ABSTRACT
The history of Moses and of his religious foundation transports people into Egypt and into the wilderness. But according to the ancient patriarchal sagas of the Israelites those tribes from which, under Moses, Israel was to be formed, had previously dwelt in Canaan and its southern environs. With regard to the cultus, people may assume that it was in many ways similar to that practised in Canaan at the same time. The problem which confronts the writer who attempts to expound the religion of Moses is to explain how the unparalleled development which the religion of Israel underwent in the course of time is intelligible in the light of its first beginnings. The ethical monotheism of the prophets must be intelligible from the foundation of the religion. According to reliable tradition the "inquiry of God " played an important part in connexion with the tent in the Mosaic period.
