Exodus 6:3 has God say he appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as 'God Almighty' (El Shaddai) but 'by my name, the LORD (YHWH), I did not make myself known to them' — yet Genesis repeatedly has the patriarchs use and hear the name YHWH (e.g. Gen 4:26; 12:8; 15:7; 28:13). This is read as 'editorializing,' i.e. evidence of composite, contradictory sources stitched together.

This deserves an honest, two-sided answer rather than a dismissal. **The critical reading, stated fairly:** Wellhausen and successors (recently e.g. Richard Elliott Friedman, *Who Wrote the Bible*) are correct that P consistently avoids YHWH before Exodus 6 while J uses it from Genesis 2 on, and that this is a real, textually observable pattern used as one criterion (among several — doublets, style, theology) for source division. This is mainstream, not fringe, source-critical observation. **Why it doesn't establish what the objection needs it to establish:** 1. *Lexical point.* 'I did not make myself known' translates a Niphal of *yada'* ('to know'), a verb whose semantic range in Hebrew regularly denotes intimate, experiential, relational knowledge rather than bare cognizance of a label (cf. Gen 4:1, 'Adam knew Eve' — obviously not merely learning her name). The natural reading is that the patriarchs had not yet *experienced* what the name YHWH would come to mean — its covenantal, redemptive weight, to be demonstrated concretely through the Exodus deliverance itself (the immediately following verses, 6:6-8, unpack exactly this: 'I will bring you out... I will redeem you... you shall know that I am YHWH your God'). A name can be spoken as a label long before its full significance is disclosed through action — much as 'Messiah' was a known term centuries before its content was historically unpacked in Jesus. Walter Kaiser (*Toward an Old Testament Theology*; *Hard Sayings of the Bible*) and, in a full-length rebuttal of the Wellhausenian reading of exactly this text, Umberto Cassuto (*The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch*) both defend this resolution and argue that Genesis's use of divine names tracks theme (El/Elohim with universal-creational contexts, YHWH with covenantal-relational ones) rather than mechanically tracking hypothetical documents. 2. *Even granting composite sources, the objection doesn't reach polytheism.* Suppose, for argument's sake, that J and P are genuinely distinct literary strands later combined (a view a number of evangelical scholars can partly accommodate — see Kenneth Kitchen, *On the Reliability of the Old Testament*, and Duane Garrett, who argue for a substantially unified final text compiled under a coherent theological hand, without requiring wholesale rejection of any tradition-history). A tension over WHEN a name began to be used, or which literary strand narrates that timing, is a compositional/authorship question. It says nothing at all about whether the strands believed OTHER GODS EXISTED. Concluding 'polytheism' from a naming-chronology tension is a non sequitur — it answers a question about literary history with a claim about ontology that the text never makes. So: concede the genuine compositional tension is real and seriously discussed even by conservative Hebrew scholars — but note plainly it does not do the work of proving early Israel was polytheistic.

Scripture's own pattern is progressive revelation (Heb 1:1-3): God discloses himself incrementally across salvation history, culminating in Christ. Exodus 6:3 fits this pattern perfectly — the *bare name* YHWH may already have been spoken by and to the patriarchs, while its full covenantal content (a God who acts in history to redeem a people from bondage) is unveiled only at the Exodus. That is not contradiction; it is exactly the kind of 'now you will truly know what this name means' disclosure the rest of the canon repeatedly performs (compare how 'Son of Man,' 'Messiah,' and 'Lord' are all terms known nominally well before their fullest content is historically demonstrated).