e Egyptian
story of Sinuhit, an Egyptian prince, who, to save his life, fled
eastward past the "Wall of the Princes" which guarded the
northeastern frontier of Egypt. On the borders of the wilderness
he found certain Bedouin herdsmen who received him hospitably.
These "sand wanderers" sent him on from tribe to tribe until he
reached the land of Kedem, east of the Dead Sea, where he remained
for a year and a half. Later he found his way to the court of one
of the local kings in central Palestine where he married and became
in time a prosperous local prince.

III.

THE SCHOOL OF THE WILDERNESS.

The story of Moses is in many ways closely parallel to that of
Sinuhit. Among the Midianite tribes living to the south and
southeast of Palestine he found refuge and generous hospitality.
The priest of the sub-tribe of the Kenites received him into his
home and gave him his daughter in marriage. Note the
characteristic Oriental idea of marriage. Here Moses learned the
lessons that were essential for his training as the leader and
deliverer of his people.

The Kenites figure in later Hebrew history as worshippers of
Jehovah and are frequently associated with the Israelites. After
the capture of Jericho certain of them went up with the southern
tribes to conquer southern Palestine. (Judg. 1:16.) It was Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite (Judg. 5:24), who rendered the Hebrews
a signal service by slaying Sisera, the fleeing king of the
Canaanites, after the memorable battle beside the River Kishon.
Many modern scholars draw the conclusion from the Biblical
narrative that it was from the Kenites that Moses first learned of
Yahweh (or, as the distinctive name of Israel's God was translated
by later Jewish scribes, Jehovah). Furthermore it is suggested
that gratitude to the new God, who delivered the Israelites from
their bondage, was the reason why they proved on the whole so loyal
to Jehovah. This conclusion is possible and in many ways
attractive, but it is beset with serious difficulties. We know, in
ancient history, of no other example of a people suddenly changing
their religion. When there have been such sudden and wholesale
conversions in later times they have been either under the
compulsion of the sword, as in the history of Islam, or under the
influence of a far higher religion, as when Christianity has been
carried to heathen peoples on a low stage of civilization. Do the
earliest Hebrew traditions imply