8. Beside the term _Ger_, with its derivatives, which gave legal standing to the proselyte, the religious genius of Judaism found another term which illustrated far better the idea of conversion to Judaism. The words of Boaz to Ruth: “Be thy reward complete from the Lord thy God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to take refuge,”(1335) were applied by the Pharisean leaders to all who joined the faith as Ruth did. So it became a technical term for converts to Judaism, “to come, or be brought, under the wings of the divine majesty” (Shekinah).(1336) Philo frequently expresses the idea that the proselyte who renounces heathenism and places himself under the protection of Israel’s God, stands in filial relation to Him exactly like the born Israelite.(1337) Therefore Hillel devoted his life to missionary activity, endeavoring “to bring the soul of many a heathen under the wings of the Shekinah.” But in this he was merely following the rabbinic ideal of Abraham,(1338) and of Jethro, of whom the Midrash says: “After having been won to the monotheistic faith by Moses, he returned to his land to bring his countrymen, the Kenites, under the wings of the Shekinah.”(1339) The proselyte’s bath in living water was to constitute a rebirth of the former heathen, poetically expressed in the Halakic rule: “A convert is like a newborn creature.”(1340) The Paulinian idea that baptism creates a new Adam in place of the old is but an adaptation of the Pharisaic view. Some ancient teachers therefore declared the proselyte’s bath more important than circumcision, since it forms the sole initiatory rite for female proselytes, as it was with the wives of the patriarchs.(1341)