Samuel Curtiss was a critical scholar who often departed from the reigning consensus of his day. Near the end of his career, Curtiss turned his attention to the Near East. He, like Wellhausen, believed that Israelite religion was a manifestation of a primitive Semitic religion that could best be recovered by a careful investigation of the practices of contemporary Arabian Bedouin. Curtiss spent fourteen months in the Near East to research this hypothesis, recording his discoveries in this book.