BIBLICAL SOCIOLOGY 221
cision has made you a bridegroom of blood." * This interest- ing little story is thrust bodily into the Exodus narrative; and its primitive atmosphere is unmistakable.
Regarding the covenant itself, we find highly important material in Exod. 18:12. Let us notice the wording carefully. "And Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for elohim. And Aaron and all the elders of Israel came to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before the elohim." It should be pointed out that the burnt offering and sacrifices were not brought by Moses nor any of the Israelites, but by Jethro, the Kenite priest. It is the Kenite who is placed in the foreground. Jethro is not an interested outsider who helps the Israelites in performance of their own religious worship. On the contrary, he is an insider who bears a necessary part in the introduction of the Israelites to his religion. For this is a sacrificial meal, and Jethro is officiating in his priestly character. He does not eat bread with the Israelites. On the contrary they eat with him. Scanning the passage once more, we note that Moses himself took no part in the ceremony. But the reason for this apparently strange omission is clear: Moses had pre- viously affiliated with the Kenites by marriage, and was already a worshiper of Yahweh. Hence there was no need that he take part in the important ceremony by which the two social groups came into connection. It is clear again that the editor of Exodus is transcribing antique traditions which he does not understand.
Under some circumstances the adoption of a god by one people from another means that the converts are lost in the mass of the earlier worshipers. The outstanding fact here, however, is that the Israelites retained their own social identity. What the reason for this fact may be we cannot say. There may have been more than one reason. But the fact itself and the reason for it are different matters. If the converts bear a small nu- merical proportion to the earlier worshipers, and if they join the organization and take the name of the latter, then their social identity is lost. But none of these conditions prevailed in the
• The old version translates, with little sympathy for the real meaning, "Surely a bloody husband thou art to me."
