Kenites

96:0.2The Salem re­li­gion was revered as a tra­di­tion by the Ken­ites and sev­eral other Ca­naan­ite tribes. And this was one of the pur­poses of Mel­chiz­e­dek’s in­car­na­tion: That a re­li­gion of one God should be so fos­tered as to pre­pare the way for the earth be­stowal of a Son of that one God. Mi­chael could hardly come to Uran­tia un­til there ex­isted a peo­ple be­liev­ing in the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther among whom he could ap­pear.

96:0.3The Salem re­li­gion per­sisted among the Ken­ites in Pales­tine as their creed, and this re­li­gion as it was later adopted by the He­brews was in­flu­enced, first, by Egyp­tian moral teach­ings; later, by Baby­lo­nian the­o­logic thought; and lastly, by Ira­nian con­cep­tions of good and evil. Fac­tu­ally the He­brew re­li­gion is pred­i­cated upon the covenant be­tween Abra­ham and Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, evo­lu­tion­ally it is the out­growth of many unique sit­u­a­tional cir­cum­stances, but cul­tur­ally it has bor­rowed freely from the re­li­gion, moral­ity, and phi­los­o­phy of the en­tire Lev­ant. It is through the He­brew re­li­gion that much of the moral­ity and re­li­gious thought of Egypt, Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and Iran was trans­mit­ted to the Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples.

96:1.12The Ca­naan­ites had long revered Yah­weh, and al­though many of the Ken­ites be­lieved more or less in El Elyon, the super­god of the Salem re­li­gion, a ma­jor­ity of the Ca­naan­ites held loosely to the wor­ship of the old tribal de­i­ties. They were hardly will­ing to aban­don their na­tional de­i­ties in fa­vor of an in­ter­na­tional, not to say an in­ter­plan­e­tary, God. They were not uni­ver­sal-de­ity minded, and there­fore these tribes con­tin­ued to wor­ship their tribal de­i­ties, in­clud­ing Yah­weh and the sil­ver and golden calves which sym­bol­ized the Bed­ouin herders’ con­cept of the spirit of the Sinai vol­cano.

131:2.1The Ken­ites of Pales­tine sal­vaged much of the teach­ing of Mel­chiz­e­dek, and from these rec­ords, as pre­served and mod­i­fied by the Jews, Je­sus and Ga­nid made the fol­low­ing se­lec­tion:

96:4.2Moses had heard of the teach­ings of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek from both his fa­ther and his mother, their com­mon­ness of re­li­gious be­lief be­ing the ex­pla­na­tion for the un­usual union be­tween a woman of royal blood and a man from a cap­tive race. Moses’ fa­ther-in-law was a Ken­ite wor­shiper of El Elyon, but the eman­ci­pa­tor’s par­ents were be­liev­ers in El Shad­dai. Moses thus was ed­u­cated an El Shad­daist; through the in­flu­ence of his fa­ther-in-law he be­came an El Ely­on­ist; and by the time of the He­brew en­camp­ment about Mount Sinai af­ter the flight from Egypt, he had for­mu­lated a new and en­larged con­cept of De­ity (de­rived from all his for­mer be­liefs), which he wisely de­cided to pro­claim to his peo­ple as an ex­panded con­cept of their olden tribal god, Yah­weh.

96:5.3Many of the ad­vances which Moses made over and above the re­li­gion of the Egyp­tians and the sur­round­ing Lev­an­tine tribes were due to the Ken­ite tra­di­tions of the time of Mel­chiz­e­dek. With­out the teach­ing of Ma­chi­venta to Abra­ham and his con­tem­po­raries, the He­brews would have come out of Egypt in hope­less dark­ness. Moses and his fa­ther-in-law, Jethro, gath­ered up the residue of the tra­di­tions of the days of Mel­chiz­e­dek, and these teach­ings, joined to the learn­ing of the Egyp­tians, guided Moses in the cre­ation of the im­proved re­li­gion and rit­ual of the Is­raelites. Moses was an or­ga­nizer; he se­lected the best in the re­li­gion and mores of Egypt and Pales­tine and, as­so­ci­at­ing these prac­tices with the tra­di­tions of the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ings, or­ga­nized the He­brew cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem of wor­ship.

97:9.7David with his small army made his head­quar­ters at the non-He­brew city of He­bron. Pres­ently his com­pa­tri­ots pro­claimed him king of the new king­dom of Ju­dah. Ju­dah was made up mostly of non-He­brew el­e­ments—Ken­ites, Calebites, Je­busites, and other Ca­naan­ites. They were no­mads—herders—and so were de­voted to the He­brew idea of land own­er­ship. They held the ide­olo­gies of the desert clans.

93:10.3Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek con­tin­ued to take a great in­ter­est in the af­fairs of the de­scen­dants of those men who had be­lieved in his teach­ings when he was in the flesh. But the progeny of Abra­ham through Isaac as in­ter­mar­ried with the Ken­ites were the only line which long con­tin­ued to nour­ish any clear con­cept of the Salem teach­ings.