[Egyptian texts about the Shasu and the Land of Yahu]

An inscription in a temple of Amon in Soleb, Nubia, from the reign of Amenhotep III (first half of the fourteenth century), lists several beduin (Shasu) territories including 'the Shasu land of Yahu'. The name also occurs in a copy of the same list in the Amara West temple in Nubia from the reign of Rameses II (second half of thirteenth century), and both could go back to an even earlier prototype.

There is broad agreement that the name corresponds to one of the forms of the name of Yahweh, that it refers to a region in which the Shasu in question lived and moved around, and that either the deity could have taken the name of the region or the region could have taken its name from the deity worshipped by the beduin who lived there.

(pp. 139-140)

(from 'The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah', JSOT 33.2 (2008): 131-153)

[The] opening invocation to Yahweh in the Song of Deborah, a variant of which appears in Ps. 68.8-9, also hails him as 'The One of Sinai', less literally 'The Lord of Sinai' (זה סיני), which suggests that Sinai is the original residence of Yahweh and is also closely associated with Seir. The connection is explicit in another poem with an ancient substratum, the Blessing of Moses:

Yahweh comes from Sinai
He dawns upon us from Seir. (Deut. 33.2)

The rest of the verse is textually corrupt, perhaps deliberately scrambled, so that any reconstruction will be speculative. It reads as follows:

הופיע מהר פארן
ואתה מרבבת קדש
מימינו אשדת לנו

After 'he shines forth from Mount Paran' we would expect a matching place name, as in the previous stich, which provides some justification for finding, with a minor textual alteration, a reference to Meribath-Kadesh in the second line (cf. Deut. 32.51) parallel with Mt Paran.

[...] it may be permissible to suggest an emendation of אשדת to אשרת with the old feminine ending, based on frequent confusion between daleth and resh.

[Blenkinsopp's emendation would give us: 'He shines forth from Mount Paran, and comes forth from Meribath-Kadesh, his Asherah at his right hand.]

(pp. 137-138)

(from 'The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah', JSOT 33.2 (2008): 131-153)

The opening invocation to Yahweh in the Song of Deborah presents him as proceeding in triumph from Seir, the regions of Edom (Judg. 5.4). Seir comes to be synonymous with Edom [Gen. 32.4; Num. 24.18; Judg. 4.5; Ezek. 35], but it can have a more specific reference as designating a region west of the Arabah [cf. Josh. 11.17; 12.7; 15.10].

The original Edomite homeland was east of the Arabah, but after the formation of the kingdom, Edom expanded to take in territory to the west [cf. Deut. 2.12, 22].

A much later composition (Isa. 63.1-6) also presents Yahweh as coming from Edom.

(pp. 136-137)

(from 'The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah', JSOT 33.2 (2008): 131-153)

Rather than Jethro's conversion to Yahwism, therefore, [in Exod. 18] we are witnessing 'the first incorporation of the Israelite leaders into the worship of Yahweh'.

(p. 135)

(from 'The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah', JSOT 33.2 (2008): 131-153)

What first gave rise to the hypothesis [of Yahweh's Midianite origin] in the first place was a historical-critical interpretation of those biblical texts which narrate how Moses, son of Levitical parents (Exod. 2.1-2), married a Midianite woman, and lived long enough in Midian to have two sons with her (Exod. 2.11-22).

During this time he was in service with his father-in-law, a priest (perhaps the priest) of Midian, named both Reuel (Exod. 2.18) and Jethro (Exod. 2.1; 4.18).

At a sacred spot, a 'mountain of God', situated beyond the normal pasturage of the Midianites but frequented by Midianites and no doubt other tribes, Moses received a revelation from a deity previously known to him only notionally if at all (Exod. 3.13), presumably a deity worshipped by Midianites, whose named was revealed to be Yahweh.

(pp. 133-134)

(from 'The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah', JSOT 33.2 (2008): 131-153)

The hypothesis [of Yahweh's Midianite-Kenite origin] is constructed on four bases:

[1] the narratives dealing with Moses' family and his Midianite in-laws;

[2] poetic texts which are understood to refer to the original residence of Yahweh;

[3] Egyptian topographical texts from the fourteenth to the twelfth century BCE dealing with the Edomite region in which the name Yahweh appears;

[4] and an interpretation of Cain as the eponymous ancestor of the Kenites and the mark of Cain as signifying affiliation to the Yahwistic cult community.

(p. 133)

(from 'The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah', JSOT 33.2 (2008): 131-153)