Sinai in Hosea and Amos?

I started James Hoffmeier's Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition. You can tell from the title that Hoffmeier is a conservative scholar. And yet, I know of centrist and liberal scholars who respect his scholarship.

I want to mention a point in one of his endnotes. On page 259, Hoffmeier states the following:

"The evidence for the lateness of the wilderness tradition, according to Albertz, is the absence of references to the Sinai theophany in the early prophets. I would disagree and point to Hosea 13:5: 'It was I who knew you in the wilderness.' The reference of 'know'...refers to the intimate relationship God established with Israel by means of the Sinai covenant. The idea is developed in more detail in Hosea 2:14-20, in which Israel's covenant relationship with God will be reestablished by YHWH, who will bring Israel to the wilderness. Similarly, Amos (3:1-2) uses the word 'know' in the same manner as Hosea."

In Etched in Stone, which I blogged through a couple of weeks ago, David Aaron argues that the Sinai tradition is late because it hardly ever appears outside of the Pentateuch, and, in the few cases that it does appear, Dr. Aaron argues that it's an interpolation---on such grounds as the contexts of the passages, and for other reasons. Indeed, the passages that Hoffmeier cites from Hosea and Amos do not explicitly mention Sinai. But Hoffmeier's point is that they refer to a covenant between God and Israel in the wilderness---a covenant, a marriage. Hoffmeier appears to hold that this can only be read in light of the Sinai stories.