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The Name of God at Moriah: An Unpublished Fragment from 4QGenExodaAuthor(s): James R. DavilaSource: Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 110, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 577-582Published by: The Society of Biblical LiteratureStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3267659 .

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JBL 110/4 (1991) 77-582

THE NAME OF GOD AT MORIAH:AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT FROM 4QGenExoda

JAMES R. DAVILACentral College, Pella, IA 50219

The Aqedah - the story of the binding of Isaac-has always been one of themost fascinating and disturbing texts in the Hebrew Bible. For more than twomillennia commentators have wrestled with the meaning of this terse nar-rative.' This note deals with a small fragment of the Aqedah from an un-published manuscript of Genesis discovered in Qumran Cave 4. Themanuscript in question, 4QGenExoda, is written in an early Hasmoneanformal hand with some semiformal influence (ca. 125-100 BCE) and has beenentrusted to me for publication by Professor Frank Moore Cross. The

fragmentreads:

........

top margin

n n w I V R ~ I ~ [ L ~ E

4QGenExoda, frag. 1 (Gen 22:14)Photograph courtesy of the Palestine

ArchaeologicalMuseum.

The text is clearly that of Gen 22:14, with one interesting variant-thereading Elohim instead of the Yahweh of the MT (the letter combination

]R 1 R T' ppears only here in the entire Hebrew Bible). In the MT the

For recent discussions and bibliography on the Aqedah, see Claus Westermann, Genesis12-36: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985) 351-63; and Alan W. Jenks, The Elohistand North Israelite Traditions (SBLMS 22; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977) 24-26.

2 Besides this fragment the manuscript preserves portions of Genesis 27; 34-37; 39-40;45-49; Exodus 1-8 or 9. The fragment published here is identical in leather quality, leathercolor, and script to the other fragments. Reconstruction of the columns of the entire manuscriptindicates that Gen 22:14 should be found approximately at the top of a column. 4QGenExodawas edited in my doctoral dissertation, Unpublished Pentateuchal Manuscripts from Cave IV,Qumran: 4QGenExa, Genb-h, Genj-k Harvard University, 1988). The revised thesis is now inpress for DJD 10 (projected 1991).

577

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578 Journal of Biblical Literature

whole verse reads, SoAbraham called the name of that place Yahweh yir'eh;as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of Yahweh yjri'eh' The divine nameYahweh n the

place-nameis found or indicated for the

Vorlagein the

MT,Samaritan Pentateuch, LXX, OL, Syriac Peshitta, Vg, and Boharic Coptic?The targums paraphrase this verse heavily but seem to reflect Yahweh as well.There are no obvious text-critical grounds for deciding which reading isoriginal. We must look at the text on other levels in order, if possible, toestablish the original reading.

In dealing with a pentateuchal text, the source-critical question must beaddressed. For scholars who accept the documentary hypothesis, it is gener-ally agreed that the core of this passage (roughly vv. 1-14, and possibly v. 19)stem from the Elohistic

source.4The rest of the

passage (vv. 15-18,and

possibly 19) is more problematical. The transition is awkward. Elohim is nolonger used, but Yahweh s used twice. In one of these uses it is the Angelof Yahweh who speaks to Abraham from heaven, a mixture of J and E ideas.The angel uses the formula 7117 O, a prophetic idiom, unexpected in themouth of an angel. Most if not all of vv. 15-19 is generally agreed to be asecondary addition of a redactor rather than from either J or E.

3 The Sahidic Coptic version reads God (pnoute) for both uses of the divine name in v. 14.

It is possible that the Hebrew Vorlage of the Greek text behind the Coptic read Elohim, butvery little weight can be given to such a variant in this secondary version.

4 Today the documentary hypothesis commands the general acceptance of biblical scholarsand must be the starting point of any discussion of the pentateuchal traditions. The most

eloquent modern scholar who rejected this approach was Umberto Cassuto. He outlined hisreservations, along with his own understanding of the Pentateuch, in The Documentary Hypoth-esis (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961); A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, vol. 1, From Adam to Noah;vol. 2, From Noah to Abraham (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1964); and A Commentary on the Book ofExodus (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967). Others who accept some form of the documentary hypothe-sis but deny that E can be isolated as a source or deny the Aqedah to E are Paul Volz andWilhelm Rudolph, Der Elohist als

Erzihler:Ein Irrweg der Pentateuchkritik? (BZAW 63;

Giessen: Topelmann, 1933); Johannes Pedersen, Die Auffassung vom AT ' AW 49 (1931) 161-81;Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, vols. 3-4 (London: Oxford University Press; Copenhagen:Branner og Korch, 1940, 1959) 725-27; Ivan Engnell, A Rigid Scrutiny: Critical Essays on theOld Testament (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1969) 50-67; Rolf Rendtorff, Das iiber-lieferungsgeschichtlichen Problem des Pentateuch (BZAW 147; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter,1977); Rendtorff, The Old Testament: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 157-64; JohnVan Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).Thomas L. Thompson basically rejects the documentary hypothesis, although he allows for

multiple sources in the Pentateuch (The Origin Tradition of Ancient Israel, vol. 1, The LiteraryFormation of Genesis and Exodus 1-23 [JSOTSup 55; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987]). Douglas

Knight'suseful

surveyof

pentateuchalresearch from 1945 to ca. 1982

maybe found in The

Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters (ed. Douglas A. Knight and Gene M. Tucker; Chico,CA: Scholars Press, 1985) chap. 8, The Pentateuch (pp. 263-96). Convenient summaries of

scholarship concerning the E document can be found in T E. Fretheim, Elohist IDBSup259-63; Jenks, Elohist and North Israelite Traditions, 1-18; and Richard Elliott Friedman, WhoWrote the Bible? (New York: Summit, 1987) 50-88.

5 Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (2nd ed.; HAT; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1902) 169,






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Davila: An Unpublished Fragment from 4QGenExoda 579

The main objection to assigning the passage to E is the appearance ofYahweh hree times in the narrative. The occurrences in v. 14 are especially

embarrassing,since

theyare

etiologicalreferences that can

hardlybe

assigned to aredactor.6

We would expect the Elohist to use Elohim con-sistently, and although this anomaly has been explained in various ways byproponents of the Elohistic origin of the Aqedah (see below), these explana-tions remain the weakest link in their source-critical chain of argumentation.

The appearance of•NI ~ R5,

the angel of Yahweh, n v. 11 has been ex-plained on a text-critical basis. The Vorlage of the Syriac Peshitta seems to haveread

'17•b 1N5n, and it has been argued that this reading is original and thatYahweh crept into the verse by assimilation to the 7117 1'RT5 n the secondaryaddition of v.

15,who is

presentedas

callingto Abraham

n .V, again '7his

171; John Skinner, Genesis (ICC; Edinburgh: Clark, 1910) 331; Westermann, Genesis 12-36, 363;Jenks, Elohist and North Israelite Traditions, 24; R. W. L. Moberly, The Earliest Commentaryon the Akedah VT 38 (1988) 302-23. Van Seters assigns the whole of chap. 22 to his exilic Jsource (Abraham in History, 227-40, 313).

6 E. A. Speiser, Genesis (AB 1; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964) 166. Cf. Volz and Rudolph,Der Elohist als Erziihler, 40-47. Volz and Rudolph cite IWnn,Moriah, f v. 2 as an additionaluse of Yahweh (in). But this interpretation cannot be taken seriously because the meaning of

-irn is completely obscure, and it may not be original to the passage. The etymology sug-gested by Van Seters, something like 'land of the fear of Yah(weh)' mOra' + yh ) (Abraham in

History, 238), does not explain the i vowel or the doubled yod in the name.7 See, e.g., Jenks, Elohist and North Israelite Traditions, 24 and n. 21. The Peshitta reads the

equivalent of 0'1bR5 0n in both 22:11 (excepting one manuscript) and 22:15. The simplestexplanation for the variations between the MT et al. and the Peshitta is that one verse originallyread 07b5 0 b10 and the other ,n1

1~ b5.The two phrases were then assimilated to each other

in different directions in the two textual traditions. The possibility will be raised below that thetwo appearances of 7171 in v. 14 arose from another textual corruption, one separate from thecorruptions in vv. 11 and 15. If so, there is no reason why the Vorlage of the Peshitta could nothave preserved the original name in v. 11, even though it reads the equivalent of 11 I both timesin v. 14.

A word should also be said about the general character of the Peshitta's witness to the divinenames in Genesis. There is remarkably little difference between the Syriac and the MT. TheLeiden Peshitta usually cites from ten to twelve Syriac manuscripts for any given passage.Excluding variations involving only one Peshitta manuscript (seven cases), which usuallyindicate nothing more than a careless scribe within the Syriac tradition, there are only six casesbesides the ones in chap. 22 in which the equivalent of VI75 is read where the MT has 7,11

(7:1; 13:10 [six manuscripts]; 15:16; 16:11b [two manuscripts]; 29:32; 30:24) and two cases inwhich the equivalent of 7m,1 s read where the MT has 0nr1i (31:16; 35:1 [four manuscripts]).There are also seven cases where the Peshitta lacks a divine name found in the MT (14:22; 1:28[three manuscripts]) or has a divine name not found in the MT (3:11; 4:14; 5:2; 15:13; 19:28).(These cases of added or deleted names exclude eight times when only one Peshitta manuscripthas a

variant.)In other words, the Peshitta

agreeswith the MT

approximately96

percentof the

time in its use of the divine names. Five of these variants found in the Peshitta are supportedby the LXX (1:28[?]; 13:10; 14:22; 15:6; 30:24). The LXX also reflects 015 11in1 n 7:1 and addsV1,5N in 4:10. In short, all the evidence indicates that the translator(s) of the Peshitta of Genesistranscribed the divine names in their Vorlage with great care, and when the Syriac reads adifferent divine name from that found in the MT we are justified in assuming it had a differentHebrew Vorlage until it is proved otherwise.






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is at least a plausible explanation that is supported by both external andinternal evidence.

The uses of Yahweh n v. 14 are more difficult, but there has been no lackof attempts to explain them away. I will summarize the most important ofthese. Hermann Gunkel, in his commentary on Genesis, argues that theoriginal name of the place was ?'l, a location in the wilderness of Judeanear Tekoa mentioned in 2 Chr 20:16. Gunkel points out that the combina-tion of consonants that forms this name is found three times in this pericopeif we allow some minor emendations: lN I' U7BR in v. 8,

,0 R RN n v. 12,

and 5 N ~R1 in v. 13. He reconstructs the second half of v. 14 to read;IN

•,Yb'1= 017 InN I.N, For he said, 'Today on this mountain, God

provides. ' RoydenYerkes

aptlycomments, This at least has the merit of

ingenuity '9Yerkes himself draws attention to the similarity between the name 'N BR

in Genesis 16 and R 7~f7I in Genesis 22. He suggests that J in chap. 16and E in chap. 22 are offering etymologies of the same name, and that theoriginal reading in 22:14 was N BR, God of vision:' The redactor of JE thensubstituted Yahweh for El, making the reading N I m711. The marginalexplanation in v. 14b crept into the text at some point and the name wasaltered under its influence to N• •n11.1

Yerkes is followed(without citation) by P.

Zerafa. Zerafaargues

that thename Yahweh n the popular etymology of v. 14 was introduced by the redac-tor and that the original text simply mentioned God, just as in v. 8. The storyof Abraham's sacrifice comes from a lost cycle of traditions about Isaac thatcirculated in the region of Lahai-Roi. It was there that the sacrifice tookplace, and Lahai-Roi was the name given to the place by Abraham in theoriginal text. The expression 'Yahweh provides/sees' (v. 14) is not a placename, but the etymological explanation of a missing one. '

Other explanations of the name are not as elaborate. John Skinner notesthe anomalous Yahweh n vv. 12 and 14 but

says,The

namingof the

placeis an essential feature of the legend, and must therefore be assigned to E.He points out that nlrN7 171 alludes to v. 8, but he follows B. Stade in takingit as the explanation of a proverb rather than the name of a sanctuary.2Martin Noth considers the appearance of Yahweh an exceptional case

8 Gunkel, Genesis, 169-71; cf. O. Procksch, Das nordhebraische Sagenbuch: Die Elohimquelleiibersetzt und untersucht (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906) 12-14.

9 Royden Yerkes, The Location and Etymology of Nr' ~nI7, Gn. 22147 JBL 31 (1912)136-39.

10 Ibid., 136-37.11 P. Zerafa, The Land of Moriah, Angelicum 44 (1967) 84-94.12 Skinner, Genesis, 330.






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Davila: An Unpublished Fragment from 4QGenExoda 581

involving the explanation of a name. '3 Alan Jenks follows him here, writingthe use of Yahweh n vs. 14 is made necessary in the etymology of the name

Moriah '14Another appearance of the name Moriah should be noted. A comment in

2 Chr 3:1 locates the hill of Moriah(,n•

fn1 IM) s the site of the templemount in Jerusalem and associates the place with the theophany to Daviddescribed in 2 Samuel 24 and 2 Chronicles 21. Noth regards Moriah asoriginal to Genesis 22, writing that the Chronicler's identification of MountMoriah with the temple mount in Jerusalem is, of course, a subsequent,unfounded construction '15 Gerhard von Rad, on the other hand, reverses theargument. He points out that

the passage n Chronicles defines the place where the angel appeared oDavid and not the place of our story [in Genesis 22], which would, ofcourse, have given the place a much more ancient consecration. The nameMoriah was perhaps nserted nto our story from II Chron. 3.1 only sub-sequently n order o claim t as an ancient radition f Jerusalem perhapsonly with a slight change in the vocalization f an ancient name).

He suggests that Gen 22:2 originally read the Amorites rather thanMoriah.'16

In this survey of the literature a significant fact stands out. The appearanceof Yahweh n the MT of Gen 22:14 has long been recognized as a problem.Some scholars have deleted it and, offering various hypothetical scenarios,reconstructed El or Elohim in its place. Others have treated it as a specialcase involving the explanation of a proverb or of the name Moriah in v. 2. Itis a pity that the end of the verse is not preserved in 4QGenExoda. The flowof thought certainly allows for the possibility that it too read IN'l a0,5. Ifthe verse originally did have Elohim rather than Yahweh t is even possibleto suggest a hypothetical explanation for the change to Yahweh. A scribenoting that

•nINl V17bseemed to be another name for the (perhaps

secondary) land of Moriah in v. 2 could easily have altered the divine namesin v. 14 to make the allusion to v. 2 more explicit (while incidentally dullingthe allusions to v. 8 [RYl 0'7

•5bR]and v. 12 [nNR INbR RI']). Such minor

scribal harmonizations are quite common.17In any case, this Qumran fragment of Genesis offers new external evidence

'3 Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981) 35 n.132.

14 Jenks, Elohist and North Israelite Traditions, 24.'5 Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 114 and n. 328; cf. V. R. Gold, Moriah, DB 2. 438-39.16 G. von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972) 240; cf.

Westermann, Genesis 12-36, 357; Zerafa, Land of Moriah, 87, 88; Skinner, Genesis, 328-29.

'1 See my article Moriah, Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, projected1991).






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for a reading that has previously been reconstructed on internal literary-critical grounds. It must be taken into account by future exegetes of this

passageand

bycommentators interested in source-critical issues in the

Pentateuch.j8

s18Versions of this note were presented in a seminar at Harvard University in the fall of 1987and in the Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible section at the 1988 annual meeting of theSociety of Biblical Literature.

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