An endeavour has been made to discover the origin of the religion of Israel from the persistent connection of Jehovah with the locality of Mount Sinai. This idea continues long after in the Promised Land (Deut. xxxiii. 2; Judges v. 5), and Elijah takes a long journey back to the sacred spot, presumably to get into closer touch with Jehovah (1 Kings xix.). With the prevailing beliefs of that age in the localisation of the god, this connection must be thought of as of more than accidental significance. It is fair to assume that the seat of Jehovah at Sinai must have been known before the great covenant, and is indeed required by the narrative itself (Exod. iii.; iv. 27), while recent discoveries are said to prove that the traditional Sinai must have been a sacred place from the earliest times. Moses, however, is clearly represented as coming to know of Jehovah during his stay in Midian. The exact means of the revelation is said to have been the sight of a bush on fire, yet miraculously unconsumed. What actually lies behind this story--whether it is a creation of the religious imagination which sees "every common bush afire with God"--it is useless for us to try and discover. A natural explanation has been sought in the fact that Jethro, the Kenite, was the priest of Midian, and presumably of some shrine of Jehovah. Certainly Jethro knew the name of Jehovah, but apparently only regarded Him as one of the gods, until the marvellous deliverance of the Exodus proved Him to be the greatest of gods (Exod. xviii. 9-11). Jethro performs an act of sacrifice to Jehovah, in the presence of Aaron and the elders, that looks remarkably like an act of initiation by which Israel are introduced to the worship of Jehovah by the regular priest of the shrine (Exod. xviii. 12). The hypothesis is further strengthened by the fact that the Kenites are found later dwelling in Palestine (Judges i. 16), and are always remembered long after as the friends of the Israelites (1 Sam. xv. 6; xxvii. 10; xxx. 29). The inference from this is that Moses first learned of Jehovah from his father-in-law Jethro, but that he understood more of the character of Jehovah than Jethro, and by his superior religious consciousness conceived of Him as in some way Supreme who to Jethro had been only one of the desert gods.