Now it is in the light of his character as thus referred to--of his knowledge and experience of the true religion as held by the people of God then and in earlier times--of his faith in the person and mediatorial work of the Messiah--that we are to regard him as the writer of the primeval and patriarchal history; and if it is evident that he recognized the Messiah in the person of the Messenger Jehovah, and that in all his subsequent narratives he designated the same official person by the terms Jehovah, Elohim, and Elohe, as well as by the terms Messenger, Adon, and Adonai, then it is safe to conclude that he intended to designate the same Person by the same terms in the earlier history. At the period of the legation of Moses, the word Elohim was in familiar use in Egypt and among the Israelites as the designation of the object of religious homage; very probably it was the only name of God known to the people generally. Moses accordingly, in the first two chapters of Exodus, which probably were written before the book of Genesis, employs that name only. The third chapter opens with the announcement of the Messenger Jehovah appearing in the bush, and in its progress applies to him indifferently the names Elohim and Jehovah; and in the fourth and ensuing chapters, the same, and Adonai and El-Shadai, but most frequently Jehovah. If now we suppose the book of Genesis to have been written by him after the events in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and at mount Sinai, and the setting up of the tabernacle, (which occurred about twelve months after the exodus,) where the people, though generally familiar only with the name Elohim, must have become in some degree used to the name Jehovah, we may perhaps discern a fitness and beauty in the first announcements of the Creator in Genesis; where, in the first chapter and the first three verses of the second, the name Elohim only is used; in the second, from the fourth verse, the name Jehovah Elohim, and in the ensuing chapters these names separately and conjointly, and various other designations, as Melach Jehovah, Adonai, and El-Shadai. In numerous instances the _article_ is prefixed to the name Elohim, as if emphatically to designate the God of Israel, the Creator, as _the_ true Elohim, in distinction from the false god of idolaters. By this method he recalled, and reëstablished in the minds of the people, all the Divine designations known to the patriarchs of preceding ages, and their reference and applicability as designations to the one mediatorial Person; rendering it plain that _the_ Elohim of the Israelites in Egypt, and of the first chapter of Genesis, was identical with Jehovah, Melach the Messenger, Adonai, &c. In this view the resemblance of the first verses of the Gospel of John is noticeable, considering that it was his object to identify the Christ, as he appeared visibly incarnate, with Elohim the Creator announced in the first verses of Genesis.