Kenite - Critical View

Critical View

According to the critical interpretation of the Biblical data, the Kenites were a clan settled on the southern border of Judah, originally more advanced in arts than the Hebrews, and from whom the latter learned much. They supposedly migrated from southern Asia. In the time of David the Kenites were finally settled among the tribe of Judah. Their eponymous ancestor may have been Cain (Kain), to whose descendants the Jahwist in Genesis iv. attributes the invention of the art of working bronze and iron, the use of instruments of music, etc. Sayce has implied that the Kenites were a tribe of smiths—a view to which Jahwist's statements would lend support.

Jethro, priest of Midian, and father-in-law of Moses, it is written in the Hebrew scriptures, to have been a Kenite, but merely live in the land of Cannan and the Midianites. This may indicate that the Kenites originally formed part of the Midianite tribe or tribes, but the truth may also be obscured by the translation and traditions. The Bible may even describe an initiation of Moses and Aaron by Jethro into the worship of YHWH. Several modern scholars believe, in consequence of this statement, that Yhwh was the deity of Jethro, and that from Jethro through the agency of Moses his worship passed to the Israelites. This view, first proposed by F. W. Ghillany, afterward independently by Cornelis Petrus Tiele, and more fully by Stade, has been more completely worked out by Karl Budde; and is accepted by H. Guthe, Gerrit Wildeboer, H. P. Smith, and G. A. Barton.