IF PIOUS YAHWISTS from Jerusalem several centuries after Sen-nacherib’s invasion12 could have travelled back in time and visited their city in the months leading up to that crisis, they would have found the local religion almost unrecognizable. Many concepts and practices with which the visitors would have been familiar would not yet have emerged. They would have found, for example, no synagogues,13 no observance of the Sabbath for the purpose of worship14 and no circumcision.15 The visitors would also have encountered little (possibly no) worship of Yahweh to the exclusion of other gods.
