JEHOVIST, 1e-ho'vIst, sometimes called JAHWIST, a hypothetic author of the Pentateuch, who used the word Jehovah, or Jahweh, as the name of God instead of Elohim, which term denotes the Supreme Being in other passages of the sacred canon. To the writer who employs the latter designation is applied the term Elo hist. According to the theories of many modern Biblical critics the present Pentateuch is a com pilation from two original records, one made by an Elohist, the other by a Jehovist. The Je hovist history is supposed to be the older of the two (by some critics it is dated 950 ac.), and to have consisted of an account of Jehovists, dealings with the chosen people up to the con quest of Palestine west of the Jordan. It is a religious history of the attainment of the Prom ised Land. In this history was emphasized the supremacy of Jehovah as the one God, creator of the world, and the national God and Father of the chosen people, in whose affairs He interposes as He appeared to their early forefathers in the shape of a man or an angel.
In the Elohist record, which is supposed to cover the same period and to have been written 700 B.C., there is a more modern interpretation of history attempted. The anthropomorphic sug gestions of deity are softened, Elohim inter poses merely by a voice, speaking to his people in words of encouragement or rebuke. Through the narrative of the hypothetical Elohist there runs also a tone of sadness, there are anticipa tions of coming disaster and disappointment.
The Jehovistic or Jahwistic editor who com bined these two histories is supposed to have lived in the 7th century ac., while in the 4th century ac. a third post-exilic writer added to these combined elements the legal codes which swelled the Pentateuch into the Hexateuch.