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case under consideration. The initiation of Israel into the wor- ship of Yahweh by the Kenite priest is paralleled by another instance in which the circumstances lie more fully in the light of history. The northern territory of Israel was depopulated of Israelites by the King of Assyria, and then filled up with colonists from various parts of his empire. These colonists were inducted into the worship of Yahweh by an Israelite priest. At the same time the new converts, like their Israelite prede- cessors, combined this worship with that of other gods : "They feared Yahweh and served their own gods after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away" (II Kings 17:33). These colonists did not lose their social identity through adoption of Yahweh from Israel ; and, in the same way, the Israelites in the wilderness, many centuries earlier, did not lose their identity simply because they adopted Yahweh from the Kenites. Although the clans of Israel could not have been the enormous host represented in the Pentateuch, the impression is that they exceeded the Kenites numerically. Besides this, they did not join the organization of the earlier worshipers of Yahweh, and take their name. Moreover, only a portion of the Kenites accompanied Israel into Canaan. Thus, the principal result of contact between these two lay in the sphere of worship. The covenant brought Israel and the god of Sinai together ; but it did not effect a formal union of the two societies. It was therefore properly spoken of as a covenant between Israel and Yahweh, and not between Israel and the Kenites. Further- more, the subsequent religious practice of Israel for centuries, in associating the cults of Yahweh and countless other gods, proves that this obscure transaction in the desert of Arabia did not have that peculiar importance for contemporaries which it acquired for posterity.
Doubtless this handling of the biblical material will be strange and perplexing to many minds. If the view appear improbable that Israel adopted the worship of Yahweh by cove- nant, it should be emphasized, in the first place, that the adop- tion of an alien faith was not in any way unusual in ancient society. We have indeed become familiar by this time with the
