However, the worship of God which the Jews adopted at Sinai certainly was originally foreign to them. It is an error to suppose from the story that Moses represented himself to Israel as the ambassador of the God of their fathers, that he must have found among the people the faith of this one God. This theory would lessen the importance of Moses for the Old Testament religion. Like all founders of religion he endowed the people with a new creative idea which gave a fresh turn to their life, and this new idea was the worship of Jehovah as their ancestral God. For if we take away all that the worship of Israel gained upon the path it travelled in historical times, then, supposing such antiquity for the worship of Jehovah in Israel, there is left no fresh idea, from the adoption of which by the people a new epoch could date. Moses, then, would in the most favourable light be only a restorer or a reformer of the old Israelitish religion, and not the founder of a religion as he is rightly considered by priestly tradition.
Two further points must be noted in this connection. In the first place, we know nothing of Israel’s worship before the time of Moses; not a single tradition exists of it. But this cannot be wondered at; and it may be observed elsewhere also that after the adoption of a higher religion, all recollection of an earlier form of worship not only dies out, but is designedly destroyed. Secondly, however, it should be noted that the worship of Jehovah may have been in a more imperfect and undeveloped form among the people from whom Moses borrowed it, than that in which he imposed it on his race.
Many features of the sacred tradition show that the worship of Jehovah was originally foreign to Israel. To ancient Israel Jehovah dwells on Sinai, which, therefore, is the original seat of his worship. Moreover, confused as the accounts may seem in some particulars, the old tradition explicitly states that Moses, who imposes the worship of Jehovah upon Israel, is the son-in-law of the priest of an Arabian race; that is, that the priesthood of Moses and Levi is connected with an older non-Israelitish Jehovah priesthood.
This father-in-law of Moses is called in Exodus iii. 1, Jethro the priest of the Midianites, and in Exodus ii. 18, Reuel. Exodus xviii. contains a fairly authentic account of Jethro by the Elohist, and yet it is questionable whether this account really refers to him. It is, however, probable. In Numbers x. 29, his name appears as Hobab. And in Judges i. 16, the Kenites are brought into connection with the father-in-law of Moses; Judges iv. 2 likewise calls Hobab, Moses’ father-in-law, a Kenite; he, therefore, should rather have been called a priest of the Kenites.
That the Arabic or nomadic race, from which Moses borrowed the worship of Jehovah, was the tribe of the Kenites, is proved by the later history of this people, who henceforth are closely interwoven with the worship of Jehovah.
According to Numbers x. 29, and Judges i. 16, the Kenites joined the children of Israel in their journey to the land west of Jordan, and according to the latter passage “they went up out of the city of palm trees (Jericho), with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah.” In the south of the district of Judah, we meet in the earliest ages of the Kings a nomadic Kenite race, which was in friendly relations with Judah (1 Samuel xxx.), although dwelling among the Amalekites (1 Samuel xv. 6).
It is questionable whether, after such a definite proof as the latter passages, it can be maintained that the Kenites were in alliance with the Midianites, especially as the land of Midian lies on the east of the Persian Gulf, and the Midianites at the time of the birth of the Jewish kingdom lived on the east of Jordan.
In this connection may be cited the fact that a single Kenite clan was nomadic in the north, and that Ephraim was, according to Judges v. 14, of partly Amalekitish origin. Nevertheless these are all only surmises. The scarcity of the records deprives us of any clear light on the ancient ethnological relations.
The people of Israel, then, strengthened by Kenitish elements, migrated from the Sinaitic peninsula into the land east of Jordan. But we know neither by what route they went, the time when it happened, nor how long the journey took. To be sure, in Amos v. 25, it is stated that the people were in the wilderness for forty years. This round number is, however, not only doubtful in itself; it is still more so because it rests upon the assumption, proceeding from theological hypotheses, that the whole of the people which emigrated from Egypt, with the exception of Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, died in the desert for their unbelief and never saw the Holy Land.
The most ancient source of the Pentateuch probably knows nothing of this forty years’ wandering. The accuracy of the mention of the places, which were the stations of the wandering in the desert, cannot, however, be brought forward as historical proof of this time in the desert. These places, it goes without saying, have all, within historical times, been desert stations. But that Israel repaired to them is supported solely by the tradition of later times which, on the hypothesis that Israel came from the Sinaitic peninsula and, on the other hand, on the basis of its knowledge of the roads through the desert, constructed a picture of the way which the Israelites might have taken. Moreover, it is evident that the veneration by neighbouring peoples of some of the places in the doubtful territory influenced the tradition. Hence the choice of Kadesh-Barnea as a chief station, of Mount Horeb as the place of Aaron’s death, and of the mountains in the north of Moab, as the abode of Moses in his last days.
It is then of little import for us to verify the route which Israel is said to have taken in its journey from the peninsula of Sinai to the land east of Jordan. We have already shown that there is no historical tradition concerning the conquest of the land east of Jordan, and that what is related about the conquest of the kingdom of Sichem by the Israelites under Moses is based upon conclusions as to the primitive condition of the country which are drawn from its condition at the time of the early Kings, but which are not free from misunderstanding.e
Before continuing with the critical narrative it may be well to glance over the biography of Moses as given in the Bible, Exodus and Deuteronomy.
BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF MOSES AND THE EXODUS
And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.—Exodus i. 22.
And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.
And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.
And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.
And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.
And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.
And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children.
Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?
And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother.