Kenite hypothesis

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The Kenite hypothesis, or Midianite–Kenite hypothesis, is a hypothesis about the origins of the cult of Yahweh. As a form of Biblical source criticism, it posits that Yahweh was originally a Kenite (i.e., Midianite) god whose cult made its way northward to the proto-Israelites. The hypothesis first came into prominence in the late nineteenth century. It is based on four key points: an interpretation of the biblical texts dealing with the Midianite connections of Moses; allusions in ancient poetic compositions to the original residence of Yahweh; ancient Egyptian topographical texts of the fourteenth to the twelfth centuries BCE; and the presupposition of Cain (or Cainan) as the eponymous progenitor of the Kenite tribe of Midian. The hypothesis thus interrogates the ethnic origins of Judah and posits that the geographic origins of Yahweh, and by extension Yahwism, do not lie in the Biblical Canaan as conventionally understood but rather lie farther south, in the region the Tanakh calls "Midian" on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea. This land was inhabited by peoples including the Kenites.