1909.] AND THE ORIGIN OF JUDAISM. 357 



exclusive worship of the Sun.® He prohibited the cult of Amon and 

 of all other gods ; their images were destroyed, and their names 

 erased from the walls of the temples and other public buildings. 

 After his death, however, a reaction set in, and his innovations were 

 abolished." But some priests of this monotheistic cult may have 

 survived in Heliopolis, and Moses's father-in-law may have been 

 one of them. 



Hobab is not a proper name, but a term for father-in-lazv .^ 

 Jethro, the Jiobdb of Moses, was attached to the Edomite clan 

 Reuel. Jhvh was an Edomite god. The meaning of the name is 

 He zvlio causes to be. In Exodus, iii, 14 we must read instead of 

 the meaningless ehyeh ashcr ehyeh, I am that I am : ahyeh asher 

 ihyeh,^ I cause to be what is.^" The old name of this god of the 

 Edomites was Esau, which is a dialectic form of the Hebrew word 

 'Oseh (for 'asai) Maker. The Jews are the descendants of the 

 Edomite worshipers of Jhvh/^ who were united under the leader- 

 ship of David about 1000 b. c. David belonged to the Edomite clan 

 Ephrath in one of the fertile valleys about Hebron. He was not a 

 native of Bethlehem, neither was any son or descendant of David 

 ever born at Bethlehem. 



"An uncle of Amenophis IV. was high-priest in HeHopoHs ; see Zcit- 

 schrift dcr Dcutschcn Morgenldndischcn Gcsellschaft, vol. Ixiii., page 247, 

 line 29. Userkaf, the first king of the Fifth Dynasty, is said to have been 

 high-priest of Heliopolis prior to his accession to the throne (about 2680 

 B. c). Compare below, page 368, note 59. 



' Compare the notes on the translation of Joshua, in the Polychrome 

 Bible, page 49. 



* In the Targum Jerushalmi ii. we find (Deuteronomy, xxvii., 13) the 

 feminine habibthd, lit. the beloved, for the Heb. hothcnth. mother-in-law. 



* The pronunciation yihyeh is incorrect. We say Israel, not Y Israel. Con- 

 trast the dissertation of Erich Ebeling, Das Vcrbuni dcr cl-Amarna- 

 Briefe (Berlin, 1909) page 10. 



'"This would be in Assyrian: usdbsd ^a ibdsil; in Arabic: ukduwinu 

 md yakiiitu. 



"The majority of them were Edomites, but they comprised also Horites, 

 Canaanites, Ishmaelites, Moabites, Hittites, Amorites, Philistines, Egyptians, 

 and Ethiopians, i. e., a mixture of Asiatic, African, and European elements. 

 For the Philistines compare the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical 

 Archceology, vol. xxxi. (London, 1909) page 233. Even the Phenicians may 

 have come from Europe. Herodotus, who states (i., i ; vii., 89) that the 

 Phenicians were originally settled on the Red Sea, confounds the Phenicians 

 with the Jews. 



