The Bible Book

R

esuming the story of the

Israelites from Genesis, the

books of Exodus, Leviticus,

Numbers, and Deuteronomy follow

the liberation of the Israelites

from slavery in Egypt under the

guidance of Moses, their receipt

of the Ten Commandments and

other laws, and their journey to

the Promised Land. The central

message is one of deliverance

through God’s covenant with

Moses, a continuation of the

divine promise begun in Genesis

and picked up through the Bible.

In Christianity, Jesus is seen

as a second Moses, who offers

salvation from death.

The Bible as history

Scholars have long attempted to

link events in Exodus to historical

sources in order to verify and date

the Israelites’ flight from Egypt.

No archaeological evidence has

so far been found and there is no

historical record. The Bible does

not identify the pharaoh at the

time of the Exodus. This lack of

corroboration has led to a hunt for

circumstantial evidence, such as

the widespread migrations that

are known to have occurred in the

eastern Mediterranean during the

transition from the Bronze Age to

the Iron Age in around 1200 BCE,

a period when trade routes changed

and civilizations collapsed.

Some scholars link the Israelites

with the Hyksos, Semitic peoples

who ruled parts of Egypt in the

160 0s BCE but were driven out by

Thutmose III in the 1400s. The

1st-century historian Josephus

Flavius, keen to stress the antiquity

of the Jews, supported this idea.

Other theories draw on the Amarna

Letters, a correspondence on clay

tablets sent by Pharaoh Akhenaten

(1350s–1330s BCE) in Amarna, Upper

Egypt, to the rest of the Ancient

Near East. They point to mentions

of a group of bandits called haipiru/

haibiru, words similar to “Hebrew,”

that are to be driven from the land.

In 1939, Sigmund Freud, in

his book Moses and Monotheism,

proposed that Moses was a priest

of Akhenaten’s god, who introduced

monotheism to Egypt. Despite

this, attempts to link the Book of

Exodus to historical events have

proved futile.

Monotheism is all

Central to the Book of Exodus is the

doctrine of monotheism, developed

from the Book of Genesis. However,

the first of the Ten Commandments

INTRODUCTION

EXODUS

2:1–3

EXODUS

3:1–22

EXODUS

12:31– 42

EXODUS

19:17–20:26

EXODUS

32:1–20

EXODUS

7:14 –12:30

EXODUS

14:1–31

EXODUS

25:10–27:20

A vision of God

appears to

Moses in a

burning bush.

Moses leads the

Exodus of the

Israelites through

the desert.

God delivers the

Ten Commandments

to Moses, who

inscribes them on

stone tablets.

The Israelites fashion

and worship a golden

calf, causing Moses

to destroy the stone

tablets in anger.

Moses is born

and set adrift in a

basket on the

River Nile.

God sends ten

plagues to Egypt

in order to free

the Israelites

from slavery.

Moses parts the

Red Sea and the

Israelites escape

Pharaoh’s army.

God gives

the Israelites

instructions for

building the Ark

and the Tabernacle.

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