to come.

The  unusual  rendering of the Hebrew, 'eyeh aser 'eyeh as 
"I am becoming what I am Becoming" is informed by the fact that both 
the form and content of this formulaic expression finds it closest parallel 
not in Semitic thought but in Hamitic or Egyptian ontological, 
mythic speculation.  Its formulation, based on theological word-play on the 
verb "to be(come)," not only reveals that we are dealing with ontology in a 
strict sense, but also that such a formulation is characteristically Egyptian.  
Consider, for example, this comparable formulation taken from an Egyptian 
grammar regarding the verb, xeper ("to be[come]"):

xeper-a xeper xeperu

"I am the one who came into being
 [and] who made come into being 
the beings who have come into being." 

We note three similarities to the formula found in the Elohist's tale.  
First, the divine name is predicated upon a repetition of a verb, the Egyptian 
version repeating it three times as subject, verb and object while the Hebrew 
version repeats it twice with the second occurrence functioning syntactically as an 
objective, subordinate predication introduced by the relative particle, aser.  
Although the syntax varies, the two formulations are similar in the central 
importance and repetition of the verb.  Second, the verbs themselves, adjusting 
for the different cultures that produced them, are roughly semantic equivalents, 
both meaning "to be" or "to become."  Third, both formulations are theological 
proclamations, intended to expose essential characteristics of a deity based upon a 
distinctively Egyptian, ontological perspective.  As such, it stands apart from typical 
Semitic understandings of divinity, but is demonstrably at home within Egyptian 
religious tradition.

Another extract may serve to illustrate the central role that the  idea of xeper 
plays in Egyptian thought:

The Book of Knowing of the rollings of Ra, and the overthrowing of Apep.

[These are] the words which the god Neb-er-tcher spoke after he had come into 
being:

"I am he who came into being in the form of Khepera, and I am the creator of 
everything which came into being;  now the things which I had created, and which 
came forth out of my mouth after I had come into being myself, were exceedingly 
many.  The sky (or, heaven) had not come into being, the earth did not exist, and 
the children of the earth, and the creeping things, had not been made at this time.  
I myself raise them from out of the Nu, from a state of helpless inertness."

Upon consideration, it is not surprising that we should find a fragment of Egyptian 
ontological thought embedded in the Elohist's narrative since the tradition is ascribed 
to Moses, the Egyptian advocate and eventual leader of the Hebrew slaves.  The 
style and content of the formulaic interpretation of the Name is compatible with 
the conclusion that we are dealing with a teaching that did indeed descend from 
Moses as something of a Levitical catechism that ingeniously sums up the essential 
teaching of Moses' understanding of God as adapted to Hebrew Yahwism.  As such, 
the formulaic understanding has become "demythologized," stripped of Egyptian 
mythology and distilled into a purely ontological statement that become compatible 
with Hebrew culture among the relatively esoteric religious traditions of the Levites.  
That the tradition lived on until the post-exilic era is shown by the fact that the 
Priestly Writer knew and utilized the Memphite Theology in his creation account, 
di!
stinguished by its notion of creation not through the traditional Semitic notion of 
theomachy but through the Hamitic concept of creation through divine fiat by both 
Ptah and Elohim.

We must also recognize that the Elohist is expressing in a form of syncretism that 
sought to combine the Hebrew concept of Yahweh Sabaoth, the Israelite concept of 
El as the god of the fathers, and Moses' Egyptian concept of divine ontology.  
This he does by reinterpreting the three religions as essentially equivalent.  
The divine warrior Yahweh Sabaoth now becomes "Yihwah" through his reading of 
the Tetragrammaton as a Qal rather than a Hiphil stem under the influence of the 
Egyptian formulation.  El, the god of the patriarchs, is simply equated through 
proclamation with both Yihwah and the great I am Becoming.  The Priestly Writer 
was well aware on the Elohist's syncretistic intention and brilliantly reproduced it in 
his pithy, poetic couplet that strikes one as another example of Levitical catechism:

And Elohim spoke to Moses and said,
"I am Yahweh.

I appeared as El Shaddai to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them."

With the same intention that informed the Elohist, the Priestly Writer utilizes the 
same setting to equate Yahweh of the Hebrew southern tribes, El of the Aramean 
northern tribes, and the Elohim of the Egyptian-Levitical tradition that was 
introduced by Moses.  Taking his cue from the Elohist, the Priestly Writer 
perpetuated a brilliant synthesis that eventually led to the ascendancy of 
monotheism within exilic and post-exilic theological thought by overcoming the 
polytheism that was inherent in the acknowledgement of the historic and separate 
identities of El and Yahweh.  Both gods were absorbed into the more abstract and 
speculative Egyptian concept of God as an ontological entity.

L. M. Barre, Ph.D.
barre at c-zone.net
www.angelfire.com/ca2/AncientIsrael

BIBLE STUDIES

Calling on the NAME

Calling on the Name