Joe Alward will need no introduction to readers who were also subscribers to the Errancy internet list when Alward was a member until four years ago, but I must introduce him for the benefit of readers who have never seen his internet antics. Those who don't know him would assume from the article linked to in the title above that he is a biblical inerrantist, but Alward claims that he is an atheist, who just wants to expose faulty attempts to find errancy in the Bible.
I first met Alward through e-mails that he sent to me in the summer of 1996 in which he asked me for information about the Bible. His questions concerned very elementary matters, which I would have thought that anyone who had attended Sunday school even occasionally would have known, but he explained to me that he had never read any part of the Bible until just a month before he began his correspondence with me. I tried to cooperate in sending him answers to his questions, but I soon wearied of his inquiries, because (1) I had other duties to attend to, and (2) much of the information he was requesting could have been found by just using a Bible concordance or doing only elementary research. I suggested to him that he should join the Errancy internet list, where he could make inquiries and also observe the discussions to improve his knowledge of the Bible. Alward joined the list, but to my surprise, he didn't observe very long. Right away, he began to post what he considered to be satisfactory solutions to the biblical discrepancies that members were identifying. These “solutions” were at times even more far-fetched than anything that bibilical inerrantists had ever dreamed up in defense of the Bible. A pattern soon developed. Alward would post a how-it-could-have-been "solution" and defy skeptics on the list to show that it wouldn't work. When arguments that thoroughly rebutted his solution were posted, he would announce that he had abandoned his explanation in favor of another one, which he was sure would work. Members of the list were then challenged to show that his new “solution” wouldn't work, but as quickly as the new one was shot down, he would return with still a third explanation and then a fourth, and so on. After a time, he would announce that he had posted on his private website an article on the discrepancy we had been discussing and would welcome comments about it. Suddenly, the man who had never read even part of the Bible just a few months earlier was presenting himself as one who could expose discrepancies in the Bible. He had been posting his “solutions” to the Errancy list and then using the rebuttals of the members to gather information he could use to write articles on the subjects he had inquired about. If members would post weaknesses that they had found in his website article, we would soon see an announcement that he had revised the article and would like to see comments on the revision. In other words, he was using members of the Errancy list to feed him information and especially to rebut possible explanations of discrepancies so that he could then use this information to write articles for his website in an apparent desire to present himself as an expert on biblical errancy.
When list members tired of his antics and more or less ignored him, he turned to taunting and goading to try to get information he wanted. He would do this by accusing the list members of having lapsed into silence because they had been stumped by his irrefutable explanations. An example of his tactics can be seen in a post that he sent to the Errancy list in reference to Exodus 6:3, which claims that Yahweh had not been known to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by his name Yahweh.
The Exodus 6:3 statement could have been a question, and therefore doesn't contradict Genesis, so all that's left is this last question. I suspect that Till would rather go to bed rather than show the list that he can't answer this question and prove his contradiction. Maybe I should be the one to make a bet. If I were a betting man, I would offer to bet $100 that Till never provides the final bit of evidence he needs to show a contradiction, and he's just going to hide behind his filter and pretend he's won the argument. If he doesn't have to admit he can't prove his case, then maybe in his mind he thinks he's won. It's hard to imagine that Till would reject the opportunity to make a fool out of me if he had a strong case on this latest allegation. If Till thinks he can just filter this problem out of his life, he's mistaken (“Yahweh Doesn't Say Which God He Was?” Errancy List, Nov. 11, 1999).
Almost a year later, Alward was still taunting list members on this issue, and especially me, so in October 2000, I finally decided that I would reply to him in The Skeptical Review. I made the decision because I was convinced that an obvious discrepancy existed between Exodus 6:3 and the many passages in Genesis that have the patriarchs and other biblical characters referring to their god by the name Yahweh. I thought that by replying to Alward in TSR, I could kill two birds with one stone. I could demonstrate to readers an example of biblical discrepancy and at the same time expose Alward's ignorance of the Bible. Accordingly, I wrote an early draft of this article with the intention of publishing it in TSR, but before the article had been completed, I decided to discontinue the hardcopy publication of TSR, so the article was never published. Alward continued his antics in the Errancy forum, so I decided in 2004 to complete my reply to his article about the name of Yahweh and post it on the TSR website, but debates with actual inerrantists and other priorities that I considered more pressing kept me from completing my reply. With other projects out of the way, I finally returned to completing this article so that readers who may encounter actual inerrantists who use the same quibbles to "explain" the discrepancy in Exodus 6:3 will see how far-fetched Alward's "explanation" is.
Alward's article "The Name Yahweh: A Contradiction That Never Was," which I have linked to in the title above, is the version of the article that he put onto his website when he was stirring this controversy on the Errancy list back in 2000. When he posts an article and later learns that he has put his foot into his mouth, he will change the article accordingly; hence, the article that I have linked to above is not the version that is on his website now. The current version of the article--at least current as I am revising this rebuttal for publication--is entitled The Name 'Yahweh,'" and although it retains most of the information in the first version, it has been revised both to delete original information and to include new information that wasn't debated on the Errancy list. I have linked the title of this article to Alward's original, because I will be quoting from the 1999-2000 Errancy archives, which will not be understood unless readers know what Alward was saying at that time about this issue. I will, however, note changes in his article so that I can rebut the additional information in what he apparently considers to be his rebuttal-proof latest edition.
This article will be long and tedious in places. I am writing it primarily for the benefit of late-comers to the Errancy list, who may not understand why so many of the old-timers on the list hold Alward in such low esteem. My rebuttal will demonstrate that (1) for someone who so often tries to present himself as an expert on biblical discrepancies, Alward is appallingly ignorant of basic biblical information, (2) he has used the Errancy list to try to goad informed members into feeding him information that he can use to write articles for his website, and (3) he wrote his name-of-Yahweh article primarily from the ulterior motive of wanting to seek revenge on those--and especially me--who did not cater to his desire to use the Errancy list as his personal research tool. More important, my rebuttal article will show to open-minded readers that what Alward called a "contradiction that never was" is very much a biblical discrepancy, much more so than some of those that Alward touts on his website as examples of biblical discrepancies.
A complete review of the controversy with Alward will require the introduction of several well known “explanations” to this discrepancy, which inerrantists have resorted to in their attempts to solve this problem, because Alward tried several of them himself before finally settling on Jerry Falwell's “explanation” that Alward defended in his website article. Before I review these other “explanations” that Alward tried before deciding that Yahweh didn't really make a statement to Moses in Exodus 6:3 but had merely asked a rhetorical question, I'm going to quote from 41 different versions of this verse to show that the scholars who were involved in producing these translations obviously understood Exodus 6:3 to mean that Yahweh told Moses that the name Yahweh had not been known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
KJV: I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name “The LORD” [Yahweh] I did not make myself known to them.
NKJV: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name LORD [Yahweh] I was not known to them.
21st Century KJV: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty, but by My name JEHOVAH [Yahweh] was I not known to them.
Modern KJV: And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But I was not known to them by the name JEHOVAH [Yahweh].
ASV: (A)nd I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah [Yahweh] I was not known to them.
NASV: (A)nd I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God almighty, but by my name LORD [Yahweh], I did not make Myself known to them.
RSV: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD [Yahweh] I did not make myself known to them.
NRSV: (A)nd I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name LORD [Yahweh] I did not make Myself known to them.
NIV: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD [Yahweh] I did not make myself known to them.
New American Bible: As God Almighty I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but my name, LORD [Yahweh], I did not make known to them.
New English Bible: I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty. But I did not let myself be known to them by the name Jehovah [Yahweh].
Revised English Bible: I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty; but I did not let myself be known to them by my name, the LORD [Yahweh].
Holman Christian Standard Bible: I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but I did not make My name Yahweh known to them.
New English Translation: and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name “the LORD” [Yahweh] I was not known to them.
Good News Bible: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as Almighty God, but I did not make myself known to them by my holy name, the LORD [Yahweh].
New World Translation: And I used to appear to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God almighty, but as respects my name Jehovah [Yahweh], I did not make myself known to them.
New Century Version: I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by the name, God All-Powerful. But they did not know me by my name, the LORD [Yahweh].
Third Millennium Bible: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty, but by My name Jehovah [Yahweh] was I not known to them.
Jewish Bible Society: I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by my name [Yahweh].
Hebrew Names Version: (A)nd I appeared to Avraham, to Yitzchak, and to Ya‘akov, as El Shaddai; but by my name the LORD [Yahweh] I was not known to them.
Isaac Leeser: (A)nd I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God, the Almighty, but by name the Eternal [Yahweh] was I not made known to them.
Jewish Publication Society: I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by my name Yahweh [printed in Hebrew].
Confraternity: As God the Almighty I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but my name, LORD [Yahweh], I did not make known to them.
Jerusalem Bible: To Abraham and Isaac and Jacob I appeared as El Shaddai [God almighty]; I did not make myself known to them by my name Yahweh.
Revised Berkeley: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by My name Jehovah [Yahweh] I did not reveal Myself to them.
Darby: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as the Almighty God; but by my name Jehovah [Yahweh] I was not made known to them.
Bible in Basic English: I let myself be seen by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God, the Ruler of all; but they had no knowledge of my name Yahweh.
Douay-Rheims: [I] appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; and my name ADONAI [Yahweh] I did not shew them.
Revised Webster's Bible: And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH [Yahweh] was I not known to them.
World English Bible: and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them.
God's Word: I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but I didn't make myself known to them by my name, the LORD [Yahweh].
Green's Literal Translation: And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, and by My name JEHOVAH [Yahweh] I never made Myself known to them.
Amplified Bible: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but my name the LORD [Yahweh–the redemptive name of God] I did not make Myself known to them.
Tyndale: (A)nd I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob an almighty God: but in my name Jehovah [Yahweh] was I not known unto them.
Moffatt: I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but I never made myself known to them as “the Eternal” [Yahweh].
Septuagint [Brenton's]: And I appeared to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, being their God, but I did not manifest to them my name Lord [Yahweh].
Lamsa's: [I am the LORD(Yahweh)] who appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; but my name the LORD [Yahweh] I did not make known to them.
Young's Literal: (A)nd I appear unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob as God almighty; as to My name Jehovah [Yahweh], I have not been known to them.
Hendrickson's [Interlinear]: And I appeared to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty and [by] my name Jehovah [Yahweh] not I did reveal Myself to them.
Hendrickson's [Margin]: And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, and by My name JEHOVAH [Yahweh] I never made myself known to them.
Segond [French] Je suis apparu à Abraham, à Isaac et à Jacob, comme le Dieu Tout-Puissant; mais je n’ai pas été reconnu par eux sous mon nom: l’Eternel [Yahweh].
(I am appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as the All-Powerful God; but I have not been known by them under my name: the Eternal [one].)
La Bible du Semeur (Sower's Bible): Je me suis révélé à Abraham, à Isaac et à Jacob comme le Dieu tout-puissant, mais je n'ai pas été connu par eux sous mon nom: l'Eternel [Yahweh].
(I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as the all-powerful God, but I was not known by them under my name the Eternal [one].)
The number of scholars who worked on these various translations would number into the hundreds, and they all agree that the original text had Yahweh telling Moses that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know his name Yahweh. On the other hand, Alward, who probably doesn't know one Hebrew alphabetic character from another, expects reasonable people to think that he knows more about the meaning of the verse in question than did all of those scholars. The fact that no Bible translators ever rendered Yahweh's statement in Exodus 6:3 as a question, of course, does not in itself mean that the explanation of this discrepancy, which Alward appropriated from Jerry Falwell, is wrong, but the absence of any scholarly support for this view certainly doesn't give us any reason to think that Falwell and Alward have stumbled onto a meaning that until recently had eluded all English translators of the Bible. Those of us who were members of the Errancy list all during Alward's tenure there doubt that any of this will budge him from his position in this matter, because we know how arrogantly presumptuous he is in thinking that he has insights into meanings of scriptures that have eluded scholars down through the ages.
Alward's remarkable ignorance of the problem presented by Exodus 6:3 was shown in the following quotation from his article, which clearly indicated that he didn't have even the slightest clue to why Exodus 6:3 contradicts earlier passages where "God" was referred to by his name Yahweh.
Farrell Till, the editor of The Skeptical Review and one of the country's leading errantists, has alleged that separate contradictions are to be found in Exodus, both dealing with the name Yahweh. I will rebut these allegations, beginning with the one below:
Exodus 3:13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them?
In a post to his internet list (errancy@infidels.org), Farrell Till has said that this statement shows that the writer believed that the Israelites didn't know the name Yahweh, and contradicts what Till believes is evidence that most of the Israelites must have known the name.
I will interrupt Alward here to point out that his statement immediately above showed that Alward didn't even begin to understand the problem that Exodus 6:3 and 3:13 present to biblical inerrantists. I have never at any time said that I believe that "most of the Israelites must have known the name [Yahweh]." Why would I have said this when I believe that the Israelite bondage in Egypt and the subsequent exodus never actually happened and are only facets of a fictionalized history? What I have said is that Exodus 3:13 and 6:3 claim that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never knew their god by his name Yahweh but that this clearly contradicts passages in Genesis that say that they did know this name. The issue, then, is that the Bible contains contradictory claims about when the name Yahweh became known. If Alward would take the time to understand the issues on which he tries to claim expertise, he could spare himself a lot of embarrassment.
By the way, Alward cited above the address of the Errancy list that was in use when he wrote his article, but the current address is Errancy@iierrancy.com. One can subscribe to it by clicking the link just given and following directions or by sending to [subscribe-Errancy@iierrancy.com] a blank post with "subscribe" on the subject line. Alward's quotation now continues.
In rebuttal, I've asked where the Bible says or implies that most of the Israelites knew the name Yahweh. Till responded with a flurry of eight different posts in which he insisted he could provide such evidence, but wouldn't until I took him up on his $100 bet that he could do so; soon after that, he withdrew from the argument, saying he would shield himself from my posts to his list.
My bet was not that I could show that "most of the Israelites knew the name Yahweh" but that I could show biblical evidence that the name Yahweh, contrary to what Exodus 6:3 has Yahweh saying, was known to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I filtered Alward's posts because I was tired of trying to reason with someone who I knew had the ulterior motive of wanting to use the Errancy list to milk from its members information that he was too lazy to research himself. By this time, Alward, for all intents and purposes, was a troll, and Errancy members know that I have little tolerance of those who join the list just to troll. Through it all, Alward continued to show his ignorance of the issue. He never recognized or at least gave no indication of doing so that the contradiction was concerned not with how many Israelites at the time of Yahweh's appearance to Moses knew his name but with the obvious fact that the passage in dispute had Yahweh saying that the patriarchs did not know him by the name Yahweh, whereas various texts in Genesis show that they did.
However, one member of the list then responded by presenting the names of twenty-six persons from post-flood [sic] times up to Moses [sic]conversation with God who knew the name Yahweh.
In other words, that other member of the Errancy list was simply showing Alward what I had bet that I could show him, i. e., the Bible clearly says that the name Yahweh was known to the patriarchs and their families before Yahweh had said to Moses in Exodus 6:3 that they did not know this name.
By way of example, a few of these names, with the corresponding verses, were Rebekah, Isaac, and Esau (Genesis 27:7); Jacob (Gen. 27:20); Leah (Genesis 29:32); Rachel (Genesis 30:24); Laban (Genesis 30:27); and Moses/Aaron (Exodus 3:15). A more complete list of characters who knew the name Yahweh, besides those just mentioned, would include Noah, Abraham, the king of Sodom, Sarah, Hagar, Lot, the men [angels] who went to Lot, Lot's son-in-laws [sic], Abraham's eldest servant, Bethuel, Laban's wife, Abimelech, Ahuzzath and Phichol, Leah, Pharaoh, and the officers of the people of Israel.
If this is the evidence Till had in mind, no wonder he went into hiding; all this shows is that only twenty-six persons knew the name Yahweh, but it may be inferred from the Bible itself that there were as many as three million Israelites at the time of Moses.
“Exodus 12:37 states that when the Israelites left Egypt, the number of men on foot (not counting women and children) was 600 thousand! When a census was taken in the wilderness (Num. 1:46), it claimed the men of military age (20 years old and up) numbered 603,550! If we assume an equal number of women in this age group... this would mean the adult population older than 20 numbered around 1,200,000. Then with the children of both sexes under 20 added on, there would have been a total population of two and a half to three million! (“Holes in the Two-Amrams Theory,” Spring 1990, p. 2).
Thus, the best the Bible skeptics can do is show that twenty-six people knew the name, but what about the other 2,999,974 Israelites?
The problem that Exodus 6:3 presents, then, is that it has Yahweh telling Moses that he had appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as "God Almighty" but that he had not made himself known to them by his name Yahweh. This text is obviously inconsistent with various passages in Genesis that clearly showed that the patriarchs and others did know the name Yahweh and that Yahweh himself had even told them that this was his name. Alward himself cited most of these passages in the quotation above, which I lifted from his article, so there is no need to repeat them here. Whenever this discrepancy is presented, inerrantists will, of course, try to resolve it. One of their favorite quibbles is to argue that the text in Exodus 6:3 can't mean what it appears to say, because the author of the Pentateuch would not have contradicted himself so obviously. We have all heard this kind of quibbling before. It is based an an assumption that the Bible is inerrant, so biblicists who try to deny that there is a problem in Exodus 6:3 will ask why Moses would have written something here that is inconsistent with what he had said earlier in the book of Genesis? Aside from trying to prove inerrancy by assuming inerrancy, they base their quibble on another assumption, which is that Moses wrote both Genesis and Exodus. This assumption, however, is held only by biblical fundamentalists who publish their books at places like Grand Rapids, Michigan. Biblical commentators who are more mainstream in their view of the Bible reject the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and recognize that it is actually a composite of works that were originally written by several authors.
One theory of authorship is called the Documentary Hypothesis, which I will not discuss here except to say that those who accept this theory recognize that the Pentateuch was complied from at least four sources, three of which have been called J, E, and P. Sections of the Pentateuch that were written by the Yahwist (J) referred to God as Yahweh, whereas passages written by the Elohist (E) referred to him as Elohim. The DH is too complex to discuss here, but a good synopsis of it can be read here. According to the Documentary Hypothesis, J consistently used the name Yahweh in the passages that he had originally written, many of which are in the book of Genesis, but E thought that the name Yahweh was not known by the Hebrews until it was revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:13-16, so up until then E consistently referred to the Hebrew god as elohim.. The P writer often called his god Yahweh, but, like E, he believed that the name Yahweh was not known until it was revealed to Moses. In compiling the Pentateuch, the editor put together in Genesis passages written by J, where God was called Yahweh, and passages written by E, where God was called Elohim. Hence, the name Yahweh had already appeared in Genesis in those sections written by J, so when the editor patched in an E text in Exodus 3:13-16 and a P text in Exodus 6:3, where E and P were telling what they thought was the way that the name Yahweh had been revealed to the Israelites, the result was a discrepancy that the editor either didn't notice or didn't care about.
Exodus 3:13 But Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" 14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" 15 God also said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you': This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations. 16 Go and assemble the elders of Israel, and say to them, 'Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying: I have given heed to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt.'"
This text is widely recognized as part of the E document. In the discussion of the name-of-God discrepancy on the Errancy list, I had referred to this text only to show the basis for the view that the Elohist thought that the name Yahweh was not known by the Hebrews until it was revealed to Moses in this text. One who reads the passage with no inerrancy axe to grind can see that Moses was clearly asking the God in the burning bush, who had until this point referred to himself only as "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (v:6), to identify himself by name. When I tell the people what you have told me to say, Moses said, if they ask me the name of the God who sent me to them, what shall I say? This question would surely not have been asked if E, the Elohist author of this passage, had thought that Moses and the Israelites he was being sent to already knew the name Yahweh. If that had been the case, then the writer would surely have had Yahweh say something like, "Well, they know my name as well as you do; I am Yahweh, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," but instead, he answered Moses' question and told him to tell them that "Yahweh, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob" had sent him. Clearly, the Elohist wrote this story as an explanation of how and when the Israelites had come to know that Yahweh was the name of their god.
If Alward had understood this, he would not have wasted so much time talking about how many Hebrews had known the name Yahweh and challenging me to prove that no Israelites in the time of Moses knew this name. Certainly, there were passages in Genesis that mentioned the name Yahweh. When did I ever deny this? That fact is a major element in the Exodus 6:3 discrepancy, because this text (quoted above from 41 different versions) clearly said that "God" was not known to the patriarchs by the name Yahweh, whereas the passages that Alward cited show just as clearly that he was known to the patriarchs by this name. Almost ten years have passed since this controversy raged on the Errancy list, but Alward has apparently not learned during all of that time that the discrepancy does not have anything to do with whether any of the Israelites in Egypt knew the name Yahweh but whether Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew it, because the latest version of his article, as did the original, still has him accusing skeptics of thinking that Exodus 6:3 contains a contradiction because the Israelites at the time of this appearance to Moses had surely known that the name of their god was Yahweh.
Some skeptics claim that one would have to believe in a conspiracy of silence to believe that any of the Israelites could not have known the name, but that argument is really too weak to be credible, and is quite easily rebutted: The farther from the principal sources the information flowed and the more it was repeated by less important persons, the less weight the news may have carried, the more it might have been distorted, and the less it might have been believed.
Alward's point in the second half of this paragraph eluded me as do many of his attempts to present himself as a biblical scholar. At any rate, I suppose he will read this article, so I will try to draw him a picture that even he can understand. Exodus 6:3 has Yahweh telling Moses that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know his name Yahweh. This verse says nothing about whether this name was known to the Israelites in Egypt at that time. It says that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know the name Yahweh. The contradiction, therefore, involves the many passages in Genesis that show that the name Yahweh was indeed known to these patriarchs. What the Israelites in Egypt at the time of Yahweh's appearance to Moses may or may not have known about the name of their god is completely irrelevant to this discrepancy. The fact that Alward still doesn't understand this after years of revamping his article speaks volumes about his biblical ignorance. When he was criticized on the Errancy list for expecting the other members to get information he wanted instead of doing his own research, he once said, "I don't do research," but his appalling confusion about what the discrepancy is in Exodus 6:3 shows that he needs to do a lot of research before he undertakes to publish articles about what is or is not contradictory in the Bible.
Biblical inerrantists, of course, reject the Documentary Hypothesis. They contend that both Genesis and Exodus were written in their entireties by Moses. Hence, Exodus 6:3 presents a problem that they must explain, because all 41 translations of it quoted above clearly have Yahweh saying that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew him as "God Almighty" but that he had not made himself known to them by his name Yahweh. That clearly contradicts various texts in Genesis where the patriarchs referred to their god as Yahweh. I will quote just a few of them. I will use the KJV (with Yahweh substituted for the LORD), because this is the version that Alward quoted from.
Genesis 14:22 And Abram said, I have lifted up mine hand unto Yahweh.
Genesis 15:6 And he [Abraham] believed in Yahweh; and he counted it to him for righteousness. 7 And he [Yahweh] said unto him [Abraham], I am Yahweh that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.
Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. 13 And, behold, Yahweh stood above it, and said, I am Yahweh God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed....
There are others, but these are sufficient to make my point. In two of the passages just quoted, Yahweh said to Abraham and Jacob respectively, "I am Yahweh." In Exodus 6:3, Yahweh said to Moses, "I am Yahweh." If the latter statement from Yahweh made his name known to Moses, then why wouldn't the same statement in the other verses have made his name known to Abraham and Jacob? For anyone except the rankest of quibblers, this would constitute a discrepancy, but Alward, apparently wanting to present himself as an expert on biblical errancy, has aligned himself with the quibblers to try to distort Exodus 6:3 into meaning something other than what it plainly says.
Alward's speculation continued with an appeal to accept an alternative "argument," which is just another how-it-could-have-been "explanation" for which he gave no contextually supporting evidence.
And, besides, if we argue in the alternative, the question by Moses doesn't have to mean that the Exodus writer believes even one single Israelite is ignorant of the name “Yahweh.” The Exodus writer might be telling us that Moses doubted whether the Israelites with whom he would speak would believe him if he said that he spoke to the “god of their fathers,” since the penalty for seeing God is death (Ex. 3:20). Thus, the Exodus writer has Moses telling Yahweh that his people would ask for some sort of confirmation that the god Moses spoke to was really Yahweh, and not some other god which Moses thought was Yahweh. Thus, the Exodus writer has Moses saying that the children of Israel would ask him, “What is his name?” Then, since Moses wanted to be sure he had permission to say the sacred name Yahweh, he asks him, “What shall I say unto them? May I say ‘Yahweh,’ instead of ‘god of your fathers’?”
If skeptics cannot show that either of these alternative positions is so unreasonable that any inerrantist defending it should be laughed at, then they should not affirm there is a contradiction in the Yahweh-name matter.
Like nearly everything else Alward has said on this issue, it is based on a misconception that the discrepancy somehow concerns whether the Israelites contemporary to Moses knew that the name of their god was Yahweh, but as I patiently explained here and here, that isn't the issue at all. The discrepancy pertains to whether the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew the name Yahweh. Exodus 6:3 says that they didn't, but various texts in Genesis clearly show that they did. That is the discrepancy and not whether the Israelites contemporary to Moses knew the name. If Alward could show undeniable proof that every Israelite living in Egypt in the time of Moses knew that their god's name was Yahweh, that would in no way resolve the discrepancy between one text that says that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know the name Yahweh and the many passages in Genesis that clearly show that they did know the name.
Alward's "alternative argument," therefore, is completely irrelevant to the issue, because what the Israelites of Moses' day may have known has nothing to do with what Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who had been dead for centuries before Moses came on the biblical scene, did or didn't know about the name of their god. Exodus 6:3 has Yahweh telling Moses that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know the name Yahweh, but various texts in Genesis clearly indicate that they did know this name. That is the issue, and, apparently, Alward still doesn't understand it.
His speculation continued with a distortion of what a highly respected member of the Errancy forum said about the issue.
However, another member of the errancy list pointed out that evidence against this argument is found in Berry's Hebrew-English interlinear (A New Old Testament, Follett, 1959, p. 239), which translates this as “...but by my name Jehovah was I not known by them.” Bible defenders (Jerry Falwell, for example) maintain that a question is implied, and the “technical” possibility of this view was allowed by another errancy member who noted that surrounding context must be used to determine whether a statement is a question: “The question ‘Art thou my very son Esau’ (Gen. 27:24) is grammatically indistinguishable from the simple sentence, “Thou art my very son Esau...” [and that] only from the clues provided by the immediate context... can one conclude that the phrase was meant as a question and not a simple statement.”
Thus, one may reasonably believe that the context surrounding Exodus 6:3 would lead one to conclude that a question is implied, and not a statement, because there are many references to Abraham and others knowing the name “Yahweh” in Genesis.
Alward argued like an inerrantist here by assuming that Exodus 6:3 couldn't have meant what it plainly says, because there are many passages in Genesis that clearly say that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did know the name Yahweh. In other words, as I noted above in referring to a familiar inerrantist tactic, he is assuming the inerrancy of Exodus 6:3 by assuming that what it says would not contradict what the Bible says in the earlier book of Genesis. Although he is not an inerrantist himself, I am sure that any inerrantist reading this would like to pat him on the back.
As for Alward's claim that the statement in Exodus 6:3 was actually a question because its structure was similar to what Isaac said to Jacob in Genesis 27:4, reading the latter verse in its context will expose the weakness of this quibble. The broader context will show that there are sound literary reasons to understand that Isaac's statement to Jacob was a question. The situation in this passage is that Jacob was conspiring with his mother Rebekah to trick Isaac into bestowing on Jacob a primogeniture blessing instead of on the firstborn Esau. The plan was to disguise Jacob to deceive the nearly blind Isaac into believing that he was actually Esau, his twin brother.
Genesis 27:1 When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called his elder son Esau and said to him, "My son"; and he answered, "Here I am." 2 He said, "See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. 3 Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me. 4 Then prepare for me savory food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die." 5 Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, 6 Rebekah said to her son Jacob, "I heard your father say to your brother Esau, 7 'Bring me game, and prepare for me savory food to eat, that I may bless you before Yahweh before I die.' 8 Now therefore, my son, obey my word as I command you. 9 Go to the flock, and get me two choice kids, so that I may prepare from them savory food for your father, such as he likes; 10 and you shall take it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies." 11 But Jacob said to his mother Rebekah, "Look, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a man of smooth skin. 12 Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him, and bring a curse on myself and not a blessing." 13 His mother said to him, "Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my word, and go, get them for me." 14 So he went and got them and brought them to his mother; and his mother prepared savory food, such as his father loved. 15 Then Rebekah took the best garments of her elder son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob; 16 and she put the skins of the kids on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. 17 Then she handed the savory food, and the bread that she had prepared, to her son Jacob. 18 So he went in to his father, and said, "My father"; and he said, "Here I am; who are you, my son?" 19 Jacob said to his father, "I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, so that you may bless me." 20 But Isaac said to his son, "How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?" He answered, "Because Yahweh your God granted me success." 21 Then Isaac said to Jacob, "Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not." 22 So Jacob went up to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." 23 He did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands; so he blessed him. 24 He said, "Are you really my son Esau?" He answered, "I am." 25 Then he said, "Bring it to me, that I may eat of my son's game and bless you." So he brought it to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank. 26 Then his father Isaac said to him, "Come near and kiss me, my son." 27 So he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garments, and blessed him, and said, "Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that Yahweh has blessed. 28 May God give you of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. 29 Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you!" 30 As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of his father Isaac, his brother Esau came in from his hunting.
Before analyzing the contextual reasons for understanding verse 24 to be an obvious question, it is worth noticing that the name Yahweh was mentioned three times in the recorded conversations in this passage--Rebekah in verse 7; Jacob in verse 20; and Isaac in verse 27. These verses all claim to report what the characters said, so we have here three examples of where characters in Genesis used the name Yahweh, which, needless to say, they could not have spoken unless they had known it. Two of these were the patriachs Isaac and Jacob whom Exodus 6:3 says never knew their god by the name Yahweh.
To see that the context of Genesis 27:24 clearly indicates that Isaac was asking Jacob if he was really his son Esau, all that one needs to do is read the statement in its broader context. Isaac, whose eyesight was failing, couldn't understand how Esau could have gone hunting, obtained game, and prepared it for eating in the amount of time that had passed since he had sent Esau on his mission. That and the voice, which Isaac had recognized as Jacob's voice, had greatly confused him, and so he asked, "Are you really my son Esau?" To interpret this as a declarative statement would require readers to stretch their imagination far beyond reasonable limits to make the bewildered Isaac saying, "You are really my son Esau," something that he would not have said in his state of confusion. The context of this statement, then, clearly indicates that it was a question, so what is there in the context of Exodus 6:3 to indicate that it was a question? Alward has yet to analyze the verse to show any contextual reasons to so interpret it. He has just arbitrarily asserted that it was a rhetorical question.
In support of his how-it-could-have-been interpretation of Exodus 6:3, Alward referred above to "another member of the Errancy list" whose comments he distorted to try to make it appear that this member of the list agreed with him. That other errancy member was Joseph Crea (now deceased), who did allow the "technical possibility" of Alward's spin, but after that point, Alward misrepresented him, because Crea went on to observe that the context in Hebrew documents had to be used to determine whether a statement was a question. Crea was the one who cited the example of Isaac's question in Genesis 27:24. Crea's position was, as I just showed above, that there is contextual evidence to support the view that Isaac asked a question rather than made a declarative statement but that such contextual evidence is missing in Exodus 6:3. In what had to be a deliberate misrepresentation of Crea's position, Alward tried to leave the impression that Crea had thought that there was contextual evidence that Exodus 6:3 was asking a question, but Crea had actually said the opposite.
Here in his own words is what Crea actually said in a post dated November 7, 1999. Notice that Crea's enclosure of explanation in quotation marks indicates from the beginning of his post that he does not consider Falwell's explanation to be sensible.
This "explanation" at least has the saving grace of being technically possible, since there are instances in the OT where a question occurs without any semantic markers whatsoever
-- see, for example Gen. 27:24 where the question "Art thou my very son Esau" is grammatically indistinguishable from the simple sentence "Thou art my very son Esau." It is only from the clues provided by the immediate context that one can conclude that the phrase was meant as a question and not a simple statement.
I will interrupt here to remind readers that I discussed above the contextual clues that clearly indicate that Isaac was asking a question and not making a declarative statement. Crea's post now continues. Notice that his use of quotations marks to enclose harmonization is another clear indicator that he did not consider Falwell's "explanation" a satisfactory harmonization.
What's interesting about this "harmonization" is that it has Falwell implicitly asserting that all (or at least all that I'm acquainted with) the translators of the OT, from the time of the LXX, down through the Aramaic Targums, through Jerome's Vulgate, onward to the present day were wrong, and Falwell is right. The hubris thus displayed is absolutely mind-boggling, but probably not out of character for Falwell! Besides there are no contextual indicators to warrant such an explanation for the passage under consideration (emphasis added).
This is exactly what Joseph Crea said on this issue, and readers will have no difficulty seeing that Alward flagrantly misrepresented him. Crea obviously thought that there was no contextual evidence in Exodus 6:3 to support Fallwell's claim that Yahweh had asked a question here and had not declaratively stated that the patriarchs did not know his name.
Crea had noted that the surrounding context had to be used to determine if a statement was really a question, but those who have read Alward's article no doubt noticed that he gave no contextual evidence from Exodus 6:3 that would indicate that Yahweh's statement to Moses was a question rather than a declarative statement. An examination of the Errancy archives will also fail to uncover anything that Alward pointed to during the discussions of this issue that would give any reason to think that the "surrounding context" of the statement indicates that it was meant to be a question.
At this point, I could stop and let reasonable people decide whom to believe in this matter, but Alward made such an issue over this that I intend to take the various quibbles that he posted on the Errancy list and show that he is just like biblical inerrantists. He will present a solution, and then when it is shot down, he will present another one. Then when that one is shot down, he will present still another one and so on. I intend to reply to his quibbles so that readers will understand why Alward lost the respect of most members of the Errancy list.
The first-meeting theory. Among the many "solutions" that Alward offered to the problem presented by Yahweh's statement to Moses in Exodus 6:3 was a far-fetched "first-meeting" theory. Exodus 3:13-16 records Yahweh's first appearance to Moses, at which time he revealed his name to Moses, so Alward contended that in Exodus 6:3, Yahweh was merely saying that he had not told the patriarchs his name the first time he had appeared to them as he had revealed the name on his first appearance to Moses.
Really, I am not making this up. Here it is from Alward's own computer on October 31, 1999.
Does Farrell rule out the possibility that Abraham may have met Yahweh prior to the events described in Genesis 12-16? If not, then Yahweh might not have told Abraham his name at that time, and that is what Yahweh was referring to in his conversation with Moses in Exodus 6:2-3, and what he was really saying was that "by my name did I not make myself known to them". [sic]
Thus, Yahweh isn't necessarily saying to Moses that Abraham didn't eventually learn his name, only that he didn't know it at the time of their first meeting, unlike Moses whom Yahweh evidently held in greater esteem.
An amazing thing about Alward is that he would post ridiculous "solutions" like this one without bothering to check whether it agreed with the Bible. After presenting his "solution" above, for example, he added the comment below.
Please note that this analysis is based 100% on the information Farrell presented in his post; I have not opened the Bible to find additional evidence which would make Farrell's case better. If such evidence exists, I apologize for wasting anyone's time.
One would think that someone who wanted to be considered a competent commentator on biblical matters would take the time to research the subjects he writes on, but, oddly enough, that was not Alward's style. He openly bragged on the Errancy list that he doesn't "do research," and in his statement quoted above, he frankly said that he had not "opened the Bible" to look for evidence that would make my case better. That in a nutshell is a basic difference in Alward and me. I have studied the Bible seriously since 1949, whereas Alward likes to brag that he hasn't studied it much at all, but even when I undertake to write a rebuttal of an inerrantist position, I always review the subject, sometimes in great detail, before I write. If Alward would do the same, he could spare himself considerable embarrassment.
The statement quoted above also illustrates Alward's inconsistency. As I was writing my first draft of this article, Alward became involved in another controversy on the Errancy list involving the meaning of Genesis 3:14, where Yahweh cursed the serpent to crawl on his belly and eat dust all the days of his life. The meaning of this verse as clearly indicated in Jewish tradition, such as the works of Josephus, the Talmud, the Haggadah, etc., is that the serpent had had legs until the curse was put on him. The moment this position was presented Alward demanded that I and the others who had presented this view show where the Bible specifically says that the serpent had had legs. On one day, then, Alward will be found demanding to be shown where the Bible specifically says whatever, but on another day, he will be found presenting crass speculation as he did above when he argued that Exodus 6:3 could have meant that Yahweh had made himself known to the patriarchs by his name Yahweh but that he just hadn't done it the first time he had appeared to them as he had done the first time he appeared to Moses.
This quibble is fully as ridiculous as anything we will see from biblical inerrantists, and I am going to take the time to reply to it only to expose Alward's ignorance. First of all, this is an explanation that ignores a standard of evidence that Errancy members know that Alward constantly demands of those who disagree with him. He wants to be shown where the Bible specifically says the contrary of what he is arguing. Hence, consistency demands that he show us where Exodus 6:3 specifically says that Yahweh had not made himself known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the first time he had appeared to them but did so at a later time. Second, Exodus 6:3 was not the first time that Yahweh had appeared to Moses. The first appearance occurred in Exodus 3:13-16. At that time, Yahweh did say that he was Yahweh (v:15), but Alward claimed that Exodus 6:3 meant that Yahweh had not revealed his name to the patriarchs on his first visit. The verse doesn't say that, but this is the spin that Alward has tried to put on it, so let him explain why Yahweh had waited until his second visit to Moses to say this. Third, we can determine by necessary implication that the Bible claims that Yahweh did reveal his name at the time of his first appearance to Abraham. That first appearance is recorded in the passage below.
Genesis 12:1 Now Yahweh said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." 4 So Abram went, as Yahweh had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then Yahweh appeared to Abram, and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to Yahweh, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved on to the hill country 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 Yawheh and invoked the name of Yahweh.
Two appearances are recorded here, yet neither of the accounts specifically says that Yahweh had told Abram [Abraham] his name. Nevertheless, by implication, we can determine that Abram understood that he was being guided by Yahweh, because the last verse quoted says that Abram invoked, or called on, the name of Yahweh. He could not have done that unless he had known that Yahweh was the name of this god. I find it ridiculous to think that some god in an initial appearance to Abram told him to leave his country and go to a land that he would be shown and then after Abram had arrived in the new land, this god appeared to him a second time and said, "Oh, by the way, my name is Yahweh." As the story was told, the name Yahweh was used in the very first sentence, which is an indication that the name of the god was known from the beginning. There is nothing at all in this story to support Alward's supposition that Yahweh appeared to Abraham but just didn't tell him who he was until a subsequent appearance.
The theory that Yahweh didn't personally reveal his name to the patriarchs: When an inerrantist presents a "solution" to a discrepancy that will not withstand scrutiny, he will often come back with another one, as if to say, "Well, my first solution didn't work, but what about this one?" Alward played the same game. When his first theory backfired in his face, Alward then tried to contend that the patriarchs knew the name Yahweh but that Yahweh had not personally told them that this was his name. This, of course, is as ridiculous as any quibble that a real biblical inerrantist could resort to, but, nevertheless, Alward tried to argue this. On November 2, 1999, Alward based this quibble on the KJV, which has Yahweh saying that he did not "make himself known to them" [the patriarchs] by his name Yahweh.
Yahweh isn't necessarily implying that Abraham didn't know that his god was called Yahweh; perhaps he's only saying that although he is personally telling Moses his name, he didn't do the same for Abraham. Why is this so preposterous, as Till seems to imply? This seems to me to be yet another example of Farrell deliberately overlooking a plausible explanation to make the Bible have more errors than it really does.
Alward called this "a plausible explanation," but why is it plausible? It is based on a rendition of Exodus 6:3 that is different from all other translations. If readers will scroll up to the 41 different translations of this verse, they will see several of them saying, "by my name Yahweh I was not known to them," or, "I was not known to them by the name Jehovah [Yahweh], or, "they did not know me by my name Yahweh," or some equivalent. How the text should be translated, whether "I did not make myself known to them by the name Yahweh," or, "I was not known to them by the name Yahweh," is irrelevant, because two of the texts that I just quoted above have Yahweh saying to Abraham, "I am Yahweh" (Gen. 15:7) and saying the same thing to Jacob in Genesis 28:13. Hence, Alward's ignorance of the Bible led him to put his foot into his mouth again, because the book of Genesis clearly does say that Yahweh had personally made himself known to Abraham and Jacob by his name Yahweh. To claim otherwise, Alward would have to argue that when Yahweh said to Moses, "I am Yahweh," this made himself known to Moses by the name Yahweh, but when Yahweh said to Abraham and Jacob, "I am Yahweh," this did not make himself known to them by the name Yahweh. This is the kind of predicament that Alward frequently gets himself into on the Errancy list.
The Question Theory: This was all pointed out to Alward while this discussion was taking place back in 1999, so Alward, seeing that another of his explanations hadn't passed muster, switched positions again as noted in his article that I am replying to.
Bible defenders (Jerry Falwell, for example) maintain that a question is implied, and the “technical” possibility of this view was allowed by another errancy member who noted that surrounding context must be used to determine whether a statement is a question: “The question ‘Art thou my very son Esau’ (Gen. 27:24) is grammatically indistinguishable from the simple sentence, “Thou art my very son Esau...” [and that] only from the clues provided by the immediate context... can one conclude that the phrase was meant as a question and not a simple statement.”
I have already thoroughly rebutted Alward's question theory, so I don't need to rehash the rebuttal here. I will just remind readers that if there is any merit at all to this quibble, it is more than just a little strange that no Bible translators recognized that Yahweh was asking a rhetorical question in the disputed text. Alward's reference to "another errancy member," who allegedly agreed that Yahweh had asked a question in Exodus 6:3, was, as I pointed out above, a flagrant distortion of a post sent to the list by Joseph Crea, who, as the link just given will show, thought that this question theory was too unlikely to warrant serious consideration. He listed reasons for his rejection of it, but Alward didn't bother to mention that part of Crea's post.
Since Alward's question theory was appropriated from Jerry Falwell, a notorious Bible inerrantist, I will point out that the Errancy archives will show that even inerrantist members of the forum disagreed with this Falwell/Alward spin on Exodus 6:3 when Alward was trying to sell it. On November 8, 1999, Matthew Bell, an inerrantist member in Scotland, sent the following reply to Alward's "explanation."
The obvious difficulty I see with the harmonisation is that it doesn't make sense in its reading, leaving one with an incomplete thought. Compare the two statements in context:
As a Declarative Statement:
And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I [am] the LORD: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Issac and unto Jacob, by [the name of] God Almighty, but by name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.As a Question:
And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I [am] the LORD: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Issac and unto Jacob, by [the name of] God Almighty, but by name JEHOVAH was I not known to them?
The declarative statement reads complete and natural (hence I suspect why it is translated that way) whereas the question when read as such leads one with a sense of incompleteness as it would no longer be a contrast between the former statement but an extension of it which raises the question of why the 'but' and as a question rather than an 'and' without the question. It does not read naturally as a question but as contrasting statement.
If I can get that much out of your proposed harmonisation I dread to think what those more familiar with literary and grammatical rules will do with it.
In other words, Bell was trying to point out to Alward that even a Bible believer, who wants to think that the Bible is harmonious, could not see any merit in Alward's spin on the verse. Alward had simply asserted, without any contextually supporting evidence, that it was a question, just as he had earlier asserted that Yahweh had meant only that he did had personally reveal his name to the patriarchs, and after that had asserted that Yahweh had not revealed his name to the patriarchs during his first appearances to them. Each time one of his assertions was discredited, he would come back with another one, but that did not deter him from continuing his string of assertions. On November 9, 1999, the day after Bell's post, Alward sent to Errancy a post reiterating that he had abandoned his "first-meeting" theory in favor of the one that he had gotten from Falwell. As explained above, this is the theory that Exodus 6:3 rather than being a declarative statement had been actually intended as a question, so instead of saying, "By my name Yahweh I was not known to them," Yahweh was actually saying, "By my name Yahweh, was I not known to them?"
When I first rebutted your Yahweh argument--the one you offered to the list for John Smith's benefit, you didn't mention the Genesis post which showed that Yahweh told Abraham his name, in that first post, at least. That was the post I rebutted based just on the information in it, which was that Genesis repeatedly made it clear that Abraham knew the name Yahweh. When I rebutted, I didn't know about Yahweh's using his name to Abraham.
I will interrupt here to observe that Alward's statement here is typical of many that he made in the Errancy forum. When a discrepancy was identified, Alward, who had admitted many times that he knew very little about the Bible and didn't spend time in research, would post a how-it-could-have-been explanation. Then when those of us who are knowledgeable in the Bible pointed out that his "explanation" was inconsistent with other biblical passages, he would tell us that he didn't know about those other scriptures when he had offered his solution, and would then abandon his explanation and present another one, not knowing whether it too would be incompatible with other scriptures. That is what he did above. He said that he just didn't know that Yahweh had told Abraham that his name was Yahweh, because I had not mentioned that in the post that he was rebutting. Believe it or not, this was standard procedure for Alward during his eight-year tenure on the Errancy list.
When Alward was shown that he was woefully ignorant of the subject he was writing on, did he apologize and tell the other members that maybe he should lurk and try to learn from those who new a bit more about the subject? He did not? After making the admission just quoted above, he went on to offer a third "solution" to the Exodus 6:3 problem.
Days went by before you responded, and in the meanwhile I had advanced much farther through the argument, and in a somewhat different direction with Bruce Monson. My position has evolved to the Question Mark Defense, supplemented by my recent post to the list last night, and a more recent one to one very helpful "George". [sic] I've long since abandoned my preliminary defense based on very little information, and have settled for now on what seems to be a very solid rebuttal of your allegations of contradiction.
The audacity of this guy is almost unbelievable. After having twice had his biblical ignorance exposed, one would think that he would have learned a little humility, but humility is apparently not a part of Alward's nature. As seen above, he announced that he had "settled for now on what seems to be a very solid rebuttal of [my] allegations of contradiction." Notice that he said that he had settled "for now" on what he thought was a very solid rebuttal in order to leave himself an opening if his new rebuttal were shot down. Look at how he justified the time he had wasted on his other "solutions."
The reason I repeatedly asked you to clarify your position, was so that I could offer the state-of-art-Alward explanation--my current explanation; you refused to do that, and continued to rail against views I no longer held.
His "current explanation," at that time, was the Falwell "solution," which interpreted Exodus 6:3 as a question rather than a declarative statement. As noted above, this "solution" was immediately ripped to pieces by members of the Errancy list, one of whom was a biblical inerrantist at the time. Alward never even tried to explain why, if his "current explanation" was as solid as he seemed to think, no one who had ever worked on translations of the Hebrew scriptures had recognized that this was a question and not a declarative statement, so without any contextual evidence on his side, Alward resorted to distorting the comments of other Errancy members to leave the impression with his website readers that even some of the list members had agreed with him. He may not be an inerrantist, but he certainly has the disrespect for truth and honesty that makes him eminently qualified to be one.
In a revision of his article after he left the Errancy list, Alward added yet another "explanation" of the discrepancy in Exodus 6:3, which he called a "second argument."
The second argument uses the interpretation of Exodus 6:3 from the New English Translation of the Bible. There, the translators tell us that "known by them" refers not to the knowing merely by the name "Yahweh," but knowing as an experiencing:
The verb "to know" is never used to introduce a name which had never been known or experienced, [but one which describes] the recognition of the overtones or significance of the name... people will know his name when prayers are answered.... God is not saying that he had not revealed a name to the patriarchs.... Rather, he is saying that the patriarchs did not experience what the name "Yahweh" actually meant.6
Support for this interpretation is also found in Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary:
The words may be considered as used comparatively: though God did appear to those patriarchs as JEHOVAH, and they acknowledged him by this name, yet it was but comparatively known unto them; they knew nothing of the power and goodness of God, in comparison of what the Israelites were now about to experience.
Thus, Till's allegation of error is once again fairly easily rebutted, if not disproved; if any skeptic thinks that this rebuttal is based on a scenario so implausible that any Bible-lover who offered it should be laughed at, let him present his case. Otherwise, Till should remove this from his list of biblical contradictions.
In his "second argument," Alward appealed to Adam Clarke, but like Jerry Falwell, Clarke was a biblical inerrantist, who always tried to explain away discrepancies. Not once in his comments on discrepancies like the one in Exodus 6:3 did Clarke ever acknowledge that any of them were actual mistakes in the Bible. He always offered some kind of "explanation" for whatever discrepancy he was discussing, so in that sense, he was no different from Gleason Archer, John Haley, William Arndt, Norman Geisler, or any of the other inerrantists who made careers of "explaining" that biblical discrepancies weren't really discrepancies. In appealing to Adam Clarke, then, Alward committed the fallacy of the appeal to biased authority.
In this sort of appeal, the authority is one who actually is knowledgeable on the matter, but one who may have professional or personal motivations that render his professional judgment suspect: for instance, "To determine whether fraternities are beneficial to this campus, we interviewed all the frat presidents." Or again, "To find out whether or not sludge-mining really is endangering the Tuskogee salamander's breeding grounds, we interviewed the supervisors of the sludge-mines, who declared there is no problem." Indeed, it is important to get "both viewpoints" on an argument, but basing a substantial part of your argument on a source that has personal, professional, or financial interests at stake may lead to biased arguments.
Needless to say, all though his article Alward based "substantial parts" of his arguments on appeals to sources whose personal and professional interests hardly permitted them to judge this matter objectively, so reasonable readers can put no confidence in the fact that Adam Clarke thought that Exodus 6:3 was not saying that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn't know the name Yahweh but that they "knew nothing of his power and goodness." Given his commitment to biblical inerrancy, he would be expected to spin the text in some way that would make it consistent with all other biblical references to the name of the Hebrew god Yahweh, but his "solution" is fraught with problems that will be immediately recognized by those whose biblical knowledge exceeds Alward's superficial level. In the first place, the text in question says nothing at all about what the patriarchs knew about the power and goodness of Yahweh; it spoke only of what they knew about his name, and it clearly said that they had known him has "God Almighty" but did not know his name Yahweh. The main problem with Clarke's "solution," then, is the same as the problems found in almost all inerrantist "explanations" of biblical discrepancies: It just doesn't say what he claimed that it meant. The absence of contextual language to support Clarke's "interpretation" of the verse raises a logical question: If Yahweh had meant that the patriarchs had known his name Yahweh but had not known his power and goodness, why didn't he just say so? Is it asking too much to expect an omniscient, omnipotent deity to communicate with clarity? After all, almost any reasonably literate person, as I have done below, could have written the statement to say unequivocally what Clarke claimed that it meant.
I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, who also knew me by my name Yahweh, but they never knew my power and goodness.
Written like this (or some equivalent) readers would immediately recognize that the god Yahweh was telling Moses what Clarke claimed that he meant, but without comparable language, one can arrive at Clarke's spin on the verse only by reading into it what he wants it to say. The main problem with Alward's "second argument," then, is that it violates a primary rule of literary interpretation that says that the meanings of words in written texts must be determined by the contexts in which they appear, and there is nothing at all in the context of Exodus 6:3 to suggest that Yahweh was telling Moses that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew his name Yahweh but just didn't know his "power and goodness."
This so-called "second argument" has enjoyed wide popularity in fundamentalist circles but none that I know of among mainstream scholars. Alward's footnote six before the quotation from Clarke's commentary, for example, was a partial quotation from commentary on Exodus 6:3 in the The New English Translation, but this too is an appeal to biased authority, because this translation was completed under the auspices of W. Hall Harris (the General Editor), Daniel B. Wallace (Senior New Testament Editor), and Robert B. Chisholm (Senior Old Testament Editor), who are all three members of the faculty at Dallas Theological Seminary, which is a Southern Baptist institution. Michael Marlowe's comments below about the twenty-three assistants who worked on NET's translation of the Old Testament speaks volumes about the probable lack of objectivity in this version of the Bible.
Although the Introduction does not mention it, seventeen of these people were teachers at DTS; and of the remaining six, five were students at DTS. Only one (William Barrick) has no obvious connection to Dallas Theological Seminary. Some of them have no publications, and are little-known outside of DTS. Evidently the version was almost entirely a project of the members of the DTS faculty, assisted by their students. This provides some context for the Introduction's statement that the translators were "chosen in every instance because of his or her work in that particular book." The copyright page of the printed edition does not say where "Biblical Studies Press" is located, but from other sources we learn that its offices are in Garland, Texas—a suburb of Dallas. Evidently the people involved in the version have some interest in concealing its "Dallas" connection.
As the above link to Michael Marlowe will show, he is a biblical inerrantist himself, but his fundamentalist view of the Bible apparently didn't keep him from seeing the lack of objectivity in one of the primary sources that Alward cited in support of his attempts to explain away the discrepancy in Exodus 6:3. Given all this information about the origin of NET, we have every reason to suspect that any of its footnotes affixed to passages like Exodus 6:3 would reflect obvious attempts to show that there are no discrepancies in the Bible. I have read NET footnotes on several passages where discrepancies have been identified, such as Deuteronomy 10:6, which disagrees with Numbers 20:25-28 concerning the place where Aaron died, and Genesis 21:14-16, which depicted Hagar carrying on her shoulder a child who, according to Genesis 16:1-4, 16:15-16, 17:1, and 21:5, would have been about 14 years old, and I never found a single footnote that agreed that these were actual discrepancies in the biblical text. Without exception, the editors resorted to what-it-could-have-meant interpretations to resolve the discrepancies. We see, then, that Alward in his attempts to explain away the discrepancy concerning Yahweh's name has made appeals to Jerry Falwell, Adam Clarke, and a Bible translation compiled mainly by personnel at a Southern Baptist seminary, whose website lists "the authority and inerrancy of the scriptures" among its "core beliefs."
We believe that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” by which we understand the whole Bible is inspired in the sense that holy men of God “were moved by the Holy Spirit” to write the very words of Scripture. We believe that this divine inspiration extends equally and fully to all parts of the writings—historical, poetical, doctrinal, and prophetical—as appeared in the original manuscripts. We believe that the whole Bible in the originals is therefore without error (emphasis added).
In this source that Alward appealed to, then, we could hardly expect to see any degree of objectivity in its footnotes inserted as commentary on "alleged Bible discrepancies," because the translators of this version of the Bible are bound to a code and institution that would not allow them even to entertain the notion that real discrepancies may be in the Bible. Alward's appeals to such obviously biased sources in no way prove that his "solutions" to this discrepancy are wrong, but they certainly give objective readers pause to wonder why he was unable to cite any unbiased authorities in support of his position. One would think that if Alward is as right in this matter as he apparently thinks he is, he would have been able to cite mainstream sources who accept that the Bible is errant in places but, nevertheless, think that Exodus 6:3 is not an example of discrepancy. Nowhere in his article did Alward appeal to any such authorities.
A widely accepted logical axiom recognizes that the truth or falsity of propositions is always independent of their sources. It is entirely possible, then, that the editors of the NET Bible were right in their claim about the meaning of Exodus 6:3, so this claim, as unlikely as it is, deserves a response. To be a satisfactory "explanation" of the discrepancy, Alward and other advocates of it must show that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had no awareness of the "power and goodness" of their god Yahweh, but several passages in Genesis clearly show that these patriarchs knew that Yahweh was a god of "power and goodness." In the first place, the problem text has Yahweh telling Moses that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew him as "God Almighty" [el shadday], so even this name clearly suggested a god of power. If not, then why would they have called him this, and why would Yahweh have told them that he was "God Almighty"?
Genesis 17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, Yahweh appeared to Abram, and said to him, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.
Genesis 35:11 God said to him [Jacob], "I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall spring from you.
In both of these texts, Yahweh appeared to the patriarchs and told them that he was "God Almighty." The expression in Hebrew was אל שּׁדּי, [el shadday]. Brown, Driver, and Briggs devoted almost an entire page (42-43, Hendrickson, 1999) to discussion of the word אל [el]. It was used to denote "men of might and rank" as in Ezekiel's reference to "the strong
Genesis 31:29 It is in my power [אל] to do you harm; but the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, 'Take heed that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad.'
Micah 2:1 Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power [אל].
The expression God Almighty [אל שּׁדּי, el shadday], then, was actually a redundancy, because the word שּׁדּי [shadday], as noted by Brown, Driver, and Briggs (p. 994), Davidson's Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon (p. 702, Hendrickson, 2006), and Strong (#7706), meant almighty, omnipotent. Therefore, when the god Yahweh told Abraham and Jacob that he was "God Almighty," in the examples cited above, he was telling them that he was the almighty, omnipotent God. Likewise, when the patriarchs referred to him in the examples below as [אל שּׁדּי], they were indicating that they understood that he was an all-powerful deity.
Genesis 28:1 Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, "You shall not marry one of the Canaanite women. 2 Go at once to Paddan-aram to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father; and take as wife from there one of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. 3 May God Almighty [אל שּׁדּי], bless you and make you fruitful and numerous, that you may become a company of peoples.
Genesis 43:11 Then their father Israel said to them, "If it must be so, then do this: take some of the choice fruits of the land in your bags, and carry them down as a present to the man--a little balm and a little honey, gum, resin, pistachio nuts, and almonds. 12 Take double the money with you. Carry back with you the money that was returned in the top of your sacks; perhaps it was an oversight. 13 Take your brother also, and be on your way again to the man; 14 may God Almighty [אל שּׁדּי] grant you mercy before the man, so that he may send back your other brother and Benjamin.
Genesis 48:3 And Jacob said to Joseph, "God Almighty [אל שּׁדּי], appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and he blessed me, 4 and said to me, 'I am going to make you fruitful and increase your numbers; I will make of you a company of peoples, and will give this land to your offspring after you for a perpetual holding.'"
Genesis 49:22 Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring; his branches run over the wall. 23 The archers fiercely attacked him; they shot at him and pressed him hard. 24 Yet his bow remained taut, and his arms were made agile by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob, by the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, 25 by the God of your father, who will help you, by the Almighty [שּׁדּי], who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
Accepting Alward's quibble, then, which he has appropriated from rank biblical inerrantists, requires one to believe that even though the god of the patriarchs told them that that he was an almighty, omnipotent deity and even though they often referred to him as such, they didn't know that he was a god of power. If we can't believe that they understood the meaning of this expression, which they frequently used, how can we know that they understood the meaning of anything they said?
In addition to the fact that the patriarchs referred to their deity in terms of his "mightiness" and omnipotence, Alward's "solution" to the discrepancy in Exodus 6:3 is inconsistent with examples that, if historically accurate, would have demonstrated to the patriarchs that their god was indeed an all-powerful deity. A notable demonstration of Yahweh's power occurred in his destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. After Yahweh had paid a personal visit to Abraham, which was just one of many visits that he made in those days, to tell Abraham and Sarah that, despite their ages of 99 and 90 years respectively, they would have a son, he also informed Abraham of his intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
Genesis 18:16 Then the men set out from there, and they looked toward Sodom; and Abraham went with them to set them on their way. 17 Yahweh said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, 18 seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? 19 No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of Yahweh by doing righteousness and justice; so that Yahweh may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him." 20 Then Yahweh said, "How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! 21 I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know." 22 So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before Yahweh.
As the rest of this tale unfolded, Abraham tried to talk Yahweh into sparing Sodom but was unable to convince him that the city should be spared. When Lot and his daughters had fled from Sodom, then, Yahweh rained brimstone and fire upon Sodom, Gomorrah, and all the cities of the plain. As the story was told in the Bible, Yahweh used a sorched-earth policy to destroy all the inhabitants and everything that grew on the ground (Gen. 19:24-25). If this story is historically accurate, as gullible inerrantists believe that it is, Abraham witnessed this display of Yahwistic power: "Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Yahweh; 28 and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the Plain and saw the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of a furnace" (Gen. 19:27-28). This tale, as it was told in Genesis, could not have happened without demonstrating to Abraham that his god Yahweh was indeed a god of great power.
Besides this demonstration of Yahweh's power, Abraham, if the Genesis accounts are historically accurate (as inerrantists believe), saw the fulfillment of a promise that he and Sarah would have a son at the respective ages of 100 and 91, which, needless to say, would have been a rather amazing feat that would have required exceptional power. Throughout the book of Genesis, tales were told of visits and visions that the patriarchs received from their god Yahweh. When Jacob journeyed to Paddan-aram to look for a wife among his mother's relatives, for example, Yahweh visited him in a dream to assure him that the land promise given earlier to Abraham would be fulfilled and that Yahweh would be with him wherever he went.
Genesis 28:13 And Yahweh stood beside him [Jacob] and said, "I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. 15 "Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."
In the book of Genesis, Yahweh routinely made appearances like this to the patriarchs. I seriously doubt that Alward believes that all of these appearances and visions actually happened, but the book of Genesis claims that they did. Since Alward is arguing that there is no inconsistency in Exodus 6:3 and the Genesis records, he must offer a plausible explanation of how Yahweh's power-and-goodness were not known to men who routinely chatted with him, witnessed such miracles as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and received numerous "blessings" from him. The footnote in the New English Bible, which Alward cited above, said that the patriarchs knew the name Yahweh but just didn't know its "significance" and then went on to say that "people will know his [Yahweh's] name when prayers are answered." No explanation of this statement was offered in the footnote, but if it is indeed true that people would know the significance of Yahweh's name "when prayers are answered," then there is certainly ample evidence in Genesis that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew the significance of the name. Abraham, for example, once prayed that the barrenness of king Abimelech and his servants would be healed, and it was done (Gen. 20:17-18). On his return to Canaan after his experiences in Paddan-aram, Jacob prayed that Yahweh would deliver him and his family "from the hand of his brother Esau" (Gen. 32:9-12). As the story was told, Esau met Jacob with a force of 400 men but made peace with his brother and allowed him to return to Canaan, so I am sure that Bible fundamentalists would say that Yahweh had answered Jacob's prayer for deliverance from the hand of Esau. Before his journey to Paddan-aram, Jacob's father Isaac had prayed that "God almighty" would bless him, make him fruitful, multiply him, and give him and his seed "the blessing of Abraham" (Gen. 28:3-4). Jacob went to Paddan-aram alone but returned with two wives, two concubines, 13 children, men and women servants, and herds of oxen, donkeys, and sheep (Gen. 32:3-5). Furthermore, as he went on his way, he was met by "angels of God" (Gen. 32:1-2). It would seem, then, that Isaac's prayer for Jacob's safety and prosperity was generously answered.
Altogether, the book of Genesis recorded over 20 visits and appearances that Yahweh made to the patriarchs, and these accounts attributed every little fortuitous event in their lives to their god Yahweh. How, then, can anyone, especially an atheist like Alward, claim that Exodus 6:3 meant only that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn't know about the "power and goodness" of their god even though they did know that his name was Yahweh? I strongly suspect that Alward, whose website is filled with superficially explicated examples of biblical discrepancies (which are far less obvious than the one in Exodus 6:3), doesn't really believe that Yahweh's statement in this verse was consistent with the many stories in Genesis that clearly indicate that the patriarchs knew the name Yahweh. Having been angered by my refusal to cater to his attempts to present himself on the Errancy list as an expert in biblical inerrancy and to use the list to get others to do his research, he wrote his article "explaining" the discrepancy in Exodus 6:3 primarily to attack me personally and not to present what he actually thinks is a plausible explanation of the Exodus 6:3 discrepancy.
