make a research on the book of exodus

BibleProject Guides

Guide to the Book of Exodus

Key Information and Helpful Resources

Exodus is the second book of the Bible, and it picks up the biblical story­­line right where Genesis left off. Abraham’s grand­son Jacob and his family of seventy made their way down to Egypt, where Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons, had been elevated to second in command over Egypt. So the family lived and grew in Egypt as a safe haven for many years.

After a few hundred years, the story of Exodus begins.The word “exodus” refers to the major event that takes place in the first half of the book, Israel’s exodus from Egypt. The book also has a second half that takes place at the foot of Mount Sinai. For now, we will focus on the first half, in which centuries have passed and the Israelites “were fruitful and multiplied and filled the land” (Exod. 1:7).

This phrase is a deliberate echo of the blessing God gave humanity back in the garden (Gen. 1:28), which reminds us of the bigger story so far. When humanity forfeited God’s blessing through sin and rebellion, God’s response was to choose Abraham’s family as the vehicle through which he would restore his blessing to the world.

Exodus 1-18

6:33 • Old Testament Overviews

Who Wrote the Book of Exodus?

Many Jewish and Christian traditions hold that Moses is the author of Exodus. However, authorship is not explicitly stated within the book.

The events described in Exodus take place in Egypt and on the Sinai Peninsula, starting before Moses’ birth until Israel’s arrival at Mount Sinai.

Literary Styles

Exodus is written as narrative and contains occasional poetic and discourse sections.

• God’s confrontation with evil brings justice and rescue
• God’s desire and plan to dwell among his people
• God’s faithfulness to his promises and commitment to an often faithless people
• Sin and idolatry as the greatest threats to the covenant promises and blessings

The structure of Exodus is divided into five parts. Chapters 1-15 detail Israel’s slavery in Egypt, God confronting Pharaoh through Moses, and Israel’s deliverance. Chapters 16-40 outline Israel’s grumbling, rebellion, and covenant at Sinai.

Exodus 1-4: Israel’s Enslavement Under Pharaoh

The new Pharaoh, however, does not see Israel as a blessing. He thinks this growing Israelite immigrant group is a threat to his power. So, just as in Genesis, humanity rebels against God. Pharaoh attempts to destroy the Israelites by brutally enslaving them and using them in hard physical labor. It’s bad, but it gets worse when he orders that all Israelite boys be drowned in the Nile River.

This Pharaoh is the worst character in the Bible so far, and his kingdom epitomizes humanity’s rebellion against God. Pharaoh has so redefined good and evil according to his own interests that murder of innocent children becomes “good.” Egypt has become worse than Babylon, and Israel cries out for help against this new form of evil. God responds by first turning Pharaoh’s evil plot upside-down. An Israelite mother throws her boy into the Nile, protected inside a basket, and the child floats right into the Pharaoh’s own family. This boy is named Moses, and he eventually grows up to become the man God will use to defeat Pharaoh.

In the famous story of the burning bush, God appears to Moses and commissions him to go to Pharaoh and order him to release the Israelites. God says that he knows Pharaoh will resist. But God plans to bring his justice down upon Egypt in the form of plagues and harden Pharaoh’s heart.

Related Content

Exodus Overview

Podcast Episode

“God” Is Not a Name

Exodus 5-15: The Ten Plagues and Pharaoh’s Hardening Heart

The confrontation between God and Pharaoh is the major focus in this narrative, but what does it mean that God will harden his heart? It is important to read this part of the story closely and in sequence. In Moses and Pharaoh’s first encounter, we are told simply that Pharaoh’s heart “grew hard,” without any implication that God caused it.

God proceeds to send the first set of five plagues, each one confronting Pharaoh and his gods. Each time, Moses offers a chance for Pharaoh to humble himself and let the people go. However, after each plague, we are told that Pharaoh either “hardened his heart,” or that his “heart grew hard.” He’s doing this of his own will. It’s only with the second set of five plagues that we begin to hear that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart .

The point is that even though God knew Pharaoh would resist his will, God still offered him many chances to do the right thing. Eventually Pharaoh’s evil reaches a point of no return, and even his advisors think he has lost his mind. It’s at that point that God takes over and bends Pharaoh’s evil to his own redemptive purposes. He lures Pharaoh into his own destruction and saves his people.

With the final plague, the night of Passover, God turns the tables on Pharaoh. Just as Pharaoh killed the sons of the Israelites, so God will kill the firstborn sons of Egypt. Unlike Pharaoh, however, God will provide a means of escape through the blood of a lamb.

Here the story stops and introduces us to the annual Israelite ritual of Passover (Exod. 12-13). On the night before Israel left Egypt, they sacrificed a young, spotless lamb and painted its blood on the doorframe of their house. When the divine plague came over Egypt, the houses covered with the blood of the lamb would be “passed over” and the sons spared. Every year since, the Israelites have reenacted this night to remember and celebrate God’s justice and mercy.

Because of his pride and rebellion, Pharaoh loses his son and is compelled to finally let the Israelites go free. The Israelite slaves make their escape from Egypt, but as soon as they leave, Pharaoh changes his mind. He gathers his army and chases after them for a final showdown, thinking that he will slaughter them by the waters of the sea. However, the Israelites run into the sea and discover they’re walking on dry ground that God has provided. But when Pharaoh pursues them, the waters surge around him, destroying him.

This part of the book of Exodus concludes with the first song of praise in the Bible, called “The Song of the Sea” (Exod. 15). The final line declares that “the Lord reigns as king,” and the song retells in poetry what the God’s Kingdom is all about. God is on a mission to confront evil in his world, redeem those enslaved to evil, and bring them to the promised land where his divine presence will live among them. This is what it looks like when God becomes King over his people.

If God Hardened Pharaoh's Heart, Did God Cause the Evil?

Pharaoh vs. the Warrior God

Moses and Aaron

Exodus 16-18: Grumbling in the Wilderness

After the people sing their song, the story takes a surprising turn. The Israelites trek through the wilderness on their way to Mount Sinai and get really hungry and thirsty. In their distress, they start criticizing Moses and God for rescuing them from Egypt! Even though God graciously provides food and water for his people, these events cast a dark shadow. As readers, we wonder if it is possible that Israel’s heart is as hard as Pharaoh’s. We’re left with that haunting question as we turn to read about Israel’s experience at Mount Sinai.

Generosity Q+R: Overpopulation, Cain's Sacrifice, and Manna Hoarding

Israel Tests Yahweh

Exodus 19-31: The Covenant at Sinai

The second half of the book of Exodus picks up right as Moses leads Israel to the foot of Mount Sinai (Exod. 19), where God invites the nation to enter into a covenant relation­ship. It’s here that we reach another key moment in the big storyline of the Bible. This moment develops God’s promise to Abraham—that through him and his family God would restore his blessing to all nations (Gen. 12, 15, 17). God says that if the people of Israel obey the terms of the covenant, they will become a “kingdom of priests” (Exod. 19:6), acting as God’s representatives to the nations and showing them his character by how they live. In this way, God’s justice and mercy will reach the nations.

The people eagerly accept the offer, and God’s presence appears on the mountain in the form of a cloud. Moses goes up as the people’s representative, and God opens with the basic terms of the covenant, the famous Ten Commandments. These are foundational rules that set up how the Israelites relate to God and to each other. After this comes a collection of fifty-two more commands, which expand on the first ten with more detail. There are laws about Israel’s worship and social justice, which shape how Israel was to live differently from the other nations. Moses wrote down all these laws and brought them to the people, who eagerly agreed to the terms of the covenant.

God then takes the relationship forward another step. He tells Moses that he wants his holy and divine presence to dwell in the midst of Israel. This develops another aspect of God’s original covenant promise from the book of Genesis. After humanity’s rebellion in the garden, access to God’s presence was lost. However, through the family of Abraham, God’s presence has become accessible again, first to Israel at Mount Sinai and one day to all nations.

The following seven chapters (Exod. 25-31) detail the archit­ectural blueprints of a sacred tent called the tabernacle. There is an outer courtyard with an altar, an outer and inner room in the center of the tent, and inside the inner room—called the most holy space—is a golden box with angelic creatures on it, the ark of the covenant. This ark acts as a “hotspot” for God’s presence.

There’s a lot of detail in these chapters, but it’s important to know that every part has a symbolic value. All of the flowers, angels, gold, and jewels call back to the garden of Eden, the place where God and humans lived together in intimacy. In other words, the tabernacle is a portable Eden where God and Israel can live together in peace. That’s how it could have worked, in theory, but things go off course, and Israel breaks the covenant.

Exodus 19-40

The Covenants

The Cathedral in Time

Exodus 32-40: Israel’s Wilderness Rebellion

While Moses is up on the mountain receiving the blueprints for the tabernacle, the Israelites are losing patience down in the camp. They ask Moses’ brother Aaron to make a golden calf idol so they can worship it as the god who saved them from slavery in Egypt. Even as God’s presence is hovering atop the mountain, they are already breaking the first two commandments of the covenant: no idols and no other gods.

What follows is crucial to the rest of the biblical story and how we understand God’s character. God first invites Moses into his anger and pain, venting his feelings and saying he wants to wipe out the entire nation of Israel. After listening, Moses intercedes by appealing to God’s character, saying that this would mean going back on his covenant promises to Abraham. Moses also appeals to God’s reputation among the nations. What would the Egyptians think if he allowed Israel to die in the wilderness? God accepts Moses’ prayer and relents. And while God does bring justice to those who instigated the idolatry, he forgives the nation as a whole and renews the covenant. It’s at this point God describes himself to Moses. “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in covenant faithfulness. He forgives sin, but will not leave the wicked unpunished” (Exod. 34:6-7). In other words, God is full of mercy, but he must deal with evil if he claims to be good. Above all else, God is faithful to his promises even if it means committing himself to people who are faithless.

After renewing the covenant, God commissions Moses to build the tabernacle, detailed in the next five chapters (Exod. 35-39). It all comes together in the final chapter (Exod. 40). The tabernacle is finished, and God’s glorious presence comes over the tent. Our hopes are high! But as Moses goes to enter the tent, he finds that he is unable to. He is blocked from entering, and the book of Exodus comes to a sudden end.

We see now that Israel’s sin has damaged their relationship with God in more ways than we had realized. The book may have opened with Pharaoh’s evil threatening Israel, but as the book comes to an end, Israel has become their own worst enemy. The sin and idolatry of God’s own people is now the greatest threat to his covenant promises. How is God going to reconcile the conflict between his holy, good presence with the sin and corruption of his own people? That’s the question that the next book, Leviticus, sets out to answer.

Visual Commentary: Exodus 34:6-7

Slow to Anger

The Most Quoted Verse in the Bible

Why Moses Couldn’t Enter the Tabernacle

God rescues the people of Israel from Egypt and invites them into an agreement, or covenant, with him. The people damage their relationship with God, which causes God to recommit to his promise to dwell with them.

How to Read Exodus

Exodus (The NIV Application Commentary)

Exploring Exodus: The Origins of Biblical Israel

Exodus (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries)

Exodus Overview Poster

Scripture Reference Guide

Exodus 1-18 Script References

Exodus 19-40 Script References

Exodus: God saves His people from Egypt

by Jeffrey Kranz | Nov 17, 2018 | Bible Books | 27 comments

The book of Exodus is the story of God rescuing the children of Israel from Egypt and forging a special relationship with them. Exodus is the second book of the Pentateuch  (the five books of Moses ), and it’s where we find the stories of the Ten Plagues, the first Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, and the Ten Commandments.

The book gets its name from the nation of Israel’s mass emigration from Egypt, but that’s only the first part of the story. This book follows Israel out of Egypt into the desert, where the nation is specifically aligned with God (as opposed to the idols of Egypt and the surrounding nations). This is the book in which God first lays out his expectations for the people of Israel—we know these expectations as the 10 Commandments. Most of the Old Testament is about how Israel meets (or fails to meet) these expectations. So if you want to understand any other book of the Old Testament, you’ll need a basic understanding of what happens in Exodus.

Important characters in Exodus

Exodus has a tight cast of important characters to keep an eye on.

God (Yahweh) —the creator of heaven and earth and the divine being who chooses the nation of Israel to represent him on earth. God goes to war against the gods of Egypt, frees Israel from their tyranny, and then makes a pact with the new nation. While the rest of the nations serve lesser gods, Yahweh selects the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the people group that will serve him and him alone.

Moses —the greatest of the Old Testament prophets who serves as a go-between for God and the other humans in the book of Exodus. Moses negotiates with Pharaoh for Israel’s freedom, passes God’s laws on to the people of Israel, and even pleads for mercy on Israel’s behalf when they anger God.

Aaron —Moses’ brother and right hand. Aaron assists Moses as a spokesperson, and eventually is made the high priest of the nation of Israel.

Pharaoh —the chief antagonist in the Exodus story. Pharaoh enslaves the nation of Israel, commits genocide, and is generally a huge jerk.Pharaoh is worshiped as part of the Egyptian pantheon: a lesser god laying an illegitimate claim to God’s people. God defeats Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt by sending a series of ten devastating plagues, and finally destroying Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea.

Key themes in Exodus

Exodus is all about God making Israel his own. God rescues the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (whom he made some important promises to back in Genesis ). Then, he gives them his expectations—a list of dos and don’ts. Finally, God sets up camp in the midst of the new nation: they are his people, and he is their God.

When God gives Israel the Ten Commandments, he frames them by stating his relationship to the Hebrews. This verse sums up the themes of Exodus nicely:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Ex 20:2)

(You can find more Bible verse art here .)

Let’s take a quick spin through some of Exodus’ themes.

It’s hard to miss this one! The entire book is about God hearing Israel’s cries for help, rescuing them from their oppressors, and making them his own.

Like the rest of the Torah, covenant is a big theme here. God makes a solemn, binding agreement with the people of Israel, establishing himself as their god and them as his people. This relationship comes with certain expectations, with benefits for the Israelites if they uphold their end of the agreement, and consequences if they do not.

God’s presence

Toward the beginning of the book, the cries of Israel rise up to God, who hears them and remembers his promises to Abraham back in Genesis. In the middle of the book, God meets Israel in the wilderness: he is high atop a mountain, and they are on the plain below. God is closer to the people, but still a ways off. However, by the end of the book, God is dwelling in the middle of Israel’s camp in the wilderness. Moses believes that it is God’s presence among the people that sets Israel apart from every other nation in the world (Exod 33:16).

This is related to the theme of covenant—specifically, the expectations God has for the people of Israel. From chapter 20 onward, we start seeing more and more directives for the people on how to live as the people of God.

Zooming out: Exodus in context

Exodus is where the story of the Bible really starts picking up. God has already made his promises to Abraham: his descendants would be a mighty people, they would possess the land of Canaan, and through them the whole earth will be blessed by God. While in Genesis we see God working through a family, in Exodus we see God working with an entire nation.

Exodus is a starburst of Old and New Testament theology. God is faithful, and keeps His promise to Abraham (Gn 15:13–21) by judging the Egyptians and liberating Israel. The Lord also gives Israel the first iteration of the Law, and begins to dwell among His people in the tabernacle. God’s liberation of Israel from slavery foreshadows His work to redeem the nations (Ro 6:17–18), just as His judgment on His people serves as an example for Christians now (1 Co 10:6–13). Exodus is also where God reveals His memorial name: YHWH, or LORD (Ex 3:14; 6:3).

An overview of Exodus’ story and structure

Act 1: Prologue

(Exodus 1–2)

Exodus picks up where  Genesis  leaves off: the young nation of Israel is in Egypt (they were invited by Joseph, the one with the famous coat). A new Pharaoh notices the Israelites multiplying, and enslaves them. Afraid of an uprising, he orders that all Hebrew sons should be cast into the Nile at birth.

But one baby boy escapes this fate: the Hebrew Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s household. When adult Moses kills an abusive Egyptian slave driver, he flees the country.

Act 2: God saves Israel

(Exodus 3–19)

Forty years later, God appears to Moses as a burning bush and sends him to deliver Israel from the hand of Pharaoh.

Moses, with the help of his brother Aaron, confronts Pharaoh on God’s behalf: “Let My people go” (Ex 5:1). Pharaoh refuses, and so God sends those famous 10 plagues upon the Egyptians. When the last plague kills Pharaoh’s son, he finally allows Israel to leave.

The Israelites celebrate the first-ever Passover, and then set out into the wilderness. Pharaoh changes his mind and sends his army to recapture them. God saves Israel miraculously by parting the Red Sea and allowing Israel to escape their would-be captors—and then uses the sea to wash away Pharaoh’s army. The Israelites leave Egypt and make their way to the foot of Mount Sinai in the wilderness. God descends on the top of the mountain, and then, something amazing happens.

Act 3: God makes a covenant with Israel

(Exodus 20–40)

The Israelites leave Egypt and make their way to Mount Sinai, where God gives His laws to Moses. God makes a covenant with the nation of Israel and the generations to come: because He rescued them from Egypt, Israel is to observe His rules. God speaks the Ten Commandments directly to the whole nation of Israel, and He relays specific ordinances to Moses on the mountain. And the people agree to it!

After this, God makes plans for a place of worship. He’s going to come down from the mountaintop and dwell in the midst of the people of Israel—but in order for this to happen, the people need to prepare a portable tabernacle for him. God gives Moses the plans for the tabernacle, the sacred furniture, and the garments for the priests.

But already things aren’t going as planned. While God is giving Moses laws for the people, the people start worshiping a golden calf … not cool. Moses pleads with God on Israel’s behalf, and the nation is given another go at keeping God’s commands.

And so Israel builds the tabernacle: a holy tent. The book of Exodus ends with the glory of the LORD filling the tabernacle. God is now dwelling among His chosen people, Israel. However, now there’s another problem: how will the people live in the presence of such a holy and powerful being?

That’s what the next book, Leviticus is all about.

Who wrote Exodus?

More pages related to Exodus

• Leviticus  (next book of the Bible)
• Genesis (previous)
• Deuteronomy
• The Pentateuch

27 Comments

These are fantastic! Is there a downloadable version?

Thanks, Steven! We don’t have any poster/PDF versions of these yet, I’m afraid—but perhaps someday soon!

I am so delighted in reading your summary on the Books of the Bible! I have began to read the bible from the beginning again and this time and I am truly enjoying it and learning so much and your comments even make it much more clearer.

Many Blessings, Joye

You have made my bible study more understandable and clear. Love your work!!

Hi Jeffery I have started reading the entire Bible chronologically and these overviews are tremendous blessings. Thanks for all the preparation and hard work you do for His Kingdom. Praying for you and this crucial ministry God has given you. Blessings Maryse

I want to see this kind of information about the book of Genesis as well. Please send me. Tq.

Check out our page on Genesis !

This work you have undertaken is just excellent. I am thoroughly enjoying reading, and learning more and more as I go. Outstanding job; you are truly spreading His word. Thank you. :)

Thanks for the kind words, Daniel!

Clear and very good presentation on the Exodus. Thank you very much, Jeffrey. What a blessing!

Thanks so much for the kind words! =)

Very good teaching with great research and explanation

Thanks, John! =)

Thanks Jeffery ! Your video and the overview help me to plan and organize my bible study for kids well ! =)

-from Seoul

Super kind of you to let me know how helpful this is, Mira. Thank you!

God blessed you with the talent to both draw and compose sketches. It lays a foundation for me to draw in the details and colors to make it mine. Thanks!

What a kind note—thank you! We’ve considered making a Bible outline coloring book … would that be something you’d find useful?

These videos are awesome! Thank you! The Bible can be overwhelming and confusing, but these videos clear up the big picture as I walk through the Bible verse by verse throughout the year.

I am using your fantastic explanations and began sharing your videos as the focus at my men’s ministry – Brick Breakers. They are a blessing. Thank you, Scott

Glad to hear they’re useful, Scott—thanks for the kind words!

Thank you Jeffery. I appreciate your work.

God bless, Pastor Bill.

I have enjoyed your survey work of the O.T. books. Are we allowed to print them? If so is there a format for that?

Thank you and God bless.

Thanks, Bill! I don’t have print-friendly formats for all these, but you’re welcome to print out these book surveys all the same. =)

Oh my..those breakdowns added immensely to my study of the Word. I appreciate to effort that took . I just signed on for more….

Thanks, Annette—glad they’re helpful. =)

I would like an overview of each book in old testament . Thanks

Lula, you can find them all here . Enjoy!

• Bible Books
• Bible characters
• Bible facts
• Bible materials
• Bible topics

Recent Posts

• Interesting Facts about the Bible
• Logos Bible Software 10 review: Do you REALLY need it?
• Who Was Herod? Wait… There Were How Many Herods?!
• 16 Facts About King David
• Moses: The Old Testament’s Greatest Prophet

Privacy Overview

Book of Exodus NIV

Chapters for exodus, summary of the book of exodus.

This summary of the book of Exodus provides information about the title, author(s), date of writing, chronology, theme, theology, outline, a brief overview, and the chapters of the Book of Exodus.

"Exodus" is a Latin word derived from Greek Exodos, the name given to the book by those who translated it into Greek. The word means "exit," "departure" (see Lk 9:31 ; Heb 11:22 ). The name was retained by the Latin Vulgate, by the Jewish author Philo (a contemporary of Christ) and by the Syriac version. In Hebrew the book is named after its first two words, we'elleh shemoth ("These are the names of"). The same phrase occurs in Ge 46:8 , where it likewise introduces a list of the names of those Israelites "who went to Egypt with Jacob" ( 1:1 ). Thus Exodus was not intended to exist separately, but was thought of as a continuation of a narrative that began in Genesis and was completed in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The first five books of the Bible are together known as the Pentateuch (see Introduction to Genesis: Author and Date of Writing).

Author and Date of Writing

Several statements in Exodus indicate that Moses wrote certain sections of the book (see 17:14 ; 24:4 ; 34:27 ). In addition, Jos 8:31 refers to the command of Ex 20:25 as having been "written in the Book of the Law of Moses." The NT also claims Mosaic authorship for various passages in Exodus (see, e.g., Mk 7:10 ; 12:26 and NIV text notes; see also Lk 2:22-23 ). Taken together, these references strongly suggest that Moses was largely responsible for writing the book of Exodus -- a traditional view not convincingly challenged by the commonly held notion that the Pentateuch as a whole contains four underlying sources (see Introduction to Genesis: Author and Date of Writing).

According to 1Ki 6:1 (see note there), the exodus took place 480 years before "the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel." Since that year was c. 966 b.c., it has been traditionally held that the exodus occurred c. 1446. The "three hundred years" of Jdg 11:26 fits comfortably within this time span (see Introduction to Judges: Background). In addition, although Egyptian chronology relating to the 18th dynasty remains somewhat uncertain, some recent research tends to support the traditional view that two of this dynasty's pharaohs, Thutmose III and his son Amunhotep II, were the pharaohs of the oppression and the exodus respectively (see notes on 2:15,23 ; 3:10 ).

On the other hand, the appearance of the name Rameses in 1:11 has led many to the conclusion that the 19th-dynasty pharaoh Seti I and his son Rameses II were the pharaohs of the oppression and the exodus respectively. Furthermore, archaeological evidence of the destruction of numerous Canaanite cities in the 13th century b.c. has been interpreted as proof that Joshua's troops invaded the promised land in that century. These and similar lines of argument lead to a date for the exodus of c. 1290 (see Introduction to Joshua: Historical Setting).

The identity of the cities' attackers, however, cannot be positively ascertained. The raids may have been initiated by later Israelite armies, or by Philistines or other outsiders. In addition, the archaeological evidence itself has become increasingly ambiguous, and recent evaluations have tended to redate some of it to the 18th dynasty. Also, the name Rameses in 1:11 could very well be the result of an editorial updating by someone who lived centuries after Moses -- a procedure that probably accounts for the appearance of the same word in Ge 47:11 (see note there).

In short, there are no compelling reasons to modify in any substantial way the traditional 1446 b.c. date for the exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage.

The Route of the Exodus

At least three routes of escape from Pithom and Rameses ( 1:11 ) have been proposed: (1) a northern route through the land of the Philistines (but see 13:17 ); (2) a middle route leading eastward across Sinai to Beersheba; and (3) a southern route along the west coast of Sinai to the southeastern extremities of the peninsula. The southern route seems most likely, since several of the sites in Israel's desert itinerary have been tentatively identified along it. See map No. 2 at the end of the Study Bible. The exact place where Israel crossed the "Red Sea" is uncertain, however (see notes on 13:18 ; 14:2 ).

Themes and Theology

Exodus lays a foundational theology in which God reveals his name, his attributes, his redemption, his law and how he is to be worshiped. It also reports the appointment and work of Moses as the mediator of the Sinaitic covenant, describes the beginnings of the priesthood in Israel, defines the role of the prophet and relates how the ancient covenant relationship between God and his people (see note on Ge 17:2 ) came under a new administration (the covenant given at Mount Sinai).

Profound insights into the nature of God are found in chs. 3 ; 6 ; 33-34 . The focus of these texts is on the fact and importance of his presence with his people (as signified by his name Yahweh -- see notes on 3:14-15 -- and by his glory among them). But emphasis is also placed on his attributes of justice, truthfulness, mercy, faithfulness and holiness. Thus to know God's "name" is to know him and to know his character (see 3:13-15 ; 6:3 ).

God is also the Lord of history. Neither the affliction of Israel nor the plagues in Egypt were outside his control. The pharaoh, the Egyptians and all Israel saw the power of God. There was no one like him, "majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders" ( 15:11 ; see note there).

It is reassuring to know that God remembers and is concerned about his people (see 2:24 ). What he had promised centuries earlier to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob he now begins to bring to fruition as Israel is freed from Egyptian bondage and sets out for the land of promise. The covenant at Sinai is but another step in God's fulfillment of his promise to the patriarchs ( 3:15-17 ; 6:2-8 ; 19:3-8 ).

The Biblical message of salvation is likewise powerfully set forth in this book. The verb "redeem" is used, e.g., in 6:6 ; 15:13 . But the heart of redemption theology is best seen in the Passover narrative of ch. 12 , the sealing of the covenant in ch. 24 , and the account of God's gracious renewal of that covenant after Israel's blatant unfaithfulness to it in their worship of the golden calf (see 34:1-14 and notes). The apostle Paul viewed the death of the Passover lamb as fulfilled in Christ ( 1Co 5:7 ). Indeed, John the Baptist called Jesus the "Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" ( Jn 1:29 ).

The foundation of Biblical ethics and morality is laid out first in the gracious character of God as revealed in the exodus itself and then in the Ten Commandments ( 20:1-17 ) and the ordinances of the Book of the Covenant ( 20:22 -- 23:33 ), which taught Israel how to apply in a practical way the principles of the commandments.

The book concludes with an elaborate discussion of the theology of worship. Though costly in time, effort and monetary value, the tabernacle, in meaning and function, points to the "chief end of man," namely, "to glorify God and to enjoy him forever" (Westminster Shorter Catechism). By means of the tabernacle, the omnipotent, unchanging and transcendent God of the universe came to "dwell" or "tabernacle" with his people, thereby revealing his gracious nearness as well. God is not only mighty in Israel's behalf; he is also present in the nation's midst.

However, these theological elements do not merely sit side by side in the Exodus narrative. They receive their fullest and richest significance from the fact that they are embedded in the account of God's raising up his servant Moses (1) to liberate his people from Egyptian bondage, (2) to inaugurate his earthly kingdom among them by bringing them into a special national covenant with him, and (3) to erect within Israel God's royal tent. And this account of redemption from bondage leading to consecration in covenant and the pitching of God's royal tent in the earth, all through the ministry of a chosen mediator, discloses God's purpose in history -- the purpose he would fulfill through Israel, and ultimately through Jesus Christ the supreme Mediator.

• Israel Blessed and Oppressed ( ch. 1 )
• Infant Moses spared ( 2:1-10 )
• Mature Moses' escape from Egypt ( 2:11-25 )
• The Deliverer Called ( ch. 3 )
• The Deliverer's Objections and Disqualifications Overcome ( ch. 4 )
• Oppression made more harsh ( 5:1-21 )
• Promise of deliverance renewed ( 5:22 ; 6:12 )
• The Deliverers Identified ( 6:13-27 )
• Deliverer's commission renewed ( 6:28 ; 7:7 )
• Presenting the signs of divine authority ( 7:8-13 )
• First plague: water turned to blood ( 7:14-24 )
• Second plague: frogs ( 7:25 ; 8:15 )
• Third plague: gnats ( 8:16-19 )
• Fourth plague: flies ( 8:20-32 )
• Fifth plague: against livestock ( 9:1-7 )
• Sixth plague: boils ( 9:8-12 )
• Seventh plague: hail ( 9:13-35 )
• Eighth plague: locusts ( 10:1-20 )
• Ninth plague: darkness ( 10:21-29 )
• Tenth plague announced: death of the firstborn ( ch. 11 )
• The Passover ( 12:1-28 )
• The Exodus from Egypt ( 12:29-51 )
• The Consecration of the Firstborn ( 13:1-16 )
• Deliverance at the "Red Sea" ( 13:17 ; 14:31 )
• Song at the sea ( 15:1-21 )
• The waters of Marah ( 15:22-27 )
• The manna and the quail ( ch. 16 )
• The waters of Meribah ( 17:1-7 )
• The war with Amalek ( 17:8-16 )
• Basic administrative structure ( ch. 18 )
• The Covenant Proposed ( ch. 19 )
• The Decalogue ( 20:1-17 )
• The Reaction of the People to God's Fiery Presence ( 20:18-21 )
• Prologue ( 20:22-26 )
• Laws on slaves ( 21:1-11 )
• Laws on homicide ( 21:12-17 )
• Laws on bodily injuries ( 21:18-32 )
• Laws on property damage ( 21:33 ; 22:15 )
• Laws on society ( 22:16-31 )
• Laws on justice and neighborliness ( 23:1-9 )
• Laws on sacred seasons ( 23:10-19 )
• Epilogue ( 23:20-33 )
• Ratification of the Covenant ( ch. 24 )
• Collection of the materials ( 25:1-9 )
• Ark and atonement cover ( 25:10-22 )
• Table of the bread of the Presence ( 25:23-30 )
• Gold lampstand ( 25:31-40 )
• Curtains and frames ( ch. 26 )
• Altar of burnt offering ( 27:1-8 )
• Courtyard ( 27:9-19 )
• Priesthood ( 27:20 ; 28:5 )
• Garments of the priests ( 28:6-43 )
• Ordination of the priests ( ch. 29 )
• Altar of incense ( 30:1-10 )
• Census tax ( 30:11-16 )
• Bronze basin ( 30:17-21 )
• Anointing oil and incense ( 30:22-38 )
• Appointment of craftsmen ( 31:1-11 )
• Observance of Sabbath rest ( 31:12-18 )
• The golden calf ( 32:1-29 )
• Moses' mediation ( 32:30-35 )
• Threatened separation and Moses' prayer ( ch. 33 )
• Renewal of the covenant ( ch. 34 )
• Summons to build ( 35:1-19 )
• Voluntary gifts ( 35:20-29 )
• Bezalel and his craftsmen ( 35:30 ; 36:7 )
• Progress of the work ( 36:8 ; 39:31 )
• Moses' blessing ( 39:32-43 )
• Erection of God's royal tent ( 40:1-33 )
• Dedication of God's royal tent ( 40:34-38 )

From the NIV Study Bible, Introductions to the Books of the Bible, Exodus Copyright 2002 © Zondervan. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Exodus Videos

How Do We See Christ in the Old Testament?

Why Is a 1446 BC Date for the Exodus So Significant?

What is the Central Theme of the Torah?

What Is the Pentateuch?

• Subject List
• Take a Tour
• For Authors
• Subscriber Services
• Publications
• African American Studies
• African Studies
• American Literature
• Anthropology
• Architecture Planning and Preservation
• Art History
• Atlantic History

Biblical Studies

• British and Irish Literature
• Childhood Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Cinema and Media Studies
• Communication
• Criminology
• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Renaissance and Reformation
• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Book of Exodus

Introduction.

• The Masoretic Hebrew Version
• The Samaritan Hebrew Version
• The Greek Septuagint Version
• English Translations
• Annotated Study Bibles
• Dictionary Treatments
• Old Testament Introductions
• Research Tools
• Bibliographies and Surveys of Scholarship
• Technical Commentaries
• Commentaries for General Readers
• Collected Essays
• History of Composition and Literary Context
• Exodus and History
• Exodus and Israelite Religion
• Exodus and Moses
• Feminist Interpretations
• History of Tradition and Composition
• Conflict at the Sea
• Hymns of the Exodus
• Exodus and Wilderness Journey (Exodus 16–18)
• Exodus and Revelation at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19–34)
• Introduction to Law
• The Decalogue
• Book of the Covenant
• Law of Covenant Renewal
• Exodus and Tabernacle (Exodus 25–31, 35–40)
• Exodus and Theology
• History of Interpretation

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• Ancient Egypt and the Hebrew Bible
• Ark of the Covenant
• Idol/Idolatry (HB/OT)
• Levi/Levites
• Names of God in the Hebrew Bible

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Latino/a and Latin American Biblical Interpretation
• Otherness in the Hebrew Bible
• Pain and Suffering in the Hebrew Bible
• Find more forthcoming articles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Book of Exodus by Thomas B. Dozeman LAST REVIEWED: 13 September 2010 LAST MODIFIED: 13 September 2010 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195393361-0038

Exodus is the second book in the Torah, or Pentateuch, of the Hebrew Bible. It follows the story of the Israelite ancestors in Genesis, which concludes with the migration of Jacob’s family to Egypt during a time of famine. Exodus opens with the Israelites’ change of status from guests to slaves in the land of Egypt (Exodus 1–2), which sets the stage for the divine rescue of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery through the leadership of Moses (Exodus 3–15), their initial journey into the wilderness to the divine mountain (Exodus 16–18), and the divine revelation of law, the formation of a covenant, and the construction of a portable sanctuary at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19–40), before the story continues with the formation of the sacrificial cultic system in Leviticus, the formation of the wilderness camp in Numbers 1–10, and the second stage of the wilderness journey in Numbers 11–36. Exodus contains the core story of salvation for ancient Israel, the biography of the liberator and lawgiver, Moses, and the central religious rituals for celebrating salvation, including Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Torah observance, and the guidelines for building the proper sanctuary for worship. The Book of Exodus contains a series of interpretations of these central themes, which has resulted in a complex history of composition, prompting a variety of questions about authorship, genre, historicity, and theology.

The Text of Exodus

Exodus is preserved in ancient and medieval tradition in a variety of different languages as illustrated in Würthwein 1995 , of which the Hebrew and Greek versions are the most important for the critical study of the text.

Würthwein, Ernst. The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica. Rev. ed. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995.

This book provides an historical overview of the different ancient versions of the Bible.

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About Biblical Studies »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• Archaeology and Material Culture of Nabataea and the Nabat...
• Acts of Peter
• Acts of the Apostles
• Adam and Eve
• Aelia Capitolina
• Afterlife and Immortality
• Agriculture
• Alexander the Great
• Altered States of Consciousness in the Bible
• Ancient Christianity, Churches in
• Ancient Israel, Schools in
• Ancient Medicine
• Ancient Mesopotamia, Schools in
• Ancient Near Eastern Law
• Anti-Semitism and the New Testament
• Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
• Apocryphal Acts
• Apostolic Fathers
• Archaeology and Material Culture of Ammon and the Ammonite...
• Archaeology and Material Culture of Aram and the Arameans
• Archaeology and Material Culture of Judah and the Judeans ...
• Archaeology and Material Culture of Moab and the Moabites
• Archaeology and Material Culture of Phoenicia and the Phoe...
• Archaeology and Material Culture of the Kingdom of Israel ...
• Archaeology, Greco-Roman
• Art, Early Christian
• Astrology and Astronomy
• Barnabas, Epistle of
• Benefaction/Patronage
• Bible and Film
• Bible and Visual Art
• Bible, Exile, and Migration, The
• Biblical Criticism
• Biblical Studies, Cognitive Science Approaches in
• Caesarea Maritima
• Canon, Biblical
• Child Metaphors in the New Testament
• Children in the Hebrew Bible
• Children in the New Testament World
• Christian Apocrypha
• Christology
• Chronicles, First and Second
• Cities of Refuge
• Clement, First
• Clement of Alexandria
• Clement, Second
• Conversation Analysis
• Corinthians, Second
• Cosmology, Near East
• Covenant, Ark of the
• Crucifixion
• Daniel, Additions to
• Death and Burial
• Deuteronomistic History
• Deuteronomy
• Diaspora in the New Testament
• Digital Humanities and the Bible
• Divination and Omens
• Domestic Architecture, Ancient Israel
• Early Christianity
• Ecclesiastes/Qohelet
• Economics and Biblical Studies
• Education, Greco-Roman
• Education in the Hebrew Bible
• Egyptian Book of the Dead
• Election in the Bible
• Epistles, Catholic
• Epistolography (Ancient Letters)
• Eschatology of the New Testament
• Esther and Additions to Esther
• Exodus, Book of
• Ezra-Nehemiah
• Faith in the New Testament
• Feminist Scholarship on the Old Testament
• Flora and Fauna of the Hebrew Bible
• Food and Food Production
• Friendship, Kinship and Enmity
• Funerary Rites and Practices, Greco-Roman
• Genesis, Book of
• God, Ancient Israel
• God, Greco-Roman
• God, Son of
• Gospels, Apocryphal
• Great, Herod the
• Greco-Roman Meals
• Greco-Roman World, Associations in the
• Greek Language
• Hebrew Bible, Biblical Law in the
• Hebrew Language
• Hellenistic and Roman Egypt
• Hermas, Shepherd of
• Historiography, Greco-Roman
• History of Ancient Israelite Religion
• Holy Spirit
• Honor and Shame
• Hosea, Book of
• Idol/Idolatry (New Testament)
• Imperial Cult and Early Christianity
• Infancy Gospel of Thomas
• Interpretation and Hermeneutics
• Intertextuality in the New Testament
• Israel, History of
• Jesus of Nazareth
• Jewish Christianity
• Jewish Festivals
• Joel, Book of
• John, Gospel of
• John the Baptist
• Jubilees, Book of
• Judaism, Hellenistic
• Judaism, Rabbinic
• Judaism, Second Temple
• Judas, Gospel of
• Jude, Epistle of
• Judges, Book of
• Judith, Book of
• Kings, First and Second
• Lamentations
• Letters, Johannine
• Letters, Pauline
• Levi/Levittes
• Levirate Obligation in the Hebrew Bible
• Levitical Cities
• LGBTIQ Hermeneutics
• Literacy, New Testament
• Literature, Apocalyptic
• Lord's Prayer
• Luke, Gospel of
• Maccabean Revolt
• Maccabees, First–Fourth
• Man, Son of
• Manasseh, King of Judah
• Manasseh, Tribe/Territory
• Mark, Gospel of
• Matthew, Gospel of
• Medieval Biblical Interpretation (Jewish)
• Mesopotamian Mythology and Genesis 1-11
• Midrash and Aggadah
• Minoritized Criticism of the New Testament
• Miracle Stories
• Modern Bible Translations
• Mysticism in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity
• Myth in the Hebrew Bible
• Nahum, Book of
• New Testament and Early Christianity, Women, Gender, and S...
• New Testament, Feminist Scholarship on the
• New Testament, Men and Masculinity in the
• New Testament, Rhetoric of the
• New Testament, Social Sciences and the
• New Testament Studies, Emerging Approaches in
• New Testament, Textual Criticism of the
• New Testament Views of Torah
• Numbers, Book of
• Nuzi (Nuzi Tablets)
• Old Testament, Biblical Theology in the
• Old Testament, Social Sciences and the
• Orality and Literacy
• Passion Narratives
• Pauline Chronology
• Paul's Opponents
• Performance Criticism
• Period, The "Persian"
• Philippians
• Philistines
• Philo of Alexandria
• Piety/Godliness in Early Christianity and the Roman World
• Poetry, Hebrew
• Pontius Pilate
• Priestly/Holiness Codes
• Priest/Priesthood
• Pseudepigraphy, Early Christian
• Pseudo-Clementines
• Qumran/Dead Sea Scrolls
• Race, Ethnicity and the Gospels
• Revelation (Apocalypse)
• Samaria/Samaritans
• Samuel, First and Second
• Second Baruch
• Sects, Jewish
• Sermon on the Mount
• Sexual Violence and the Hebrew Bible
• Sin (Hebrew Bible/Old Testament)
• Solomon, Wisdom of
• Song of Songs
• Succession Narrative
• Synoptic Problem
• Tales, Court
• Temples and Sanctuaries
• Temples, Near Eastern
• Ten Commandments
• The Bible and the American Civil War
• The Bible and the Qur’an
• The Bible in China
• the Hebrew Bible, Ancient Egypt and
• The New Testament and Creation Care
• Thessalonians
• Thomas, Gospel of
• Trauma and the Bible, Hermeneutics of
• Twelve Prophets, Book of the
• Virtues and Vices: New Testament Ethical Exhortation in I...
• War, New Testament
• Wisdom—Greek and Latin
• Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testa...
• Worship in the New Testament and Earliest Christianity
• Worship, Old Testament
• Zoology (Animals in the New Testament)
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [66.249.64.20|81.177.182.154]
• 81.177.182.154

Your browser does not support JavaScript. Please note, our website requires JavaScript to be supported.

Please contact us or click here to learn more about how to enable JavaScript on your browser.

• Change Country
• Resources /
• Insights on the Bible /
• The Pentateuch

Listen to Chuck Swindoll’s overview of Exodus in his audio message from the Classic series God’s Masterwork .

Who wrote the book?

As with Genesis, early Jewish traditions name Moses as the most likely and best qualified person to have authored Exodus. This theory is supported by a number of factors. Moses’s unique education in the royal courts of Egypt certainly provided him the opportunity and ability to pen these works (Acts 7:22). Internal evidence (material found within the text of Exodus itself ) adds support for Moses’s authorship. Many conversations, events, and geographical details could be known only by an eyewitness or participant. For example, the text reads: “Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said,” (Exodus 24:4 NIV). Additionally, other biblical books refer to “the law of Moses” ( Joshua 1:7; 1 Kings 2:3), indicating that Exodus, which includes rules and regulations, was written by Moses. Jesus Himself introduced a quote from Exodus 20:12 and 21:17 with the words, “For Moses said” (Mark 7:10), confirming His own understanding of the book’s author.

The title “Exodus” comes from the Septuagint, which derived it from the primary event found in the book, the deliverance from slavery and “exodus” or departure of the Israelite nation out of Egypt by the hand of Yahweh, the God of their forefathers.

Where are we?

Exodus begins in the Egyptian region called Goshen. The people then traveled out of Egypt and, it is traditionally believed, moved toward the southern end of the Sinai Peninsula. They camped at Mount Sinai, where Moses received God’s commandments.

The book covers a period of approximately eighty years, from shortly before Moses’s birth (c. 1526 BC) to the events that occurred at Mount Sinai in 1446 BC.

Why is Exodus so important?

In Exodus we witness God beginning to fulfill His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Though the children of Israel were enslaved in a foreign land, God miraculously and dramatically delivered them to freedom. He then established Israel as a theocratic nation under His covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai. The ten plagues, the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, the fearsome majesty of God’s presence at Mount Sinai, the giving of the Ten Commandments, the building of the tabernacle . . . these events from Exodus are foundational to the Jewish faith. And they provide crucial background context to help future readers of Scripture understand the entire Bible’s message of redemption. The frequency of references to Exodus by various biblical writers, and even Jesus’s own words, testify to its importance.

What's the big idea?

The overall theme of Exodus is redemption—how God delivered the Israelites and made them His special people. After He rescued them from slavery, God provided the Law, which gave instructions on how the people could be consecrated or made holy. He established a system of sacrifice, which guided them in appropriate worship behavior. Just as significantly, God provided detailed directions on the building of His tabernacle, or tent. He intended to live among the Israelites and manifest His shekinah glory (Exodus 40:34–35)—another proof that they were indeed His people.

The Mosaic Covenant, unveiled initially through the Decalogue (Ten Commandments), provides the foundation for the beliefs and practices of Judaism, from common eating practices to complex worship regulations. Through the Law, God says that all of life relates to God. Nothing is outside His jurisdiction. 

How do I apply this?

Like the Israelites who left Egypt, all believers in Christ are redeemed and consecrated to God. Under the Mosaic Covenant, people annually sacrificed unblemished animals according to specific regulations in order to have their sins covered, or borne, by that animal. The author of the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us, “But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:3–4 NIV). Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross fulfilled the Law. As the perfect Lamb of God, He took away our sin permanently when He sacrificed Himself on our behalf. “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10:10 NIV).

Have you accepted His sacrifice on your behalf? Are you truly “redeemed”? If you’d like to learn about this, see “How to Begin a Relationship with God.”

Copyright ©️ 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

Bible Study Chart

Exodus overview chart.

View Chuck Swindoll's chart of Exodus , which divides the book into major sections and highlights themes and key verses.

View a list of Bible maps , excerpted from The Swindoll Study Bible.

• Search Menu
• Advance articles
• Author Guidelines
• Open Access
• Submission site
• Why Publish?
• About The Journal of Theological Studies
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Terms and Conditions
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

• < Previous

The Book of Exodus: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation . Edited by T homas B. D ozeman , C raig A. E vans , and J oel N. L ohr .

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Graham Davies, The Book of Exodus: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation . Edited by T homas B. D ozeman , C raig A. E vans , and J oel N. L ohr ., The Journal of Theological Studies , Volume 67, Issue 2, October 2016, Pages 635–637, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flw149

• Permissions Icon Permissions

T his seventh volume in the series The Formation and Interpretation of Old Testament Literature contains twenty-four essays on Exodus (all in English, but some translated from German), divided into four groups: ‘General Topics’ (three), ‘Issues in Interpretation’ (eight), ‘Textual Transmission and Reception History’ (eleven), and ‘Exodus and Theology’ (two). Surprisingly, perhaps, the second half may prove to be of wider interest and use than the first half. So we shall begin at the end and work backwards. To those many readers who would expect the theology of Exodus to be focused on God, history, law, covenant, and perhaps divine presence, the topics chosen by Walter Brueggemann (‘The God who Gives Rest’) and Terence Fretheim (‘Issues of Agency in Exodus’) may be unexpected, especially when the latter proves to be about human agency as much as (or even more than) divine. What Fretheim has in mind is the action of God through agents that he does not control: as others have recognized, this is especially evident in Exodus 1–2 (not least in the action of women) and Fretheim, with some encouragement from 3:10–12 (Moses is appointed to ‘bring the Israelites out of Egypt’), uses it as a paradigm for the theological interpretation of the rest of the book. Not all, as Fretheim makes clear, would see it this way—a source-critic (there are still some of us left: see below!) might point out that it is especially in the Elohist strand of the narrative (compare also ch. 18) that such a theology is explicit. But Fretheim’s challenge to a one-sided emphasis on ‘divine action’ in Exodus is appropriate and liberating.

Brueggemann, who is well known for espousing a similar approach to the Old Testament, centres his essay on the gift of rest (or Sabbath), which proves to be an unexpectedly pervasive theme of Exodus—not just in the string of explicit textual references that he can assemble (which recalls the telling use of them in the Book of Jubilees which is detected by Lutz Doering in his contribution to the volume [pp. 490–6]), but as a plausible way of glossing the liberation of the Israelites from slave labour. It is, incidentally, in Exod. 16:29 (probably part of the older non-Priestly manna story) that what might be called Brueggemann’s ‘text’ can be found: ‘The Lord has given you the sabbath’ (cf. v. 26). The same connection between Sabbath and liberation has been seen, though Brueggemann does not mention him here, by Jürgen Moltmann (I am indebted to Dr Lidija Gunjevic for drawing this to my attention).

The third group of essays follows very much the same pattern as in the corresponding volume on Genesis (2012). Sidnie White Crawford’s survey of the Dead Sea Scrolls again concentrates, very usefully, on the interpretation of the book there (rather than on the biblical manuscripts, for which those interested will need to consult Armin Lange’s Handbuch ). Among the four essays on the main ancient versions those by Jerome Lund on the Syriac and by David Everson on the Latin have the most to offer, in part because they cover topics that are not as well known as the Septuagint and the Targumim. Bruce Chilton’s ‘The Exodus Theology of the Palestinian Targumim’ provides a succinct summary of his own extensive earlier work on ‘The Poem of the Four Nights’ found in various forms at Exod. 12:42 in Targum Neofiti 1 and elsewhere. In the section on reception history there are (in addition to Jubilees) studies of Philo, (parts of) the New Testament, Josephus, the Christian Fathers and Rabbinic commentary, of which the first and last (by G. E. Sterling and Burton Visotzky) are particularly valuable.

The first two groups of essays may be taken together as, with the exception of ‘Exodus and History’ by Lester Grabbe, they all provide the scholars concerned with the opportunity to present (and sometimes modify) their already published conclusions about a longer or shorter portion of the text. The ‘conclusions’ are predominantly about the origin of the passages in question (C. Dohmen on the Decalogue and H. Utzschneider on the Tabernacle are notable exceptions) and nearly all display the various kinds of redactional analysis which have become particularly prevalent in German-speaking scholarship in the past twenty-five years. The Preface says that ‘The contributors were invited with a view to representing the spectrum of opinion in the current interpretation of the Book of Exodus’ (p. ix), but by accident or design this has not been achieved in this part of the collection. The Genesis volume at least had contributions from Ronald Hendel and Baruch Schwartz to illustrate the older and still widely favoured source-critical model. This is not the place to engage (again!) in detailed argument with the trends that are prominent here. Suffice it to say that there continues to be much to be said, as argued by Ernest Nicholson in his The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century (1998), for the detection of parallel accounts (or sources) deriving from different authors and traditions and for the broad distinction between substantial pre-exilic and exilic or post-exilic portions of the text. The current ‘avant-garde’ scholarship that appears here remains divided over several important issues (such as the nature of the Priestly Work) and its proliferation of late redactional layers often relies on minor similarities and differences of wording that make too little allowance for ancient authors’ literary competence (as noted by Suzanne Boorer in her essay on the ‘land oath’). One sometimes has the impression that more knowledge about the origin of texts is being sought than sound method and the evidence available will allow. A different kind of problem, compared with the scholarship of an earlier generation, is a much weakened sense for the contribution of inherited tradition to a body of literature like the Pentateuch. Recent studies of ancient Near Eastern scribal tradition have underlined how conservative it was even when it allowed for adaptation and innovation. The essays by Grabbe and David Wright (on the ‘Covenant Code’ in Exodus 20–3) have a different character from the rest (and from one another). The former examines a wide range of evidence and argument (but not the important correlation between ‘Hebrews’ and the ‘ apiru mentioned in Egyptian texts) and ends by stressing the difficulty of finding proof of a historical Exodus; while the latter concentrates on the many parallels with Babylonian laws and argues specifically for the composition of Israel’s ‘founding law text’ on the basis of the ancient laws of Hammurabi in the period of Assyrian domination in the eighth or seventh century bc . Both these contributions merit careful (if critical) study.

There is much that is valuable in this collection and the editors have provided helpful indexes of modern authors and of biblical and other references.

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Recommend to Your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1477-4607
• Print ISSN 0022-5185
• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Introduction to Exodus

Author and Date

Exodus (meaning exit) is best understood to have been written primarily by Moses, like the rest of the Pentateuch, though some details (such as the narrative of his death in Deuteronomy 34 ) were clearly added at a later time. It also appears that some language and references were updated for later readers. There is no consensus among scholars as to the date when the events of the exodus took place. A common view is that the exodus occurred in c. 1446 B.C. This is based on the calculation of 480 years from Israel’s departure from Egypt to the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (c. 966 B.C. ; see 1 Kings 6:1 ). However, because Exodus 1:11 depicts Israel working on a city called Raamses, some scholars believe that this would suggest that the exodus occurred during the reign of Raamses II in Egypt (c. 1279–1213 B.C. ), possibly around 1260 B.C. (see note on 1 Kings 6:1 ).

The overarching theme of Exodus is the fulfillment of God’s promises to the patriarchs. The success of the exodus must be credited to the power and purpose of God, who remembers his promises, punishes sin, and forgives the repentant. The book highlights Moses’ faithfulness and prayerfulness.

• Covenant promises. The events and instructions in Exodus are described as the Lord remembering his covenant promises to Abraham ( 2:24; 3:6, 14–17; 6:2–8 ). The promises extend to both Abra­ham’s descendants and all the nations of the world ( Gen. 12:1–3 ). They include land (which Israel will inhabit), numerous offspring (which will secure their ongoing identity), and blessing (God cares for them and other nations). The fulfillment of these promises is rooted in Israel’s covenant relationship with the Lord ( Gen. 17:7–8 ).
• Covenant mediator. Moses mediates between the Lord and his people. Through Moses the Lord reveals his purposes to Israel and sustains the covenant relationship.
• Covenant presence. God’s presence with his people is highlighted throughout the book of Exodus .
• Setting: Israel in Egypt ( 1:1–2:25 )
• Call of Moses ( 3:1–4:31 )
• Moses and Aaron: initial request ( 5:1–7:7 )
• Plagues and exodus ( 7:8–15:21 )
• Journey ( 15:22–18:27 )
• Setting: Sinai ( 19:1–25 )
• Covenant words and rules ( 20:1–23:33 )
• Covenant confirmed ( 24:1–18 )
• Instructions for the tabernacle ( 25:1–31:17 )
• Moses receives the tablets ( 31:18 )
• Covenant breach, intercession, and renewal ( 32:1–34:35 )
• Tabernacle: preparation for the presence ( 35:1–40:38 )

The Journey to Mount Sinai

Scholars disagree about the precise route of the exodus, but most agree that Mount Sinai is the site that today is called Jebel Musa (“Mountain of Moses”).

• Travel/Study

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

The exodus: fact or fiction.

Evidence of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt

Dated to c. 1219 B.C.E., the Merneptah Stele is the earliest extrabiblical record of a people group called Israel. Set up by Pharaoh Merneptah to commemorate his military victories, the stele proclaims, “Ashkelon is carried off, and Gezer is captured. Yeno’am is made into nonexistence; Israel is wasted, its seed is not.” Ashkelon, Gezer and Yeno’am are followed by an Egyptian hieroglyph that designates a town. Israel is followed by a hieroglyph that means a people. Photo: Maryl Levine.

Is the biblical Exodus fact or fiction?

This is a loaded question. Although biblical scholars and archaeologists argue about various aspects of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, many of them agree that the Exodus occurred in some form or another.

The question “Did the Exodus happen” then becomes “ When did the Exodus happen?” This is another heated question. Although there is much debate, most people settle into two camps: They argue for either a 15th-century B.C.E. or 13th-century B.C.E. date for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt.

The article “ Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History ” from the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review 1 wrestles with both of these questions—“Did the Exodus happen?” and “When did the Exodus happen?” In the article, evidence is presented that generally supports a 13th-century B.C.E. Exodus during the Ramesside Period, when Egypt’s 19th Dynasty ruled.

The article examines Egyptian texts, artifacts and archaeological sites, which demonstrate that the Bible recounts accurate memories from the 13th century B.C.E. For instance, the names of three places that appear in the biblical account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt correspond to Egyptian place names from the Ramesside Period (13th–11th centuries B.C.E.). The Bible recounts that, as slaves, the Israelites were forced to build the store-cities of Pithom and Ramses. After the ten plagues, the Israelites left Egypt and famously crossed the Yam Suph (translated Red Sea or Reed Sea), whose waters were miraculously parted for them. The biblical names Pithom, Ramses and Yam Suph (Red Sea or Reed Sea) correspond to the Egyptian place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf. These three place names appear together in Egyptian texts only from the Ramesside Period. The name Pi-Ramesse went out of use by the beginning of Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period, which began around 1085 B.C.E., and does not reappear until much later.

FREE ebook: Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus .

These specific place names recorded in the biblical text demonstrate that the memory of the biblical authors for these traditions predates Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. This supports a 13th-century Exodus during the Ramesside Period because it is only during the Ramesside Period that the place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf (Red Sea or Reed Sea) are all in use.

A worker’s house from western Thebes also seems to support a 13th-century Exodus. In the 1930s, archaeologists at the University of Chicago were excavating the mortuary Temple of Aya and Horemheb, the last two pharaohs of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, in western Thebes. The temple was first built by Aya in the 14th-century B.C.E., but Horemheb usurped and expanded the temple when he became pharaoh. (He ruled from the late 14th century through the early 13th century B.C.E.) Horemheb chiseled out every place where Aya’s name had been and replaced it with his own. Later—during the reign of Ramses IV (12th century B.C.E.)—the Temple of Aya and Horemheb was demolished.

During their excavations, the University of Chicago uncovered a house and part of another house belonging to the workers who were given the task of demolishing the temple. The plan of the complete house is the same as that of the four-room house characteristic of Israelite dwellings during the Iron Age. However, unlike the Israelite models that were usually constructed of stone, the Theban house was made of wattle and daub. It is significant that this house was built in Egypt at the same time that Israelites were constructing four-room houses in Canaan . The similarities between the two have caused some to speculate that the builders of the Theban house were either proto-Israelites or a group closely related to the Israelites.

Is this a proto-Israelite house? This plan shows the 12th-century B.C.E. worker’s house in western Thebes next to the Temple of Aya and Horemheb. The house is undoubtedly a four-room house. In Canaan, the four-room house is considered an ethnic marker for the presence of Israelites during the Iron Age. Is the Biblical Exodus fact or fiction? This favors “fact,” so the question becomes, “ When did the Exodus happen?” The presence of such a house in Egypt during the 12th century B.C.E. seems to support an Exodus during the Ramesside Period. Photo: Courtesy of Manfred Bietak.

A third piece of evidence for the Exodus is the Onomasticon Amenope. The Onomasticon Amenope is a list of categorized words from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. Written in hieratic, the papyrus includes the Semitic place name b-r-k.t , which refers to the Lakes of Pithom. Even in Egyptian sources, the Semitic name for the Lakes of Pithom was used instead of the original Egyptian name. It is likely that a Semitic-speaking population lived in the region long enough that their name eventually supplanted the original.

Watch full-length lectures from the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference, which addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. The international conference was hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego in San Diego, CA.

Another compelling piece of evidence for the Exodus is found in the biblical text itself. A history of enslavement is likely to be true. The article explains:

The storyline of the Exodus, of a people fleeing from a humiliating slavery, suggests elements that are historically credible. Normally, it is only tales of glory and victory that are preserved in narratives from one generation to the next. A history of being slaves is likely to bear elements of truth.

Exodus: Fact or fiction? This four-room house from Izbet Sartah, Israel, shares many similarities with the 12th-century B.C.E. worker’s house uncovered in western Thebes. Photo: Israel Finkelstein/Tel Aviv University.

So, is the biblical Exodus fact or fiction? Scholars and people of many faiths line up on either side of the equation, and some say both. Archaeological discoveries have verified that parts of the biblical Exodus are historically accurate, but archaeology can’t tell us everything. Although archaeology can illuminate aspects of the past and bring parts of history to life, it has its limits.

It certainly is exciting when the archaeological record matches with the biblical account—as with the examples described here. However, while this evidence certainly adds weight to the historical accuracy of elements of the biblical account, it can’t be used to “prove” that every detail of the Exodus story in the Bible is true.

To learn more about evidence for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, read the full article “ Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History ” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review .

—————— Subscribers: Read the full article “ Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History ” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review .

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 10, 2016.

1. This BAR article is a free abstract from Manfred Bietak’s article “On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Today Can Contribute to Assessing the Biblical Account of the Sojourn in Egypt” in Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider and William H.C. Propp, eds., Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture and Geoscience (Cham: Springer, 2015). In Bietak’s article, the scholarly debate about the archaeological remains and the onomastic data of Wadi Tumilat is more elaborately treated.

Related reading in Bible History Daily :

Exodus in the bible and the egyptian plagues, who was moses was he more than an exodus hero.

Akhenaten and Moses

Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library :

Become a member of biblical archaeology society now and get more than half off the regular price of the all-access pass, explore the world’s most intriguing biblical scholarship.

Dig into more than 9,000 articles in the Biblical Archaeology Society’s vast library plus much more with an All-Access pass.

Related Posts

Pharaoh’s Brick Makers

By: Marek Dospěl

By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff

Searching for Biblical Mt. Sinai

By: Robin Ngo

112 Responses

The five Books of Moses has be categorically determined that they are works of fiction, not facts. This is just as ridiculous as Aliens in Ancient times. You show one house and you say that it is Israelis and then jump to conclusions that the Exodus is real. Bonkers and bad archeology. Sorry to break it to all of you, Bible is fiction, just like Santa Clause.

Why are you so hateful towards Christians? Do you have some kind of grudge?

Hello Josh, I disagree! Here my own logic. Jesus Is Logical. I means he talks with Logic that Make Sense. In John 14:29 NASB Jesus said “29 Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.” The Logic here is If I tell you that it will storm tomorrow, you will say Big Deal. But if I say to you that it will storm 74 days from today at 1 pm in your town with orange rain, you will be very skeptical. You even may forget this conversation till it truly happen and then you will say that guy knows something, he told me exactly that!!! That is the The Logic of John 14:29 Here is a prophecy being fulfilled before your own eyes! In Mark 13:1-2 As He was going out of the temple, one of His disciples *said to Him, “Teacher, behold [a]what wonderful stones and [b]what wonderful buildings!” 2 And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down.” Here is why this passage is important 1- At that time, there was no known imminent threat to the temple. 2- That Building, The Temple, was the Heart of The Jewish Life & Worship. They were willing to defend it with every thing 3- The destruction was not accomplished by The Jesus “Team, i.e. His Disciples” to fulfill their Boss prophecy 4- The one who did it were the Romans to crush the Jewish uprising. During that they believed that there were some gold between the stones, that is why they literally turned every stone. 5- The ones that is maintaining the Destruction till this moment are the Muslims who built the mosque on top of the Temple. 6- Islam came 6-7 centuries after Jesus!!! 7- Despite the Rich Jews worldwide, Despite Return to their Promised Land, Despite the Power of their Army, They Can Not Build The Most Important and Central Building in their lives!

Please go back to John 14:29 and be Candid with yourself, Is that humanly possible? Is that a Fiction?

If you are still in doubt, why you do not raise (Earnestly and Sincerely) your eyes to the Lord of Lords and Ask One Question, Please Help My Weak Faith, Show me Yourself! I can Assure you with one thing, If you are truthful and sincere, He will give evidence beyond any doubt. You will be The Most Fulfilled Person. You will be in my prayers. Blessings Brother

“Here is a prophecy being fulfilled before your own eyes! In Mark 13:1-2 As He was going out of the temple, one of His disciples *said to Him, “Teacher, behold [a]what wonderful stones and [b]what wonderful buildings!” 2 And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down.””

This “prophecy” is a bit ridiculous to claim. In a time where civilizations conquered and destroyed each other, you are claiming a reference to a temple being destroyed is prophecy? Jerusalem was an occupied city near the outskirts of the Roman Empire, which was at war with the neighboring Persian Empire. That isn’t a prophecy at all to say a temple might be destroyed.

Also, the “Logic of John” could be applied to absolutely anyone who makes any predictions that are near true.

A clue to the timing of the Exodus which appears to be overlooked is Iron was in use when the Israelites killed King Og (Og king of Bashan was the last of the Rephaites. His bed was decorated with iron and was more than nine cubits long and four cubits wide. It is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.) Deut. 3:11 New International Version.

These debates need to have a few more guidelines beside simply true or false. True or false is difficult enough with many of the specifics regarding this matter. For example: if the time of the Exodus is pushed back from the 1200 BC to three hundred years before and the narrative is fully verbatim, then should the ruler of Egypt be referred to as Pharaoh? Because it was during the reign of Merneptah, circa same date, that the title was adopted.

Furthermore, geographical Egypt as we see it today was not always united under the same ruler. Upper and Lower Nile had separate rulers in various eras. For some reason the narrative never seems to split hairs about this. The Egypt “over there” is monolithic,

If the documents are as old and verbatim as some proponents claim, then the original account, say, dictated by Moses himself, would reflect the original Egyptian titles and not the one derived.

…Unless subsequent scribes had decided to change the words. For what? For clarity? For whom?

Both Genesis and Exodus do not address these distinctions in the stories about Joseph and Moses. And saying that Israelites were working on construction projects at Pi Ramses only adds to my distress. It seems like something that scribes in Babylonian Captivity would be well acquainted with, especially since where they dwell, clay brick and straw construction projects are typical of a different river valley. So many of the monuments, the products of the Egyptian state were cut of stone. And they were built for centuries by specialist builders, tradesmen, a sort of civil service. Distinct from slavery.

It is as though this is much metaphor for what has happened in Babylonia and the wait for deliverance from there?

The Egyptian state long had a presence far up the eastern Mediterranean coast and its military campaigns well into Syria through Canaan are recorded in stone. Canaanites on the battlegrounds were often taken captive and removed to Egypt. They lived and worked their, but not necessarily in bondage. Fighting at locations like Megiddo and Carchemish, the Egyptian presence in the second millenium BC in these regions is recorded in the Amarna letters. Some of them pose awkward problems for the Exodus. Because, if you set the date wrong, you could have Joshua arriving in the Promised Land while there is still an Egyptian administrator sending reports back to Amarna.

But given that antiquity suffered a widespread catastrophe around 1200 BC, it is clear that numerous peoples or nations were on the go as refugees or as marauders. We have not been able to pull together all the strands of those events. It could well be that the scribes of the 600s and 500s BC pulled together some of what happened centuries before and wrote about it, reflecting the events and lessons of their own time as well.

This process does not end, though. Consider that the pivotal experience of the United States is a civil war about deliverance from slavery with the leader of the abolitionists named Abraham. He is assassinated on Good Friday 1865. at the close of the war but short of the promised land.. Will historians be sceptical about this three millenia from now?

As a Christian, I sincerely believe in the integrity of the scriptures we call the Bible. I believe in the inerrancy of the original manuscripts and, as well, that God does indeed preserve His word from generation to generation. I also believe that the “historical” writings and books of the Bible, (e.g., the books of Kings and Chronicles), are historical, essential, and highly accurate but, not necessarily divinely inspired, (in the sense of infallibility.) Wherever it is written, God said, or an angel of the Lord said, or an instruction is given to a prophet mentioned or recorded in the Bible, that is the infallible “word of God.” English translations are highly accurate but, like the later added chapterization and verse numbering, I do not give the translational work of linguists divine inspiration in the sense of infallibility either – (while I do believe there are “King James Version” only-ists who would argue vehemently otherwise.) Translation work is ongoing, developing and refining itself as more historical context, colloquialisms, and ancient writings are unearthed or otherwise brought to light. Translational work is essential, and God uses it for spreading His message of mercy and grace to all people on this Earth. So, translation is essential but, prayerfully digging for the fullness of meaning in providing the highest accuracy of understanding must be the work of every Theophilus who would want to know the heart and mind of God.

With the above in mind, I firmly believe end-times prophecy of revelations (mysteries and signs) in the heavens above and the earth beneath will bear witness to the integrity of God’s truth. Archeological evidence exists and soon will be unearthed, and published, to prove the Hebrew people’s Exodus from Egypt in an undeniable way, which I also believe will be true for the irrefutable historical evidence of the first and second temples. You doubters can call it hogwash if you like. I believe in a unfathomably wise, intelligent, and living God, who is running the clock of events, (including signs and wonders), to suit His own agenda – not that of those with a stubborn and hard heart, who refuse to believe.

The evidence mention in this article is presented in Where Moses Stood- a book which details and reveals cast iron evidence for the Exodus and the work of Moses. Also clear proof for the site of Mount Zion date presence of the Israelites.

It certainly does not, you can’t invent fiction then use said fiction as proof…

It’s interesting the Minoan empire encountered a catastrophe around 1450BC. It’s proximity to Egypt may help validate the suggested 1450BC Exodus date. Especially if it was a volcanic disaster.

How could Moses write anything when Hebrews had no functional written language in 1300BC? Not even down to 1000BC or 800BC do we find any writings at all? Yet if you go with Israel Finkelstein’s anlaysis, top Israeli archaeologist, the Hebrews really emerged by a socio-religious fusion from the Canaanites. WE DO have MANY communications found sent back & forth between Canaanite chiefs & Kings of Egypt.

Why not just admit the obvious instead of trying to prove this complete fairy tale of Moses being true? Its obvious most of this was written centuries after it is supposed to have happened, Jewish scribes at the behest of a king post Babylon exile, to show they had divine claim to the land. Occam’s razor, the motivation for cmposing these stories is all too clear.

Language actually started with the Israelites in Egypt after Joseph and then Jacob/sons arrived.

Also a whole, free city (Avaris) civilization of Semites arrive and grew in the period buried beneath city of Rameses. We have arrival, wealth, slavery period, Hebrew names, Hebrews leaving Egypt, written description of plague effects, invasion of Egypt with no defense, conquering of Canaan. This is all documented in the 15th century, not 13th like the scholars falsely assume.. One cannot base science on assumptions and guess work.

This might help. Watch the dvd “Patterns of Evidence, Exodus” .

This is nonsense. Look at the evidence of 4-room houses which were peculiar to a Semitic group in Egypt and 40 years pop up in the hill country of Israel.

Rob, that was debunked as fake news ages ago. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chariot-wheels-found-bottom-red-sea/

I thought recent underwater research had located suspect chariots from the exodus abandoned at what would have been a crossing point; could not wood samples of this be used to determine a carbon date for the wood used in construction (assuming that it is not buried extremely deep) in the Red Sea? Also an expert on late night TV, examining their living circumstances, said the Israelites were not slaves, but merely lowly-paid contract workers, Cecil Blount DeMille, not withstanding. Sorry, Cecil. Years ago I learned that Cecil married a remote cousin of mine in Judge Adams daughter in Boston in 1900.

Yam Suf is not Red Sea or Reed Sea. If you translate the Hebrew it’s Sea of Reeds, in other words, it isn’t nor was it ever the Red Sea

Doesn’t matter, there’s still no evidence of 2 million people wandering the dessert…zero! 2 million people didn’t drop a thing? Didn’t make an imprint?

In trying to determine the date of the Exodus scholars combed through ancient documents to see any mention of peoples or places that aligned with the Biblical account. They noted the appearance of the following names: (1) Philistines, (2) Rameses, (3) Pithom, (4) Edom, (5) Seir, (6) Arad, (7) Heshbon, (8) Bozrah, (9) Ai, (10) Hazor. They discovered that Egyptian records noted a tribal group called the PLST, part of the Sea Peoples invasion of Canaan and Egypt in the reign of Rameses 3rd circa 1174 BC. This is the first mention of these people outside the Bible. This suggests an Exodus after 1174 BC as the PLST were not in Canaan before that date and Israel feared the Philistines on her departure from Rameses in Egypt. Pi-Rameses in Egypt has been excavated and it was founded by Rameses I and II in the 1200’s. Bozrah is Buseirah Edom’s capital, and it is no earlier than the 7th century BC. Heshbon (Tell Hesban) is no earlier than the 12th century BC. Hazor fell after 1174 BC as two Philistine sherds were found in its destroyed layer by the Israeli archaeologist Moshe Dothan. Edom is mentioned in an Egyptian document of the Ramesside era (13th century BC) and Seir. Jericho’s last wall was circa 1540 BC and fell to Egyptian forces pursuing the Hyksos from Egypt under Ahmoses I, founder of the 18th dynasty. My conclusions? The Exodus recalls the Hyksos expulsion of circa 1540 BC. But it also combines details from an invasion of Canaan and Transjordan circa 1174 BC or later. I suspect two invasions were recast as one event, the exodus. Why? The second invaders married the conquered peoples (Hyksos descendants) of 1174 BC and thus became heirs to the Hyksos expulsion of 1540 BC.

I agree with Richard, via hyperbole, and gross exaggeration, God’s mighty deeds are presented in such a way as to “wow” the listeners/readers of the text. Or, to put it another way: “Put the fear of God in the audience.” The trick has worked, witness the millions of Jews, Christians and Moslems, believing in this nonsense for two millennia.

WHEN is the critical question:

“The question “Did the Exodus happen” then becomes “When did the Exodus happen?” This is another heated question. Although there is much debate, most people settle into two camps: They argue for either a 15th-century B.C.E. or 13th-century B.C.E. date for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt.”

The Exodus in 1446 BCE (15th-century B.C.E.) is based on a single eclipse from the Assyrian eponym. The 13th-century B.C.E. date for the Exodus is linked to the reign of Rameses II, simply based on the Bible noting the Israelites built a storage house at a location called Pi-Ramses. But when noted archaeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon dug up Jericho, she specifically noted that her evidence contradicted these two theories for WHEN the Exodus happened. Her dating for the fall of Jericho between 1350-1325 BCE would necessarily date the Exodus between 1390-1365 BCE (the third quarter of the 14th century B.C.E.), which points to Amenhotep III and Akhenaten. She is thus dismissed in the major discussion even though she is providing the most direct archaeological dating for the Exodus. Her is her quote:

Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up Jericho, Jericho and the Coming of the Israelites, page 262:

“As concerns the date of the destruction of Jericho by the Israelites, all that can be said is that the latest Bronze Age occupation should, in my view, be dated to the third quarter of the fourteenth century B.C. This is a date which suits neither the school of scholars which would date the entry of the Israelites into Palestine to c. 1400 B.C. nor the school which prefers a date of c. 1260 B.C.”

This agrees with the archaeological dating of David based on the end of the Philistine pottery period in 950 B.C.E. by Israel Finkelstein. If we date David’s reign from 950-910 BCE and Solomon’s reign from 910-870 BCE, then his 4th year in 906 BCE would date the Exodus to 1386 BCE, the end of the reign of Amenhotep III. Akhenaten’s sudden monotheism thus is evidence of the impact of the ten plagues on the Egyptians! Thus you have two archaeological events that coordinate to when we must date the Exodus or at least include as a potential date for the Exodus rather than the popular dates for the Exodus, which lack critical evidence for the Exodus that dating the Exodus at the time of Akhenaten provides. Of course, Akhenaten and his monotheism has often been independently linked to Moses.

Evidence for the Exodus needs to include all potential dates. As noted, it is not IF the Exodus happened but WHEN!

Robert wrote: “Evidence for the Exodus needs to include ALL potential dates.” I can agree on that point. The Jewish Historian, Flavius Josephus, circa 70 AD, wrote a paraphrased history of the Jewish People using the Bible. He associated the Exodus with the Expulsion of the Hyksos by Pharaoh Ahmose I, founder of the 18th Dynasty, circa 1550/1540 BC. His source was a History of Egypt written in Greek by an Egyptian priest called Manetho. Manetho thought the Israelite Exodus was a Ramesside event, not Hyksos. More recently two Egyptologists, Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeir, have concluded that the chronology preserved in the Bible suggests that more than 480 elapsed from the Exodus to the 4th year of King Solomon (1 Kings 6:1). They argue that almost 600 years elapsed, which aligns the Exodus with the Hyksos Expulsion of the mid 16th century BC. Of note, is that the British archaeologist, Dame Kenyon, noted that the last wall of ancient Jericho had been destroyed circa 1550 BC and attributed the city’s fall to Ahmose I (Ahmoses I) and his Egyptian army that pursued after the Hyksos and conquered Canaan. So we have the Bible telling us a story about a people lately come from Egypt, conquering Jericho, and we have Kenyon telling us Jericho’s last walls fell to Egyptians in the Hyksos period. Perhaps the real event behind the Bible’s Exodus story was the Hyksos expulsion? Was Ahmoses I recast as Moses? His cartouche exists in the southern Sinai at the Egyptian shrine dedicated to the cow-goddess Hat-Hor, who gave birth at day break to the sun as a Golden Calf, that became a mature bull at sunset to impregnate his mother Hat-Hor, the sky-goddess in bovine form. She was worshipped with song and dance and drunken revelry. Near her shrine at the base of mountains (Serabit el Khadim) were found shattered stone tablets bearing Canaanite inscriptions (proto-sinatic Script) calling on the god El to protect the Canaanites working the mines with Egyptians. Were these shattered tables recast as the Ten Commandments thrown down by Moses at the sound of worship of the Golden Calf (Hat-Hor’s son)?

Per archaeological dating for the end of the Philistine pottery period c. 950 BC, David’s rule should be dated to 950-910 BC, and Solomon thus from 910-870 BC. Jeroboam was anointed as king prior to the death of Solomon and Rehoboam’s reign parallels that of Jeroboam, thus Shishak’s invasion occurred just prior to the death of Solomon in his 39th year. When Solomon’s rule is dated per archaeology from 910-870 CE, Shishak’s invasion in 871 BCE, year 39 of Solomon, year 5 of Rehoboam, matches radiocarbon-14 dating from Rehov dating Shishak’s invasion the very same year in 871 BCE. Solomon’s 4th year would fall in 906 BCE, dating the Exodus to 1386 BCE. Kathleen Kenyon, in turn, dated the fall of Jericho between 1350-1325 BCE, which is consistent with the date of 1346 BCE for the fall of Jericho.

With all this coordinated archaeology, it should be clear the dating of the Exodus should be at the end of the reign of Amenhotep III and that Akhenaten’s monotheism was thus a direct result of the 10 plagues. A closer look at more details from the time of Akhenaten confirms a better dating for the Exodus to 1386 BCE, rather than to the seemingly popular alternative during the Ramesside period.

The Bible says the pharaoh of the Exodus would have ruled for less than 40 years. Amenhotep III ruled less than 40 years, Rameses II ruled 62 years. Everything points to Amenhotep III as the pharaoh Exodus and Akhenaten becoming a monotheist after experiencing the 10 plagues. But early dating and not Sothic dating must be used for dating Akhenaten. An eclipse event noted in the KTU 1.78 dates year 12 of Akhenaten to 1375 BCE, which in turn, dates his 1st year to 1386 BCE, a date we’ve already established as the year of the Exodus. Date the Exodus where you wish, but 1836 BCE must now be included in the discussion.

The Exodus account in the Bible mentions Israel’s fear of Philistines in returning to Canaan. Thus another route is used, not the “way to the land of the Philistines,” the road to Gaza skirting the Mediterranean Sea (Exodus 13:17-18). The earliest mention of Philistines in Egyptian records is by Pharaoh Rameses III, circa 1174 BC, he mentions them as the PLST, and counts them among the Sea Peoples who have recently conquered Canaan and now are attacking Egypt. He boasts of defeating them. This datum would suggest the Exodus has to be AFTER the arrival of the Philistines in Canaan, circa 1174 BC. Perhaps Rameses III is the Pharaoh of the Exodus, or some Pharaoh after him, like Rameses VI, circa 1130 BC? Hazor, in Canaan, falls to Joshua (Joshua 11:10) and the Israeli archaeologist, Moshe Dothan says he found two Philistine pottery sherds at Hazor, which would align the Exodus with a Philistine presence in Canaan after 1174 BC (see p. 96. Trude Dothan and Moshe Dothan. People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines. 1992) “Moshe had already ‘done’ Hazor briefly for the Israel Department of Antiquities…Moshe also found two characteristic Philistine sherds. True, two sherds out of hundreds were not much, but their very presence was provocative: Hazor was, after all, 165 miles from the core Philistine settlement.”

Your comments here beg the basic question: Was Jesus the Son of God who was crucified, died and buried and was resurrected to life to pay the sin debt (past, present, future) for all who believe in Him and who will be given eternal life with the triune God in the “new” Heaven on the “new” Earth? If your answer/ belief to my question is “no” then I have been duped into believing a lie or your answer will reject Biblical teaching and you will suffer eternal life totally separated from God.

My own understanding is that Jesus is not the Messiah, it was another, much earlier individual, Zerub’babel, as mentioned in the books of Haggai and Zechariah. Jeremiah predicted a 70 year Babylonian Exile for Judah. God would destroy Babylon, its inhabitants would become slaves, and Judah would be set free to return to the Promised Land. Jerusalem would be rebuilt, so too the Temple of Solomon, and a Messiah would reign of the line of David, and house of Judah. One of the tasks laid on the Messiah was that he would rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Haggai and Zechariah portray Zerub’babel as completing the Temple by 517 BC. Haggai has God saying that he has chosen Zerub’babel to be his signet ring, an earlier Davidic King had been called God’s Signet Ring, Jeconiah. History reveals Zerub’babel never was crowned the Messiah or King, despite his accomplishing the Messianic task of restoring God’s Temple. Haggai tells us when Zerub’babel will become the Signet Ring. It will be after God overthrows the Throne of Kings and its army of chariots and horsemen. This is a veiled reference to the Persian Empire. God never brought to Jerusalem, all the kings of the earth, client kings of the Persian Empire, to attack the city. For God would then appear and destroy the kings of the earth and establish Jerusalem as the world’s capital and the silver and gold tribute of the client kings would flow into the Temple treasury at Jerusalem, not Persepolis, the Persian Treasury and Capital. However, in 332 BC Alexander the Great of Macedonia did overthrow the Throne of kings, the Persian empire, and he released its gold an silver as Greek coins, bearing his image as the head of Hercules wearing a lion-skin head-dress and a seated Zeus on the reverse. Earlier gold and silver coins showed the Persian monarch striding into battle with a bow and spear (or sword). The Messianic Age was envisioned by Jeremiah as beginning with the fall of Babylon, after 70 years of Exile. In 539 BC Babylon fell to Cyrus of Persia who ordered the release of all Jews allowing them to return to the Promised Land and rebuild Jerusalem and its House of God. Zerub’babel, who was to be the Messiah or Signet Ring, according to Haggai and Zechariah, was the grandson of Judah’s last pre-exilic king. He was then a Persian appointed governor of the province of Yehud (Judah). God had failed to keep his promise, he did not overthrow the Persian Empire and its Throne of KIngs (Persian Monarchs styled themselves as “KING OF KINGS”) and thus Zerub’babel did not get to be crowned as Messiah.

Keep moving those goalposts, he has to get here someday right?

Whatever makes you think that a god that contradicts, rapes, murders innocent people, lies and is, in reality, a manmade monster has any sway to those of us who have researched and discovered theism is a mishmash of mythology, false memory and plain lies.

What a ridiculous problem? Bible and Exodus is not a history book but an interpretation of history. A ‘fiction”or “fact” is a false dilemma. Generally, persons and places in Bible refer to historical data since the 8th cent.B.C.; some archeological data can maybe refer to an earlier time. The Bible’s author believed that a hidden hand (JHWH-Ex.3,14)guides the events (in history) especially the liberation from an oppression and expressed it in a narrative. By an analogy, the fall of Devil Empire on December 8,1991-Bialoviezha Accord (Yeltci,@Bialorus, and Ukraine PM’s) made a coup contra Gorbatchev! If one does not see in it a hidden hand he/she is blind knowing the global horror threat of nuclear war in Cold War. More, December 8 is the FEast of Immaculate Conception.People have a short memory

The narrative has been worked over a number of times which cast doubt on the authenticity of the texts. What we have here is the aspect of objectification, by which intense or significant experiences of God are portrayed in the form of objective events. The point of the narrative is to bring out the significance of this birth in the history of Israel and to stress the value of trust in God even in adversity and apparent disappointment. At the same time, we encounter the aspect of retrojection, by which present interests and concerns are projected into the past, to become exemplary paradigms which enshrine a set of values, hopes and ways of life. In this sense, the narrative was written and shaped to express interests and hopes of post-exilic Israel, and projected into an ancient past, to a time beyond the possibility of realistic recollection. Therefore many of the concerns of those exiled in Babylon and returning to Jerusalem would be expressed in an ancient heroic saga of mighty and visible acts of God to liberate and establish Israel in her own land.

When the historicity of events in Exodus is literary and linguistically analyzed, they contain a large amount of legendary material. Some cases in point, did the Exodus happen as it is recorded in the Tanakh? Did the ten plagues on Egypt occur by a wave of Moses’ magic wand? Did the sea roll back at his bidding? Did the king of Egypt and all his army drown? Many historians, scholars and students of scripture will promptly answer no. These narratives are highly stylized, literary compilations from various traditions, with many editorial revisions and expansions that have accumulated new miraculous features each time. They employ the mechanism of magnification, whereby encounters with God are depicted in magnificent grandeur. God proclaims the Ten Commandments from a flaming mountain to the accompaniment of trumpets and in a voice heard by all the people. In short, they magnify the mighty acts of God into clear and unambiguous demonstrations of his power. In reality, it was probably vaguer and less impressive.

So vague to be of nothing of significance. Adults with imaginary friends are dangerous.

The names mentioned does not support a 12th century exodus any more than a 12th century recount of the events. 12th century readers (or hearers) would not likely be aware of “Avaris” for instance. My take is a 15th century (albeit late 15th, not mid) exodus is still not ruled out. Reference to Zoan (Tanis?) later suggests the biblical authors were quite aware of current designations and used the for clarity.

Ok then find a single piece of evidence that shows a 2 million strong population making its way around the Sinai…it’s been thousands of years, still waiting.

This has in no way eliminated an Eleventh Century Exodus; as Abraham Malamat suggested in BAR: “Let My People Go and Go and Go”. In fact, Dever claims that the Transjordan nations weren’t settled enough for an Exodus until after the 11th Cent.; but he must admit that there are indeed some remains from the nations Midian, Edom, Ammon, Moab and Philistia in the Eleventh.

Er, Eleventh -> Twelvth

How curious that anyone would object to the historical value and accuracy of the Torah/Old Testament. The continuancey left in place while being written by as many as 35 different authors with mostly no contemporary knowledge of each other, and having little to no access to the other’s writings and all by divine inspiration over thousands of years is more than enough reason for us to approach the text with absolute belief. I dare say more than belief but absolute acceptance that it is true. Find it’s written likeness anywhere else in human history! You cannot, but there is nothing else like it precisely because this book that we’ve come to call the Bible is itself a miracle. To claim anything other is to literally stand with one’s nose against the trunk of a tree and then claim to comprehend the forest of which it is only a small part.

Well said Brother “D”, see you on that day!

Your assertions have no place in reality, drugged up desert monks wrote the gospels based on earlier traditions and borrowed heavily from other Middle East myths. Nonsense built on top of historical nonsense = more nonsense. Your intellectual dishonesty does no one any favours.

There is zero evidence MOSES was an actual historical figure. For good reason. Indeed the entire foundation for all Abrahamic cultic ideology can be understood by logging on to THE JERUSALEM POST and looking at the date. This is STARDATE 5778 according to the JEWS. All of the lineage , rituals and traditions are based on this date. It equates to Adam being created in Oct,3760 BCE (thus 2018 CE 3760 BCE being the present date 5778). Using the Torah one can follow the lineage for ADAM to the BIBLICAL FLOOD which equates to 1656 years. Bringing us to 2104/5 BCE as the date the Torah presents as the entire world being covered in water to the level of Mt Ararat. In this planetary genocide only 8 humans and a wooden boatload of fauna survived. Understanding the foundational premise for all of Hebrew ideology one can understand the mindset of the authors of the mythistory. All of World History reveal there were many civilizations thriving in that timeframe. We KNOW for example the pyramids at GIZA were centuries old in 2104/5 BCE. Countless millions of facts and artifacts support genuine history. We can KNOW for certain NOAH and SONS (including SHEM and progeny ) never existed. They would have been the most famous humans on the planet yet they are phantoms in genuine history(they even vanish in the portrayal). Because they were mythical characters in a Bronze age fable. Likewise the story of MOSES in its entirety is fictional. One can look at the instructions given by the HEBREW deity and clearly see it portrays an anthropomorphic primitive ethnocentric tribal warlord. The primitive manner in which the culture existed for millennia (polygamy,marketing of slaves and keeping multiple sex slaves etc) and their lack of understanding of even basic natural law clearly reveal the source for the mythology. Primitive nomadic ethnocentric ignorant tribal concepts are the basis for the entire mythology. When one reads any text and it reads like a primitive fable because the details are implausible and irrational it should be a hint. From the Garden of Eden, Paradise Lost, portrayal; to the portrayal of Moses as a magician who led his tribe out of Egypt where they had been kept as slaves for centuries. These ancient bronze age myths have no basis in actual history.Like most novels there is a smattering of exaggerated actual history thrown in to make it appear somewhat interesting. The foundation for all Abrahamic cultic ideology is a primitive mythology from the imagination of men who used it to justify ethnocentric cleansing for millennia. The deity YHWH is portrayed over and again as being a tyrant who commits genocide. The instructions MOSES is portrayed as giving just before his fabled death reveals much. Go and kill and take and occupy. We live in an information age of high technology. Yet we are culturally, thru ritual , traditions and ideologies, still in 5778.. (or 2018) .. When the entity (or their agents) offering protection and salvation is portrayed as having committed countless acts of ethnocentric and even planetary genocide; and threatens to return and repeat the same; you can be certain it is not a moral, intelligent being of any sort. We can perceive much of the nature and character and intelligence of those who wrote the mythistory of Moses. We can also perceive the power of IDEOLOGY thru ancient Myths, Lore and Fables on the population of the world presently. When superstition , fear and ignorance are the basis for a cultures ideology they will be easily led to commit atrocities. In the name of the gods and tribalist, nationalist perspective. The portrayal of MOSES as a hero speaks to the character and mentality of those who to this day deem it such..cliches and platitudes aside..

I’ve been to a mainline Protestant seminary and here’s my take: a much smaller group of Israelites than documented in Exodus escaped enslavement in Egypt to make it to Israel where their relative clans were already settled. Did they have a leader named Moses? Maybe…maybe not. Did a miraculous crossing of the Red Sea happen followed by God eventually giving them the 10 Commandments, etc on their way to Israel? Again…maybe or maybe not. It really doesn’t bother me or diminish my faith either way. I find the research fascinated though!

You can move the goalposts all you want, nothing in the bible was fact, it was a good story to fool the simple minded to control them…look how effective it was.

In my equinox year chronology Solomon is around 850 BC, then assuming that 40 years is a generation which is around 25 years: 1) Patriarchal age would become to the 14th century, the Tell-el-Amarna age (the hypothesis by Cyrus Gordon). In Genesis 47:11 Ramesses would fit. 2) Exodus would be in mid-11th century. The cities mentioned in the exodus story seem to exist in that time, and Ai was inhabited 1200-1050 BCE. Finkelstein also mentions a general destruction in the Late Iron age 1. – I think the total number of the Moses group was 5000…30000 people. The Biblical numbers don’t seem be the headcount using 10-base system but something else (families, clans?), or it is just figurative (to cheat the enemy?)

So an entire religion is based on a dude saving a large village from Egypt??? What?

I read your article with interest and more particularly the parts devoted to chronology because as an assyriologist I am specialized in absolute chronology. You know that establishing a reliable chronology is difficult but when using astronomical data one avoids the usual choices between high and low chronologies. You will see, if you read the 3 articles below, that the Egyptian chronology can be anchored on absolute dates fixed by astronomy and notably the period during which the Exodus took place.

Absolute chronology of Exodus ( https://www.academia.edu/31803253/ ) Absolute Chronology of the Ancient World from 1533 BCE to 140 CE ( https://www.academia.edu/26080694/ ) The Pharaoh of the Exodus Fairy tale or real history? Outcome of the investigation ( https://www.academia.edu/30200722/ )

Best regards,

Gérard Gertoux https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gerard_Gertoux

Narrator: “There was no exodus because it’s just a story.”

I’m sorry you invested you life in nonsense. I’m going to assume from this point that nobody has told you that it is nonsense, and you may have been ignorant to its veracity. You’ve been told you know, now move on.

It amazes me that such sites as these can “educate” people with “Fake News”. In relation to Keith’s amazing comment, I can only say that if you actually did go to school, learn to read, and understand history, archaeology and theology, you would discover how that most respected, educated and well resourced and evidenced backed scholars, archaeologists, Educated people on Egyptology, historians and more have clearly and without doubt proven that 1) There were no “Jews” as such in ancient Egypt, and that the Jewish people originated from the Canaan and they were NOT slaves in historical Egypt. 2) The lack of evidence from the time of Moses in Egypt to the time of “deliverance” after getting the 10 Commandments is NOT proof that these events happened. 3) There is absolutely NO historical writing, negative events in Egypt (population, economically or otherwise) documented to support Exodus and 4) the origin of the Exodus story has been clearly defined in archaeological evidence from a broader and more believable amalgamation of multiple pre-history stories of the Canaan peoples and their involvement with other Egyptian and African cultures. So please, do not insult people when they are BANG ON with historical and archaeological evidence that proves beyond doubt that Exodus is nothing more than an exciting but fantasy story involving the desire of enslaved peoples to be free.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Egypt https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/were-jews-ever-really-slaves-in-egypt-1.5208519

And I could go on with EVIDENCE AND FACT!

But of course! Why didn’t i think of it before! i should have asked you to tell me the whole truth. after all… you were there! lol.

Pro-Bible nonsense.

Websites like this one are actually misleading a lot of people. The Exodus is a ‘dead issue’ and has been a dead issue for over 30 years.

Not only is the Exodus a dead issue, the enslavement, sojourn and military conquest of Canaan are also dead issues. The early books of the Bible are simply wrong, these events did not happen.

But I suppose there is money to be made from gullible readers who do not know what archaeology is.

I am sorry, but this website contains about as much ignorance as Answersingenesis.

What do y’all think of the Patterns of Evidence documentary on Netflix?

Vadim, you just left an archaeological trail that 1,000,000 Jews left the Soviet for Israel. Future akeologists are likely to get digging in old internet files. for example, entry registration to Israel and other countries in Europe. In ancient Egypt, they were also careful to write down important information; it is strange that nothing is mentioned about the Jews in all texts that remain from the time of exudus.

The cities of Pi Ramses and Pi Atum. I don;t think the former city would be named before a Ramses became pharaoh.. Pi Atum seemingly was named for Aten, the heretical god. Ramses came along more than a hundred years after the Atenism was suppressed. For a Ramesside to name a city for Atum would be like a .a catholic ruler naming a city for Luther. Therefore, if there was an exodus the Israelite’s did not have a reliable date for it

Read ‘Where Moses Stood’ for the true facts.

He didn’t “stand” anywhere, just like Harry Potter hasn’t “stood” anywhere.

In 1970s totally assimilated, non-religious, non-circumcised Jews got up and left the totalitarian Soviet Union. It is estimated that over a million “Russian” Jews emigrated in a space of 5 years. That occurred shortly after H. Potock has written his unsubstantiated “Jews of Silence,” about the loss and assimilation of the “Russian” Jews. The people were denied exit visas, lost relatives, jobs, etc., ect. Majority of Jews from this 1st Exodus from the Soviet Union settled in Israel. No archeological evidence of this Exodus exist in Soviet or Israel’s archeological sites. In the Soviet Union mention of Jewish emigration in press or in public speeches was outlawed. Nothing much was evident in Israel, where these highly educated, energetic immigrants were resented by local Jews. Nothing showed except sudden apartment construction, engineering and scientific boom in Israel and unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union. What should archeologist and historians say 3000 years from now? Was it possible to loose and receive a million Jews? Where are the Soviet records? How did 4M Israelis absorbed 1M “Russians?” Was it a miracle?

Now millions are leaving Middle East for Europe. Is this a miracle? Europeans do not publish statistics either. Tents and trailers will not remain after 300 years either.

Did they walk there? As a group? No? Back of the line!

The problem I have with BAR is that they want to be a scholarly publication yet asks ridiculous tease questions such as “Exodus Fact of Fiction?” It is hopelessly fictional. To even pose such a question, leads anyone of an scholarly integrity to ignore the publication.

Date of the Exodus is very difficult to fix with certainty. Different historians have assigned it to the period of the (a) Hyksos (b) Amarna Age (c) Ramses and Merneptah (d) 20th Egyptian Dynasty.(b) and (c)are much more probably true than (a) and (d). The Biblical tradition should be assumed as valid;i.e.that the Pharaoh of the oppression was Ramses II and that of the Exodus, his successor Merneptah. Ex. 1:11 and 2:23-24. Clues: (a) if the period of the Hyksos should be agreed upon, although very unlikely, then the date of the Exodus should be c1550. (b) if the Hibaru of the Armana Tablet could be identified with the Hebrews and the wars fought by them in Palestine were the wars under Joshua, then the date of the Exodus was c1450B.C. (c) Exodus Exodus 1:11 if this points to the Pharaoh of the Ramses dynasty, this would put the Exodus to 1234- 1214B.C. There is evidence in Egyptian Records of Semetic labour during the reign of Merneptah II(1229B.C.) (d) I Kings 6:1 says Temple began 480 years after the Exodus. Date of Solomon’s reign is c 970B.C. Therefore c970 480=c1450B.C.(c) Exodus 12:40 gives 430years as period of sojourn. If the Hebrews reached Egypt immediately the Hyksos gained power in Egypt, I.e. c1800, then the date of the Exodus is 1800– 430= 1370, or if immediately after their expulsion 1580– 430=1150B.C. We may therefore conclude that our earlier date is probably not later than the early part of the 15th century B.C. but we can not say more than that if it probably took place between the middle of the 16th and the 13th Century B C. As regards the crossing of the Red Sea it is a mistranslation of Sea of Reeds as Red Sea from Bible commentaries. There are Bibles with maps of the Exodus and none of them show a transition of the Red Sea. From time immemorial there had been a highway between Africa and Asia along which Moses took the Israelites the same highway that Napoleon almost drowned with his horse when he reached its end at the gulf !!!

Book 3, Chapter 27’s context, is the Roman calendar. We still use this numbering in Sept., Oct., Nov. Dec. The calendar consisted of 304 days. The days from the end of Dec. to the beginning of March, were not assigned to any month at all. But they still were there, and were considered, and noted.

Using 304 days, with no days considered in between? In three years, December would be starting in July.

The Romans, would have noticed.

The Calendars were set up, to count time; and, specifically, to recognize the days for the beginnings of the religious festivals, which all have their origin in the cycle of planting, growth, harvest, and dormancy. The mythologies of all peoples, are rooted within the cycle of the seasons, for the most part. Persephone, Demeter, and Hades; Sukkot, are specific examples, of the purpose of the calendar.

No ancient calendar is detached from the cycle of the seasons, no matter how accurate, or inaccurate, it is.

Any consideration of ancient calendrical systems, must recognize why they were created in the first place, and what they are based upon. The time of planting, is the most important to calculate, especially in areas of more meager rainfall. And every planting, is definitely a new year, to every ancient culture.

You can count whichever way you want, still won’t provide evidence of 2 million Jews wandering the desert without a trace…it just won’t.

The Exodus wasn’t during the reign of Ramses the Great. There is ample evidence for an Exodus in the 15th century BC. Amenhotep III is the Pharaoh who wouldn’t let the Israelites go free. His son Thutmose was the first born and he mysteriously disappears from the Egyptian records and is said by scholars to have predeceased his father. Manetho even wrote about him, The story depicts Osarseph [Moses] as a renegade Egyptian priest who leads an army of lepers and other unclean people against a pharaoh named Amenophis [Amenhotep]; the pharaoh is driven out of the country and the leper-army, in alliance with the Hyksos (whose story is also told by Manetho) ravage Egypt, committing many sacrileges against the gods, before Amenophis returns and expels them. Towards the end of the story Osarseph changes his name to Moses.” Probably the best evidence for the Exodus at this time is the fact that when Akhenaten came to power he immediately forsook the Egyptian gods and the Egyptian capital of Thebes and he went and built his own capital in the desert, a completely new city with temples dedicated to the sun god Aten. In conclusion Amenhotep III is the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Thutmose III is the Pharaoh who was reigning when Moses was born c.1472 BC and his daughter took him in, possibly Beketamun. Moses fled towards the end of Thutmose’s reign c.1432 BC. The Exodus was c.1391 BC.

You can’t use evidence from the bible to prove itself. It’s fiction.

Anne and Brian — esp the latter — are quite devoted to a particular point of view. The explanations presented here are very detailed and obviously done by spending much time piecing things together and using their calculators. I have heard reputable evangelical Egyptologists defend the 13th century BC dating for the Exodus of the Bible and say that the evidence that does exist converted them from their earlier 15th century BC. POV. And yes, I saw (and bought) the movie “Patterns of Evidence.” Well done movie though heavily critiqued by some. The article in BAR is excellent.

“Egyptologists” do NOT acknowledge the exodus as a real event. There’s no need to date fictional events in science.

Let me also present another proof by offering a timeline in which we use the 1180 B.C. Battle of Kadesh as a marker, taking into account the inter-calculatory reckoning of years on the shortened Greek calendar of 10 months or 305 days, as stated earlier existing pre Cyrus I, and showing how that Josephus, Patristics, and the Bible can be shown to be explaining the same accurate parallel history one with another regarding these years in question.

The Clementine Stromata Book 1, Chapter 21 with Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (AoJ) and the Bible, presents us a clear outline.

1551 – 1486 B.C.

Joshua 24:29 ; Judges 2:8 — “And Joshua the son of Nun…died, being a 110 years old.”

Clement: “As the book of Joshua relates, the above mentioned man was the successor of Moses 27 [ actual 25] years”

Clement: “After the close of Moses’s life, Joshua succeeded to the leadership of the people, and he, after warring for 65 years, rested in the good land other 25.” [Corrected by Josephus]

Josephus, Antiquities, 5.1.29: “So Joshua, when he had thus discoursed to them, died, having lived a 110 years; 40 of which he lived with Moses, … He also became their commander after his death for 25 years.”

Hence: 1551 B.C – 65 years = 1486 B.C.

—————————————————————

1511 B.C. – 1471 B.C.

Judges 3:11 – “ And the land had rest 40 years. And Othniel the son of Kenaz died.”

Clement: “Gothoniel [ Othniel]. the younger brother of Caleb, of the tribe of Judah, who, having slain the king of Mesopotamia, ruled over the people 40 years in succession.”

This section is the only one that I have found where the addition of years seems to infer one meaning while being translated as another, and likely is the one that throws most chronologists off the trail. I believe that the proper interpretation may be that Othoniel co-ruled with Joshua (as his general and then as his chief administrator) for 40 years. The notion that the Land had rest, may imply the East Bank lands of 2 1/2 tribes enjoyed the Shabbat, as did any lands the Hebrews immediately conquered. Unfortunately, this is a tenuous interpretation forced by the circumstance of all the other years of the chronology add up and correspond. Since Scripture is inerrant, I must therefore view the Scripture in the chronology it makes available for me to interpret from, using the information that it provides.

———————————————————————- 1486-1471 B.C. [Unknown 8 year tributary period at any time in this 15 year period]

Judges 3:8 — “the children of Israel served Cushan-rishathaim 8 years.”

Clement: “Then the Hebrews having sinned, were delivered to Chusachar [ Chushan-rishathaim] king of Mesopotamia for 8 years.”

——————————————————————

1477 -1459 B.C.

Judges 3:12 — “and the L-RD strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel.”

Clement: “ And… were delivered into the hands of Æglom [ Eglon] king of the Moabites for 18 years.”

Josephus AoJ 5.4.1.: “Eglon, king of the Moabites…reduced [the Israelites] to poverty for 18 years.”

—————————————————————————

1441 – 1361 B.C.

Judges 3:30 — “So Moab was subdued …and the land had rest 80 years.”

Clement: “ But on their repentance, Aod, [ Ehud.] … was their leader for 80 years.”

Josephus AoJ 5.4.3: “Ehud…died after he had held the government 80 years.”

————————————————————–

1361-1341 B.C.

–[actual “Jabin”, king of Canaan] Judges 4:3 — [Jabin for ] “20 years … mightily oppressed the children of Israel”.

Clement: “On the death of Aod [Ehud]… were delivered into the hand of Jabim,…20 years.”

Josephus AoJ 5.5.1-2 – Israel subdued by Sisera to Jabin’s control, 20 years.

——————————————————————–

1341-1301 B.C.

Clement: “Deborah ruled, judging the people 40 years”

Josephus AoJ 5.5.3-4 – Israel delivered to Deborah administration and commander Barak.

————————————————————————-

{A Kadesh in May, 1300 BC would have encountered a simultaneous Midianite bid for control of the plains and farmlands of the Hebrews.}

1301 – 1294 B.C.

Clement: “On her death, the people … were delivered into the hands of the Midianites 7 years.”

Josephus AoJ 5.6.1: “For about 3 years the Israelites fought off the Midianites and Arabians, then retired to the mountains, and endured famine.”

———————————————————————

1294-1254 B.C.

Clement: “Gideon, of the tribe of Manasseh …ruled 40 years.”

Josephus AoJ 5.6.7 – “Gideon ruled over the government 40 years.”

1254-1251 B.C.

Clement: “The son of Ahimelech, 3 years.”

———————————————————————-

1251-1229 B.C.

Clement: An Israelite judge [obscured by Clement]…“of the tribe of Ephraim, who ruled 23 years”

Josephus AoJ 5.7.6.: “Jair the Gileadite of the tribe of Manasseh…22 years.” —————————————————————————–

1229 – 1211 B.C.

Clement: “The people having sinned again, were delivered to the Ammonites 18 years” —————————————————————–

1211-1205 B.C.

Judges 11:26 – [And Jepthaah inquired] – “While Israel dwelt in …all the cities that are along by the side of the Arnon, 300 years; wherefore did ye not recover them within that time?”

1511 B.C. – 300 years = 1211 B.C. We have a chronological marker for accuracy in Judges 11;26.

Clement: “Jephtha the Gileadite, of the tribe of Manasseh… ruled 6 years ”

—————————————————————-

1205 – 1198 B.C.

Clement: “Abatthan. of Bethlehem, of the tribe of Juda, ruled 7 years.”Cf. Judges 12:7,9

Clement: 1198 – 1190 B.C.

Clement: “Then Ebron the Zebulonite, 8 years”

Scripture: 1198 – 1188 B.C. Judges 12:11 ————————————————————–

Clement: 1190 – 1182 B.C.

Scripture: 1188 – 1180 B.C.

Judges 12:13-14 “And after him Abdon… judged Israel…8 years.”

Clement: “Then Eglom of Ephraim, 8 years” ————————————————————

A Kadesh battle in 1180 B.C. regarding Rameses and the Hittites would have left a vacuum of power in Israel that is quickly filled by the Cretan based Philistines. That is exactly what appears to have happened.

Clement: 1182 – 1142 B.C. Scripture 1180-1140 B.C.

Judges 13: 1 And the children of Israel …into the hand of the Philistines 40 years.”

Clement: “Under the power of the foreigners, the Philistines, for 40 years” [Cretan based]

In Egyptology, we find that there is a relief that celebrates Raameses victory at Kadesh in 1180 B.C. This same victory is recorded in Judges 13:1, which the biblical record of successions tells us, is 331 years AFTER THE EXODUS. Therefore, this Pharaoh is not the one who died in the Red Sea during the Hebrew Exodus in the era of the Hebrew Judges of Israel, who judged IN ISRAEL.

Kadesh: 31 years earlier. In Judges 11:26, Jephthaa speaks of 300 years having passed from the entry of the Hebrews into Israel, to his time. The Judges, like Jephthaa, are more so contemporaneous with the Tell El-Amarna tablets, than is the Exodus to its contents. The tablets, dated by some to ca. 1375 – 1358 B.C., calls for Egypt to deliver the Philistine Lords from their ‘apiru” or ‘habiru’ oppressors. Archer, Gleason L. “A Survey of Old Testament Introduction,” Chicago: Moody Press, ©1964, p. 164, (1974 edition.); cf. pp.241,289-295 (1994 edition.)

In 1422 B.C., Amenophis ruled Egypt, until 1391 B.C. Osiris is known as the deity of Heliopolis. In the reign of Amenophis, there were ambassadors “sent out to those shepherds driven out of the land (of Egypt) by Tethmosis, to the city of Jerusalem, whereby he informed them of his own affairs…” (Josephus, Against Apion. 1.26.). The result of this communication forges an alliance between the Rephaims and Philistines with Egypt, against the local Israeli Hebrew population.

If this is the case, this supports the validity for and the era of the Tel Amarna tablets. These Babylonian linguistic tablets from the Philistines to Egypt are to be dated to circa 1384 B.C., when: 1) Ehud, the son of Gera, of the tribe of Benjamin, delivers the Israelites from Eglon (Judges 3:16 -20); and 2) Shamgar, the son of Anath, kills 600 Palestinian men with an ox goad the same year (Judges 3:31).

The Hyksos, former masters in Egypt, only 167 years after their concurrent Exodus through the northern Sinai, were servants of Egypt in Israel. In Canaan/Israel, the once oppressive Hyksos were, in turn, afflicted by the Hebrews: and resorted to asking Egyptians (who their ancestors despised as weak), for archers as protection against the Hebrew judges and a popular uprising. The Hyksos were also related to the Anakims (Numbers 13:33) or “Nephilims”. Nephilims are translated as giants, but literally, it means “the fallen ones”, and is a direct reference to those who died in the Red Sea while pursuing Israel.

In 1391 B.C., Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis was upon the throne. Isis, says Clement of Alexandria, in Miscellanies 1.21. will be deified in what we may reckon as somewhere near 1271 B.C.

The Romans over a thousand years later, will worship her as Demeter: the deity of the fruitful and bountiful earth, and the “protector of marriage”. Her son, Horus, also is — centuries later — remembered by the Greeks, and thought of as a deity: Apollo. His sister, Acenchres (called “Nefertiti”), is Artemis and Diana. She ruled from 1354 B.C. until 1342 B.C. through Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV). Her successor from 1342 to 1333 B.C. was Rathotis (a.k.a., Tutankhamen). Thus, the Tell Amarna tablets become a type of formula for prayers or requests to the fabricated deities Apollo (Horus) and Diana (Acenchres), for deliverance from the Jews, and the One True Faith in GOD, the GOD of Israel.

In the Tell El-Amarna tablets, the Philistine lords or city-kings, communicate to Egypt in the Babylonian language…not in Egyptian. Why? One tablet speaks of Gezer having fallen, along with Ashkelon and Lachish. In Joshua 16:10, 21:21; and Judges 1:29; we find that Gezer was portioned as half-Jewish priests with their families and half-Canaanite. The Babylonian language entered the land with distinction in ca. 1450 B.C. with the invasion of Chushanrishathamin (Judges 3:8) , and remained the language of trade from 1450 B.C. until ca. 1211 B.C., some 239 years later. This example we see again with the Hellenization of the region and the influence of the Greek language over 1,000 years later.

In Isaiah 52:4, we find the Jewish history that those who oppressed the Jews in Egypt before the Exodus were not Egyptian at all: they were Syrian or Assyrian. In other words, the only peoples that fit this description within Egypt during the era in question: are the Hyksos, who came out of Syria-Assyria and into Egypt, because the Hittites were too strong for them to defend against at the time. This brings into Egypt the language of Aram, which is later characterized as Syriac-Babylonian.

Therefore, the language of Moses and of the Hyksos was a separation of distinctions or dialect of the same general mother tongue. To not be immersed and familiar with the characterizations and recent slang might cause one to stammer and stutter in conversing with those who use certain unfamiliar idioms regularly. This is perhaps what Moses meant in his asking GOD for, and receiving, a helper in Exodus 4:10-16. This insight appears to be lost in the discussion regarding a proper dating of the Exodus.

Then where are the missing Jews? Where did they go?

The calculation of the last year of the Trojan War is affirmed in the ancient witnesses utilized by the Church Fathers: as being about 1031 – 1034 B.C. Now 1031 – 1032 B.C. is the 4th year of Solomon’s reign — making both King Solomon, and his father David, as of an older date than modern “Intellectuals” will lead you to believe.

Using a separate Jewish calendar, Josephus: reckons a total of 477 years and 6 months between the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., and the building of Jerusalem by King David (Josephus, Wars of the Jews 6.10.).

This places David in Jerusalem in ca. January-February of 1063 B.C.

But in his Antiquities of the Jews, 8.3.1. Josephus uses the reckoning of the familiar Greek calendar (of his Roman audiences) to state that Solomon built the Temple 592 years after the Hebrew Exodus, before switching gears and reverting to the Jewish calendar of reckoning again.

Josephus knows the Scriptures use 480 years, as according to Hebrew reckoning, in I Kings 6:1.

The Greek calendar years of 592 times our inter-calculatory fraction of the pre-Cyrus I Greek Calendar of 10 months and 305 days is about 480.05 …or rounded off, 480 years. Josephus uses this methodology for preservation of Jewish history, when mentioning the Greek calendar, in Caesar’s library.

In Antiquities of the Jews, 20.10.1, in discussing the lineage of the high priests from Moses to the A.D. 70 destruction of Jerusalem; Josephus gives a similar length of time (612 short years). When calculated against our inter-calculatory fraction, we are given a new insight into Biblical History.

Josephus cites a rule of the high priesthood for the last 16 years of the 40 years in the wilderness, when Moses was 104 – 120 years old. This was followed, again, by a 480-year gap between the entry into the Promised Land by Joshua, and the Temple of Solomon’s dedication. There were only 13 high priests ruling in all that time. 480 divided by 13 is about 37 years per high priest’s tenure. Contrast this with the 28 appointed high priests in the 107 years from Herod I to Titus’ conquest, in which the average high priest served for a little less than 4 years because of robbery and political corruption of the office.

The testimony of the Galilean Israelite, Josephus, is that he agrees with the Greek reckoning that puts King David, in Jerusalem and building it, in circa 1060 to 1063 B.C.!

It appears that a few years elapsed before the actual major construction began. Thus, David’s reign is calculated to have begun no more recent or later than 1075 to 1070 B.C David reigned in Jerusalem for 33 years, and based on Josephus’ calculations, until ca. 1037 to 1036 B.C. (I Kings 2:11).

Therefore, for Solomon to dedicate the Temple in the fourth year of his reign (2 Kings 6:1), and for it to be 480 years after coming into the land from the Exodus: the Exodus entry into Canaan must date to ca. 1512 – 1511 B.C.

In I Kings 6:1, the literal reading show us that “…it was 480 years from the lasa’ah of the children of Israel from the Land of Egypt.” That is, it was the finishing moment, the end destination, the conclusion to — leaving Egypt, being the end of 40 years in the wilderness, and the feet of all Israelites touching both sides of the Jordan. This makes the entry a certainty at 1511-1512 B.C.

Upon closer examination of Manetho’s 3rd Century B.C. Histories of Egypt, we find that A-mosis is really both Ahmose, and Tethmosis (Thummosis) – the son of Alisphragmuthosis. Under his leadership, says Josephus in Against Apion 1.14, while citing Manetho, 480,000 Egyptians rallied around the city of Avaris, and expelled the Hyksos families of those who perished in the Red Sea with their king, Assiss (Asehre Khamudi). These families were expelled along the northern route out of the country, and settled in Judea. Since the Hyksos had giantism and are linked to the same clans of the Anakim that the Jews saw both in what later was called Egypt and in what was later called Judea, the literary historical is there for all to see, but with book sales and political correctness that rewards unbelief, in an environment bent on grants and fund-raising and not offending donors or those who cut your paycheck or salary to you, even Biblical Archaeologists and others are just too illiterate to see it.

The biblical narrative holds up when it is recognized that there is a wide divergence (about 350 years) between the biblical and standard timelines at the time of the Exodus. The Exodus had to have taken place near the end of the 12th Dynasty. The Hyksos were able to enter Egypt easily shortly after the Exodus because of the devastation that the 10 plagues caused and the Ipuwer Manuscript describes this time. The ancestor (Jacob) of the Children of Israel entered Egypt originally in the 3rd Dynasty; Joseph was Imhotep as can be shown through probability; the divergence of the two timelines is about 1000 years at that time. The numbers of the Children of Israel were far smaller than is generally believed, because the word “eleph” only came to mean 1000 in classical Greek times. I could go on and on. I have researched and published on this subject for some time. My papers and other writings are referenced from my web site http://www.creationsixdays.com . I welcome private correspondence on these issues.

Biblical Archaeology has yet to come to its literary history senses, and is filled with such political correctness nonsense of rear end kissing atheism, that it has no clue as to what the historical facts are or how to again and again come to a same right conclusion. The Greeks who existed before Cyrus I conquering Babylon in circa 539 B.C., reckoned their years upon a 10-month or ca. 305-day calendar (Theophilus to Autolycus, 3.27). It was NOT a annual calendar based on seasons, it was a mathematical calendar. It was with Cyrus I in Babylon, that the Greeks reckoned a 48-month cycle for each Olympiad in place of the 40-month cycle (Julias Africanus, Fragment 13 -.3). –Post-539 B.C., we are to calculate against a 12-month calendar.

According to Herodotus, by his era, the Greek calendar became reckoned as 12 months of 30 days, with every other year being given an extra inter-calculated month of 30 days — Year 1 being 360 days, and Year 2 being 390 days, and then repeating itself thereafter (Herodotus, Histories, 1.33).

— From 539 B.C. to 46 B.C., the average Macedonian / Greek year appears to have become tabulated on average of 375 days long: being 360 days 1 year, then 390 the next. So this era of 46-539 B.C. is the point of the greatest trouble in calculating actual years in Greek reckonings. In 46 B.C., the Greeks adopted the standard Roman or Julian calendar of 365 days. In that particular year, adjustments were made, and 46 B.C appears to have been 445 days long.

raditionally, the first Olympiad is thought to have occurred around 776 B.C. In reality, the early Olympiads, which contained 4 years of 10 months each, first started when Ahaz reigned in his first year in Jerusalem, in 741 B.C. (Julius Africanus, Fragment 15).

Therefore, any year before 741 B.C. is pre-Olympic history to the Greeks. By being able to balance proper Biblical Chronology early on, we can more properly reckon the older dates of both Greek and Hebrew Histories as presented in Patristics.

It is entirely important that we know that 741 B.C., like the Diaspora of 586 B.C., be a fixed year and immutable. Once such a year is fixed firmly, such as the Bible does do for us, we can then springboard with greater accuracy as to what the testimony of the past really is. One example of using the Patristic reckoning of Greek history is found in the dating of Homer, the author of many Greek myths and false deities. But in order to date Homer, we also need to date the fall of Troy.

During the times of the 62nd Olympiad, Heraclitus wrote that the Trojan War and the First Olympiad were separated by 407 [10-month] years (Clement, Miscellanies, 1.21).

By that reckoning, the Trojan War ends in 1071 B.C. But Clement also cites the Greek historian Eratosthenes, who appears to “phrase” an oversight to historians.

a) From the capture of Troy to the descent (or expedition) of the Heraclidae: are 80 [10-month] years

b) From the Heraclidae to the founding of Ionia: are 60 [10-month] years

c) From the Heraclidae to the protectorate of Lycurgus: are 159 [10-month] years

d) From the protectorate of Lycurgus to the First Olympiad: are 108 [10-month] years

First Assumption ——————————- Actual Testimony

1070 B.C. — The fall of Troy —————— 1032 B.C. 1005 B.C.— The descent of Heraclidae ————957 B.C. 957 B.C.—- Ionia is founded — —————–909 B.C. 828 B.C.— The “Protectorate of Lycurgus” ——- 828 B.C. 741 B.C. —- The First Olympiad —————– 741 B.C.

In the above, we find that the testimony hinges on a double reckoning from the descent of Heraclidae. Once this ‘double reckoning’ is established as being the ‘actual intent’ of the Greek historian: it is then corrected, and the Greek reckoning falls in line with the biblical testimony.

It also casts a light of importance on the ‘double reckoning’ as well, because to Eratosthenes, the descent of the Heraclidae is a major calculable event in Greek history. Therefore, prior to the Olympics, the Greeks must have used this as an event year from which to reckon from for about 216 years actual, or about 256 years on their calendars.

In analyzing this period, we find that the late Second Century A.D. scholar of Alexandria, Egypt, — Clement of Alexandria — cites Homer as having been an Egyptian, and not a Greek.

Like Herodotus, Clement lists all sorts of dates that various ancient Greeks have speculated through the centuries on the man called Homer. The most reliable of these historians, tells us that Homer died 90 years before the first Olympiad (Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 1.15, 1.21).

Taken after the percentage of what a 10-month year is to a 12-month year, we then calculate 90 years times that fraction to achieve a death of Homer in 814 B.C. (the calculation being now about 73 years prior to the First Olympiad).

His birth, according to Philochorus, was 180 years after the Trojan War (Clement, Miscellanies, 1.21). After the calculation of 180 years times the inter-calculatory fraction, the Greek percentage of a 10-month versus the later 12-month calendar, we find that Homer was born in 886 B.C. Therefore, by reckoning Greek history from fixed dates, we find that Homer died in his 71st or 72nd year of life. No more, and no less.

In short, if we use the reckoning of the Exodus using the Greek Historical Calendar left us by Patristics, we will find that the parallel reckoning of the Exodus must place the event between 1545 to 1570 B.C. And using Josephus with a new understanding that he applies this same 10 month calendar prior to Cyrus I, and knowing how to properly date the Bible by taking its annual reckonings literally, we will see the Bible reckon the actual Exodus date as 1551 B.C., vetted by Josephus and by the Greeks as cited by Early Christian Church writers.

How maths (v.simple) will help: from “Adam” to the Restoration of Temple in 164B.C by Maccabi=4000 years/ One Great Year (for Greeks)= all the sum of lives (of “persons”)and periods (also in Egypt, 400years). Check it!

@ F — taking the “witness” of the Koran for Biblical narratives is like taking Shrek for Grimm’s tales.

The Koran is not a good witness to Biblical narratives. It’s a second or third hand tale.

Recently saw the DVD Decoding the Exodus by Simca Jacobovic. His ten year research documents evidence that the Exodus did indeed happen. It is well worth seeing what he presents.

It’s still lies, I’m sorry you couldn’t figure that out, but as you believe nonsense you seem easily lead and not a critical thinker.

See my blog “The First and Second Exodus from Egypt.” The Five pastoral Judahite tribes lived at Goshen in Egypt from about 1630 to 1210.BC From 1290 to 1210 the Judahites were conscripted to work on the canals of Pi-Ramesses (See Bietak canals K1 and K2). The mud from these canals was mixed with hay and made into mud bricks for dwellings at Pi-Ramesses. I’ah-mose (Moses) the prophet of YHW led the Judahites to Midian in Arabia AFTER the death of Ramesses II in 1213. Exodus 2:23.. This was a LEISURELY JOURNEY with women, children, sheep, goats and cattle. Their tents were loaded onto donkeys. Moses knew the route well having only recently returned to Goshen from Midian.. There was NO confrontation with Pharaoh ( He was already dead),.There was no death of the first born of Egypt. This refers to the death of the Crown Prince of Egypt. Definitely a late addition to the story. The name Egypt only appears during the 26th Dynasty (6th Century BC). There was NO pursuit and parting of the Red Sea. This was a borrowing from the Exodus of the Hyksos and Israelites from Avaris pursued by King Ahmose and the problems at the Sea of Reeds about 1540 BC.. The Judahite tribes stayed in Midian Arabia with Moses father in law Jethro for about 15 years. The Judahite tribes did NOT go to Sinai peninsula. The welfare of the livestock of the tribes was paramount. Moses knew every pasture and well in Midian having lived there as a sheep herder for Jethro for over 10 years. There are NO trees or bushes on Mt Sinai. This is again a late addition supported by Helena mother of Constantine over 1500 years after the event. About 1195 the Judahites moved to Kadesh Barnea where the 600 members of the Judahite tribes split up into 4 groups. The Simeonites to Hormah, the Judahites to Hebron and the Reubenites and Gadites with Moses to the Trans-Jordan.. The Levites were split up between these 4 tribes. The Judahite tribes were the half-brothers of Joseph who had thrown him down a well after stripping him of his coat of many colors. Joseph as vizier of the Hyksos had the power to punish the conspirators when they came to Avaris. They were given grazing land at Goshen. There was NO reconciliation EVER. The rest of the Israelites were welcomed into Avaris, Capital of the Hyksos.. After the expulsion of the Hyksos and Israelites from Avaris the Israelites became the Shasu-YHW (wanderers of YHW) in the Trans Jordan for 300 years 1535-1235. The Israelite tribes were led into Canaan about 1235 by Joshua the Ephraimite, a direct descendant of Joseph. The total time for Israelites and Judahites in Egypt was 430 years if the 10 years of Joseph in Avaris is added to the total, that is 1640-1210 BC. The miracles and inflated numbers were to tie the Judahites to the State and to the family God YHW at a time when the very survival of the Judahites was in doubt due to the aggression of the Assyrians, Egyptians and later the Babylonians.

I just recently saw the Documentary called, “Patterns of Evidence – Exodus” by Tim Mahoney that approaches this subject brilliantly with scientific and archeological evidence to back it up. I would highly recommend this Documentary that sheds light on the biblical and historical account of the Exodus and the timeline that substantiates his findings. This was a 12 year quest and worth a look if you want a visual of what has been written here.

I very much enjoyed the article that is in the current issue of BAR and done by Manfred Bietak, I believe. I have heard (read) some of these arguments before and from similarly qualified individuals of various backgrounds. His arguments are reasonable arguments to the extent that they try to “connect the dots” for an event that would have occurred long ago. I can accept that much of ancient history is discussed on the basis of minimal or occasional documentation, limited concrete evidence, and just the merest of anything. And that is all that can be done. I have heard (but not done the counting myself) that the Bible makes about 2,000 mentions of the Exodus. Thus, it is an event — whether large or small — that made a real mark in national memory and helped to shape their sense of identity and of religion. Thus, this article presents a positive assessment of evidence that does exist. It will be encouraging — and convincing — for some. Others will not find it so convincing. But I think it is clear that something happened and these bits of information point to it .

What would happen if groups of Egyptianized Caananites had a sudden or even catastrophic migration of some kind or another back to an ancestral homeland? We already know factually that significant populations of semites were residing in Egypt at more or less the right time. And the Isrealites couldn’t just reassimilate seamlessly with their old Canannite cousins. They’d been gone a little too long and things were different. They’d changed. The resident Canaanites had changed also. So the returnees decided to assert themselves and eventually they established a foothold on some territory to live in.

It’s easy to forget how simplistic the story can be when you strip it down. And it’s almost eerie how the core of the story parallels or even prefigures other events in history involving similarly displaced, migrating or exiled peoples.

For that reason, I believe the Exodus story is fact just because it all sounds plausible thematically at its core. Of course thinking something sounds plausible is really different than knowing it factually. The story may be perhaps more plausible anthropologically than it might ever be provable archeologically. But maybe someday. I hope so. That would be pretty exciting.

I once researched a paper on the influence of Akhenaton’s monotheism on the Exodus. My premise was that the Egyptian religion prior to that time was inclusive and absorbed gods and myths from surrounding subject people. However, after the suppression of Amarna, when the traditional religion came back, something new had been added: dogma. The Priests of Amun were now super sensitive to other religious beliefs and particularly, monotheism. No one has ever pinpointed when the Hebrews came into Egypt, or who Joseph might have been, but if they were there then and practicing their own religion, they would have experienced prejudice and suppression which could have driven them to leave. I did find evidence of 100,000 people leaving from the Delta region during the Ramesside period. They were not slaves, but were vintners. Part of the evidence was a drastic reduction in wine seals from this period. I have always been fascinated with the influence of religion on human history and this period was obviously pivotal.

There was never a population of 100k in that area at that time, so your theories are entirely debunked.

Facts versus fiction? Facts are archeological evidences plus what can be derived off from the interpretation called Bible stories; Bible itslef is not the textbook of a history! What we have known from Rev Israel.Filkenstein the first pure historical names -as confirmed by archeological evidences- appear only from 8th century BC; here,maybe some old historical names of places got into texts created in 6th-1the cent BC. Slavery and liberation from it maybe even not once but a few times is the real history in Ithink in 6or 5th century B.C. An interpretation (of facts) is neither a fact or a fiction ! An experience of liberation is a pure fact or Aristotelian substance. The facts are the positions of stars in the sky seeing by eyes or telescopes; an interpretation of it by Ptolomey or Copernicus is not a fact (physical). On Scientific Semantics of A.Tarski (Warsaw Lwow School of Logic) from 1935 will help in theology also! “Partying of the sea” is a physical or historical fiction for sure but as a narrative tool has a poetic sense; surely, Decmber 8,1991-the date of a formal end of Soviet Union is a historicial fact! The period from August 1980, Gdansk’s Strike to that date – an exodus is an interpretation but very rational and historical or one must believe in a chance

The evidence is there for all to see but most miss it. Amenhotep III was the pharaoh who wouldn’t let the Israelites go free. His first born son was Thutmose who died as the first born son during the Exodus or he was Moses and he left rather than died. The Egyptian records don’t indicate what happened to Thutmose he just disappears from the records before Amenhotep died. His second son was Akhenaten who abandoned the Egyptian gods and started his own religion worshiping Aten the sun god. Akhenaten left thebes and built his new capital in the desert. Why did he abandon the old gods? Why did he build a city in the desert? The answer is pretty obvious he abandoned the gods because he saw that the Israelites god was more powerful than Egypt’s gods so he started worshiping a god he could both feel and see (the sun) like the Israelite GOD YHWH.

So you have historical context and support for this? No? Just more fiction? That’s not helpful.

It was during the Hyksos period that the Israelites were expelled from Egypt. It is well known that large numbers of people left Egypt upon their defeat.

I think exodus started in 1159 BC, 10 days after the spring equinox, when there was a lunar eclipse. There was a cooler time 1159-1140 BC. 40 years in that context means a generation.

Fact or fiction? The “truth” then (as now) for any historical account lies somewhere in between these. Complete fabrication seems highly unlikely as a whole cloth fiction serves no historical function in culture. Interpretation of events and understanding is dependent upon the author(s) and may not agree with the understanding/interpretation of others–but differences of opinion don’t equate with fiction. We also lack access to the author(s) and their perspective. Establishing the facts–places, people, and events over 3000 years past is thus a fairly high order undertaking. I doubt that many historians consider the Exodus accounts to be non-historical–the problem for archaeology is finding evidence, the problem for all academic inquiry is how to understand the interpretation of the events.

Just finishing Velikovsky’s “Ages in Chaos”, had never heard of him until last month… has there been any serious refutation of the solid reasoning behind his work? It seems solid. I’ll be ordering his other books soon.

Here is the story of Moses and his nation as it is told in the Koran, as much I could sum up. The name of Moses is the most frequently occurring one in Quran – twenty-five times more than the name of Mohammed himself . His life story represents an epic of miracles from the very outset: to the deep humiliation of the tyrant Pharaoh, who was taking all precautions to prevent the rising of the savior of the then-enslaved nation of Israel, Allah predestined that Moses would be born during the year in which the Pharaoh was killing all the newborn males of his Jewish subjects, and, moreover, predestined that the baby would be brought up within the Pharaoh’s court itself. Growing to manhood, Allah bestowed Prophecy upon him, and provided him with many miracles that stand as the most distinguished among those given to His Prophets and Messengers. With the settling down of Jacob, whom Allah had named Israel, and his twelve sons and their families in Egypt began a long story of a people’s tragedy. Jacob was the founder of the Jewish nation, and his twelve sons represented the seed of the twelve branches into which this nation was initially divided. They came to live in Egypt, as we have seen, when the family’s most brilliant member, Joseph, was occupying one of the highest offices in the land, and their number was constantly increasing throughout the following centuries until they became a distinguished ethnic group in Egypt’s demography. The Egyptians lived in peace with the Children of Israel for many centuries following, and traces in Quran indicate that Joseph’s calling to worship Allah gained considerable followers among the heathen nation, initially because Joseph’s gift in exegetics had saved the nation of Egypt from a disastrous famine. The esteem in which the Egyptians had held the Children of Israel was thus accrued from the interpretation of a vision seen by the King, and all this was changed, ironically enough, as a result of the interpretation of another vision seen some centuries later by another Egyptian monarch. It came to pass that a certain Pharaoh saw in a dream a great fire originating in the land of Jerusalem and sweeping over all the land of Egypt, destroying it all except the areas inhabited by the Israeli people. The Pharaoh’s high priests interpreted that to be a baby son to be born among the Israeli nation, who would eventually be the cause of the collapse of the Egyptian kingdom. From that time on, the Pharaoh was not slow to take precautions to save his kingdom from the predicted menace, and every effort was made to purge the Children of Israel of any newborn male. The Egyptians had a firm hold over the Israeli citizens, and resistance was impossible. The Children of Israeli were kept in a constant state of servility: all newborn male babies were slaughtered, while the women and girls were always taken as servants to the nobles’ families. This unjust policy towards the male babies, however, was seen to be threatening in the long run the number of the Israeli people, who were necessary for the many humble works in the land, and so it was changed in due course to be practised biennially: sparing their lives a year, and putting them to death in the next. Accordingly, a certain pious Israeli woman was fortunate to give birth to a baby son, whom she named Aaron, in the year of condoning, but since she was again expecting during a killing year, she was anxious and tried to keep herself away from the eyes of Pharaoh’s spies, in case she bore a male baby. When the faithful woman was nearing her time, and in the midst of her oppressive feeling of fear, she was ordered by Allah that she would give birth to a baby son, and that if she feared danger she should nurse him and then cast him into the river! Time passed and she did give birth to a male baby, and news came that the tyrant’s spies were searching in the nearby precincts. The affectionate mother, without hesitation, began to act on the Heavenly instructions: she nursed her baby, put him in a wooden sarcophagus, and, before the baby was even given a name, she threw him into the river. “Don’t fear and don’t feel sad! We will return him to you and We will make him of the Messengers,” Allah promised. The river was not less kind with the baby than his mother, though it moored the sarcophagus at the very shores where the Pharaoh’s palace stood. There, one of the Pharaoh’s family saw the floating wooden sarcophagus, picked it up from the water, and was astonished at finding a baby in it. The baby, whose Allah has “cast over him a Love of His,” was taken to the Pharaoh’s wife, who, being childless, ordered the Pharaoh “not to kill him; that he might benefits us; or we might adopt him as a son,” and named him Mu-Sa , which means “son of water.” Meanwhile, being informed of the incident, “the heart of Moses’ mother became empty because of fear; and she would have unconcealed her secret had not We fixed calmness on it.” Moses’ sister, Miriam, who was one of the queen’s maidservants, secretly watched her brother, and she found a chance to recommend to the queen a certain woman to be the baby’s nurse, for Allah “had forbidden for Moses all the nurses” – a matter that had much worried the queen about her adopted baby. The proposed nurse came to the court, and to the pleasure of the queen, Moses sucked her milk cordially, for the proposed nurse was not but his mother. At once the queen ordered that the nurse should immediately take the baby to her house for that purpose: and Moses’ mother became the only mother in all the history of humankind to nurse her baby through a royal warrant! In such a way Allah “returned him to his mother, to make her heart tranquil, and may not she be sad, and to let her know that the Promise of Allah is a truth.” After a two-year period, Moses was returned to stay with his royal foster mother, though he continued to frequent the house of his “nurse.” In his late childhood, Moses was aware of the truth of his real family, and that he belonged to Israeli nation, but the matter remained as a secret among the Israeli people, who might have recognized through the correlative miracles that that boy would be their savior whom they had long dreamed of. One day at the royal court, it is said, the child Moses pulled the beard of the Pharaoh in such painful way that the reminiscence of the old nightmare of his kingdom’s collapse was awakened in his memory. He determined at once to kill the child, of whom he had become very suspicious, but the queen managed to make him reprieve the verdict by suggesting putting the boy to a test. An ember and a piece of fruit were introduced to the child Moses, in an examination of his awareness, and fortunately he picked up the ember and put it to his tongue. Thus Moses had escaped punishment, but he grew up with a speech impediment thereafter. Years passed, and Moses was now in his manhood. One day, Moses entered during a hot summer noon into the town, whose citizens were compelled, because of the fierce heat of the day, to retreat to their houses earlier than usual. In one of the empty roads Moses found two men – one Egyptian, the other Israeli – quarreling. The Israeli man asked the help of Moses, who came forthwith to his rescue and, in frenzy, boxed the Egyptian. It was a mortal blow, and at once Moses repented of his wrong deed and asked Allah’s Pardon. Allah “forgave him, for He is the Most-forgiving and the Most-merciful,” but Moses was in danger of losing his life for the murder he committed. On another day, Moses met the same Israeli, who was quarreling with another Egyptian, and asked the support of Moses. Just as Moses came to his fellow’s rescue, the Egyptian recognized, somehow, that it was Moses who had dispatched the Egyptian assailant the other day. “Do you want to kill me as you had killed one aforetime?” the Egyptian anticipated Moses, “you want to be of the tyrants in the land, then; and you don’t want to be of the conciliators.” The confrontation was broken up peacefully, but the incident placed Moses in grave danger more than before. While at home, and before long, “a man came from the furthest end of the town” to Moses to tell him that the Egyptians were conspiring his murder, and advised him to depart the town as soon as possible to save his life. No place in Egypt was deemed a safe refuge, of course, and so Moses was obliged to leave the Pharaoh’s entire domain. He absconded and traveled east, with no vision to guide him as to where to go. On reaching the tip of the eastern “horn” of the Red Sea, he turned down southwardly along the coast until arriving at a settlement in the deserts of Arabia called Midian. Almost worn out, Moses stopped for a rest at the point of Midian’s water-well, where he found a group of shepherd men watering their cattle and two women keeping back their animals. “What is the matter?” addressed Moses the two women. “We cannot water our cattle until the shepherd men have finished their undertaking; and our father is an old man,” they replied. Thereupon Moses undertook watering the women’s animals, and they thanked him and left for their home. Shortly afterwards, while he was seated in the shadow of a tree near the water-well, one of the two girls came to him and told him that her father wanted him to come to their house to recompense him for his good deed. Moses went with her, met the old man, and told him his story. The old man assured him that he was safe at Midian, and offered him one of his two daughters in marriage on the terms of working for him as a wage earner for ten years. Moses accepted the offer, and at the end of the ten years, homesick, he wanted to return to Egypt to visit his mother. He set out with his little family during winter days, and at a certain point on the long journey, near Mount Al-Tour in Sinai, Moses thought that he had confused the right way to Egypt. Stopping for a while, he looked about and could see in the distance a burning fire. Leaving his wife there, he headed to that spot intending to obtain a blazing brand for warming, and, if possible, directions to Egypt. As he arrived at the fire site, Moses heard: “O Moses, I am Allah, Lord of the existence!” It was at that “Sacred Valley” that Allah commissioned him to the mission of Prophecy, and showed Moses two miracles that he would be possessed of during his mission to call the Pharaoh to worship Allah and to ask his permission to let the Children of Israel get out from Egypt to the Sacred Land, Jerusalem. “What is that thing in your right hand, Moses?” Allah asked. “That is my wooden stick; I am leaning on it, attend my sheep by it, and I have other purposes in it,” replied Moses. Allah ordered Moses to cast off his stick, and when Moses did, the stick turned into a snake, which terrified Moses and stirred him to “take to his heel and never to turn around.” But Allah calmed him down, and gave him another Sign of His: “Push your hand into your pocket; when you get it out, it shall appear of pure white color; these are two proofs to the Pharaoh and his people, who are a dissipated folk.” Moses did not accept the heavy task without debate, however. He remarked that he had killed one of the Egyptians, that he was afraid of being put to death for it; and that his speech impediment would make it difficult to argue with them. He therefore asked to be assisted by his more talkative brother, Aaron. Allah agreed, and promised that they would be given strong shoulder from Him during their Prophetical mission until they were victorious. Moses, trusting and resigned, returned back to where his wife was waiting, and the journey was resumed. Arriving in Egypt, Moses and Aaron immediately undertook their mission. It was not easy to appoint a meeting with the Pharaoh, who was said to neglect their request for no short time. At last, when the interview was held, in the presence of the Pharaoh’s viziers, Moses imparted to the monarch the purpose of that meeting: “We are the Messengers of the Lord of existence; so you should let the Children of Israel go with us, and do not put them to torture,” said Moses. “Have not we brought you up among us, while a child, and you stayed with us for several years?” said the monarch grimly. “And you have done your murder, proving that you are one of the ungrateful.” “I have done it as I were of the misguided, and I fled your land when I feared you. Then Allah has bestowed upon me a Sound Verdict, and made me of the Messengers. And it is not a favor that you have enslaved the Children of Israel.” “What is that Lord of the existence?” “He is the Lord of the heavens and the earth and what in between.” “Hear what he says,” said the Pharaoh, turning to his viziers. “He is the Lord of you all and your fathers of old,” went on Moses. “The messenger sent to you is mad,” ridiculed the Pharaoh, and the courtiers laughed. But Moses never turned a hair, and, keeping a phlegmatic mood, he continued: “He is the Lord of the East and the West and what is in between.” “If you would consider any god but me, I will make you of the prisoners,” thundered the tyrant. Seeing himself confronted with a man deaf to argument, the Messenger decided to show the Pharaoh and his courtiers the Signs Allah had given him: he cast his wooden stick onto the ground, and it turned into “a grand snake”; and put his hand into his garment’s pocket, and drew it back to “appear to the onlookers of a white color.” The Pharaoh was dazed by these, and he had soon the inspiration to command a consultation with his viziers, who, thinking that Moses was a magician, advised their king to sent messengers of him throughout the width and breadth of the land to call for the most skilful magicians. Before the meeting was broken up, Moses and the Pharaoh agreed on the time for the contest with the Pharaoh’s magicians, and the chosen time was the forenoon of the “Day of Embellishment” – a day of a gorgeous public festival of ancient Egypt. Volunteer magicians came from all over Egypt to the Pharaoh, who accommodated them in his royal palaces and promised to bestow special favors upon them if they won the day. At the predetermined time, the open court of the great temple, with the Pharaoh and his viziers at the forefront, became overcrowded with people, who came to the capital city of Egypt to see the “wizards’ battle.” Breathless with excitement, all who came there saw with their own eyes the Egyptian magicians casting onto the ground some sticks and ropes, and, as they all, including Moses and Aaron, were bewitched, the magicians’ tools appeared to them as if they were moving like snakes. “Moses felt fear within himself,” but Allah told him that he would overcome just as he cast his stick. When Moses did as he was ordered, the great sensation came: his wooden stick became a grand snake and swallowed all those tools of the magicians, who, recognizing that what Moses had done could only be from a True God’s power, prostrated on the ground, and announced: “We have believed in the Lord of the Existence, the Lord of Moses and Aaron.” The “rebellious attitude” of the Egyptian magicians added bitterness to the Pharaoh’s defeat, and he hastened to strike at them by professing that “it was a plot which you and Moses had planned together,” and so he announced his verdict concerning the new proselytes: “I will wed you all to the balm trunks; and I will cut your hands and feet off from your bodies.” But still much more bitterness was in store for him, as the new faithful magicians’ reply came back in open defiance of his punishment: “We will never prefer you to what has come to us of the truth; so, dispense what you like to do – you are only dispensing in this worldly life!” Many years passed before Allah ordered Moses to lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt. During that time, the Egyptians returned to their policy of killing the newborn Israeli males and enslaving the females. Thereupon Allah descended upon the Egyptians His Punishment, which made them suffer from a number of afflictions and hardships, including drought, lack of crops, the infesting of frogs, locusts, and lice. But still they refused to submit to Allah. “Whatever you show us of the Signs, we will not believe in you!” they addressed Allah’s Messenger haughtily. But the plagues lasted for a long period, becoming unbearable, and so they asked Moses: “Pray to your Lord God on our behalf to turn away from us His afflictions; if you do, we shall believe in Allah, and shall send the Children of Israel with you.” Nevertheless, “when We turned the plagues away from them, they abjured their allegiance to Us.” The inevitable sequence of the Pharaoh’s wrong deeds was nearing, and the Children of Israel, acting on Moses’ commands, had long prepared for the Exodus and were waiting for Allah’s Order. In the same time, the Pharaoh had previously sent to the provinces of Egypt for a mobilization against the Israeli people, and vast crowds of Egyptian soldiers were gathered and equipped in the capital city. Allah’s Command was given to Moses to start out from Egypt on a certain night, and under his leadership the Children of Israel traveled eastwards, aiming for Sinai. When they were almost at the east coast of the Red Sea, the Egyptian army, under the command of the Pharaoh himself, appeared at their heels. “We are caught up,” said the followers of Moses to him as they saw the vanguard of the pursuers, but Moses, who had had an abiding faith in Allah, did not turn a hair: “Nay, my Lord will guide me.” At this very moment Allah ordered Moses to strike with his stick at the sea, which was miraculously parted into two parts: “each part was like a momentous mountain.” Between the two parts of the divided sea was a “dry road” through which Moses and the Children of Israel removed safely to the other side. As the last one of them reached the west coast, Moses wanted to strike the sea again to close up the road, but Allah ordered him: “Let the sea open; they will be drowned soldiers.” Meanwhile, neither the Pharaoh nor any one of his soldiers dared to pass through the road between the two water-mountains until the entire hordes of the Israeli people were on the other shore. As the sea remained in the same situation, all of the Egyptian army flocked to go through it. When the army reached the middle of the road, Allah crashed the sea down, and they all were drowned. Quran says that at the time of his death-rattle, the Pharaoh uttered: “I have believed that there is no God but that in Whom the Children of Israel believe; and I am of the Muslims .” But death-bed conversions are not accepted by Allah, and so Allah drowned the tyrant and destined that the waves would wash up his dead body on the eastern shores of the Red Sea. “We will get out your body rescued from the sea to make of you a lesson for the coming generations.” Moses and his people, after they had seen with their own eyes the fate of their enemy, resumed their journey to the site of Mount Al-Tour, where Allah had first spoken to Moses during his return trip from Midian to Egypt, and there they were ordered to settle down. On their way to that site, however, it happened that the Children of Israel passed by some settlements whose people worshiped idols and images, and Moses was shocked to hear his people asking him: “O Moses, make for us a god just as this people have gods!” Moses reply came back in a fury: “Would I choose for you a god except Allah, Who favored you to all the people of your time?” On reaching the site appointed by Allah, which was, and still is, a barren desert, Moses asked of Allah salvation from the lack of food and water that they encountered there. So, Allah “bestowed over them with the manna and quail,” as a daily source for food, and “shadowed over them by clouds,” and, to supply each of the twelve tribes into which they were divided, He ordered Moses: “Strike the stone by your stick; thereat sprung from the stone twelve water-spring, each tribe should know their drinking source.” After the Children of Israel settled down “at the right side of Al-Tour,” Allah promised Moses an appointment after thirty nights, which should be spent in worship of Him, but as Moses went to the appointed place a little earlier than agreed, Allah ordered him to complete an additional ten nights of worship. “When Moses completed the appointed time of his Lord, he said to his brother Aaron ‘be my successor in command of my folk; conciliate between them, and do not follow the way of the corrupters,’” and then departed for the promised appointment. “When Moses came to Our appointment and his Lord Allah spoke to him, Moses asked his Lord saying ‘my Lord, allow me to see You,’ but Allah said you cannot see me; but look at the mountain – if it will remain in its stability, then you will be able to see me. Thus, when Allah revealed Himself to the mountain, the revelation caused the mountain to smash down, and Moses fell down swooned. When he was up and about again, he said ‘Exalted You! I have repented to You, and I am the first of the believers.’” Moses was given, in that appointment, “the Tablets, in which We have written of everything a sermon, and the detail of everything,” and was ordered, too, “to keep a firm hold to the instructions therein, and to order his folk to look upon the best of these.” Before he started back to his folk, Allah told Moses that when he came to His appointment early, one man among his nation misguided them by introducing a golden calf as a god to be worshiped instead of Allah. So “Moses returned to his people angry and regretful.” “Has not Allah promised you the good promise,” he addressed his people in a rage, “does the promise appear to be attained, or do you want that your Lord’s wrath comes down upon you by breaking my covenant?” “We have not broken your covenant of our own accord,” they replied to their Prophet, “but we had been compelled to bring with us some jewels of the Egyptians; then we melted these with fire, and that man, Al-Samerie, made up out of this a golden calf that mooing––he said to us that this was the god of Moses!” Not knowing that Aaron had firmly stood against the wrong act with such persistence that “the folk had nearly killed him,” and that he remarked on the incident by saying “O my people, you have been infatuated by the golden calf; it is Allah who is your God; so you should follow me and obey my order,” Moses turned ferociously on his brother, caught hold of Aaron’s head and beard, and addressed the speech to him in scolding tones: “What had prevent you, when you saw them misguided, from following my instructions? Did you refuse to comply with my order?” “O my mother’s son,” answered the courteous Prophet Aaron, absolving himself from what Moses had thought, “do not pull me by head and beard! It happened that the folk regarded me a weak one, and they had nearly killed me. So, do not make my enemies crow upon me… I feared you accuse me for sowing division among the Children of Israel; and for not acting on your order.” Aaron was absolved of the sin, and it became clear that it was Al-Samerie who was responsible for the aberration. In answer to the charge, Al-Samerie said that he could get a handful of the dust that bore traces of Gabriel’s horse, on his coming to execute Allah’s Order of drowning the Pharaoh and the Egyptian army, and that by casting this dust into the furnace he could achieve the miracle of a mooing golden calf: “In such way had myself abetted me.” Accordingly, Moses threatened Al-Samerie Allah’s punishment for his wrong doing in this world and the hereafter, and the golden calf was seized and put into a furnace until it reached an excessive temperature, and then it was thrown off into the sea to explode into pieces. “When anger had become dormant within Moses, he took the Tablets, which in its copy is found a Guidance and Bless for those who fearing their Lord.” Moses had now to select from his people seventy men to go out for Allah’s appointment, to ask His forgiveness concerning with the wrong deed of worshiping the calf. When they went to the appointed place, they were seized by a tremendous tremor, and Moses beseeched Allah: “My Lord, if You had wanted to destroy them and me formerly, You would have done that. Would You punish us for what the debauched among us had done? It is but Your trial, by which You mislead whom You will, and You guide whom You will. You are our Protector – so, forgive and bless us: You are The Best Forgiver.” Allah subsequently ordered that the Children of Israel should start out for the Sacred Land of Jerusalem to obtain it from the heathen people inhabiting it. The Order of Allah included that if they did that and entered the gates of the town prostrated and submitted to their God and asked Him His Forgiveness, Allah would forgive their sins and He would bestow additional favours upon the benevolent of them. “O Moses,” they commented on the Order, “there is a tyrant people living in the Sacred Land, so we will not enter it until they get out of it: if they will do, we will enter.” Nonetheless, there were more pious people among the Israeli who tried to make the rest of the folk believe that if they would only submit to Allah’s Order and enter the Sacred Land, they would be victorious. But the vast majority of the Children of Israel lingered: “Moses, we will never enter it; so go you and your Lord together to fight them – we are seated here,” they ignominiously retorted. Thereupon, the Children of Israel were punished by Allah for their lingering: “It is forbidden for them to enter it for forty years, during which they will wander in the land; so, Moses, do not feel sorrow about the debauched folk.” During those forty years, not one of the entire Israeli nation could get out of the wilderness for any other land, and thus the liberator of Israel’s Children died in the wilderness of Sinai before accomplishing his desire for reaching the Sacred Land, and so did Aaron.

Would you use the “DaVinci Code” to prove the events in “Humpty Dumpty” took place?

It still boggles my mind that BAR continues to ignore David Rohl’s New Chronology and Immanuel Velikovsky’s Revised Chronology, both of which present near iron-clad evidence that the problem is not the biblical dates for the Exodus, but academia’s faulty reckoning of Egyptian chronology. I suggest readers check out the documentary Patterns of Evidence: Exodus for a better understanding of that, and to see the compelling evidence for the historicity of the Exodus account.

I did, they’re not wrong it still doesn’t prove anything, you still have giant holes in the narrative that does not conform to reality. Where you hiding a migrant population of 2 million people that couldn’t exist because 2 million people didn’t exist in Egypt.

Since Egyptians were paid to work on building sites during Nile river flood, it is unlikely unpaid slaves would have been employed or even needed. Jews were free to come and go as they pleased and any exodus represented a net loss of the Jewish population as they left in small groups to assimilate with the Canaanites. The conquest of Canaan was a mere overwhelming by population than a military conquest. Egyptians were probably glad to see such an intelligent and resourceful people leave.

Does anybody besides me not see any meaningful similarities between the two house outlines, other than that they are roughly rectangular, and has rooms?

I don’t doubt that the Israelites could have been slaves n Egypt. But I think using the narrative that a story in the Bible (Israelites were Egyptian slaves) is evidence for the validity of that story is philosophically circumlocutive (A story is true because the story says it’s true). A more compelling case might be based upon landmarks and events and people which can be verified. All people have some creation story, but few seem to know their origins (e.g. any Native American origin story never seems to indicate hey came over the Bering Strait).

1. These specific place names recorded in the Biblical text demonstrate that the memory of the Biblical authors for these traditions predates Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period.

2. A worker’s house from western Thebes also seems to support a 13th-century Exodus.

3. A third piece of evidence for the Exodus is the Onomasticon Amenope.

These mean only that there were Israelis in Egypt during the 13th-century, not that a mass exodus occurred. As Egypt controlled much of the Levant during this period, doubtless Israelis crossed back and forth frequently, often staying for work and settling there if times were good.

For 600,000 men to have left Egypt in such an exodus would have involved approximately 2.5 million men, women, and children, not including livestock, at a time when the entire population of the country consisted of about 3.5 million – the loss of 2/3 of the country’s population would have left more than a ripple in the nation’s economy.

Marching 6 abreast, such a column would have extended for 150 miles – how long would it have taken a group that size to cross the Red, or the Reed, or any other sea?

As with all archaeological issues, the Bible, not scholarly opinion is the foundation for truth. BAR is a good resource but has always leaned more academically liberal chronologically (pushing the Exodus from the 1400’s to the 1200’s BCE) with clear anti-biblical stances on many issues – not necessarily neutral. If you’re looking for a firmly biblical academic opinion I would refer you to The Institute for Biblical Archaeology, The Associates for Biblical Research and World of the Bible Ministries.

Rick Dack Defending the Bible Int’l. Minneapolis, MN

I have visited the Associates for Biblical Research on You Tube and their videos. And am appalled that these so-called “seekers after the truth,” engage in silencing any dissent to their views by shutting off all comments to their videos. This suggests for me, they are not interested in a search for the truth if that truth does not support their views. That is to say they are a Christian Fundamentalist Biased organization. Truth will not be found by silencing dissent.

Write a Reply or Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Blog Posts

The Göbekli Tepe Ruins and the Origins of Neolithic Religion

Did I Find King David’s Palace?

What Is Coptic?

Errors in the Masoretes’ “Original” Hebrew Manuscripts of the Bible?

Must-read free ebooks.

50 Real People In the Bible Chart

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Past, Present, and Future

Biblical Peoples—The World of Ancient Israel

Who Was Jesus? Exploring the History of Jesus’ Life

Want more bible history.

Sign up to receive our email newsletter and never miss an update.

By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy .

All-Access Pass

Dig into the world of Bible history with a BAS All-Access membership. Biblical Archaeology Review in print. AND online access to the treasure trove of articles, books, and videos of the BAS Library. AND free Scholar Series lectures online. AND member discounts for BAS travel and live online events.

Signup for Bible History Daily to get updates!

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

The book of Exodus : a critical, theological commentary

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

cut off text

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

858 Previews

35 Favorites

Better World Books

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

EPUB and PDF access not available for this item.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by station23.cebu on February 29, 2020

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Volume 48 - Issue 1

Exodus in the New Testament

This multi-author volume is a continuation of a series on the NT use of the OT initiated by Steve Moyise and Maarten Menken. While earlier volumes were linked to the Seminar on the Use of the OT in the NT hosted annually in Hawarden, Wales, this one is independent of the Seminar.

After a preface and introduction by editor Seth Ehorn, chapter 1 by Drew Longacre, “Exodus in the Second Temple Period,” serves as an introduction to Exodus, summarizing the book’s contents, key themes, composition history, text, and reception history. Two sections on the text of Exodus get the most attention, with extensive discussion of the Hebrew and Greek texts and their transmission.

In Chapter 2, Jeannine Brown examines Exodus in Matthew’s Gospel. She arranges her chapter around Matthew’s handling of major thematic movements in Exodus, starting with key personages common to Exodus and Matthew: (1) Moses, Israel, and Jesus; (2) Exodus Redemption; (3) Wilderness and Torah; and (4) Tabernacle and Presence. While Jesus is at times typologically associated with Moses, Brown argues that this is only one layer of Matthew’s primary Israel-Jesus typology. She concludes that Matthew views Jesus as Israel’s representative who comes out of Egypt, highlighting the new exodus that brings restoration from exile and covenant renewal through Jesus’s missional death. Jesus is the authentic interpreter of Torah, who teaches a higher ethic implicit in the law (p. 47). The final scene in Matthew (28:20) brings together two key Exodus/Sinai themes: teaching (“obey everything I have commanded you”) and divine presence (“I am with you always”).

In Chaper 3 on Mark’s Gospel, Daniel M. Gurtner examines the four quotations and twenty-one allusions and verbal parallels from Exodus cited in the NA 28 and UBS 5 . These occur in a wide range of contexts, and only a few relate to the exodus deliverance itself. Gurtner concludes that “while Mark may indeed advance a motif of an Isaianic New Exodus [as proposed by Rikki Watts] … his use of the ‘old’ Exodus does not seem to accommodate such singularity of purpose” (p. 60).

Chapter 4, by Brian J. Tabb and Steve Walton, deals with Exodus in Luke-Acts. Like other NT writers, Luke-Acts alludes to texts in Exodus for a variety of reasons. Yet “Luke and Acts also commonly draw attention to major events and themes of the Exodus narrative, including YHWH’s promises to the patriarchs, his power to save his people from slavery, his glorious presence and enduring revelation to Moses at Sinai, as well as Israel’s stubborn rebellion against God and his chosen leaders” (p. 61) For Luke the exodus is not only the paradigmatic model of God’s redemptive activity in the OT, it also points forward to the new “exodus” (9:31) deliverance accomplished by Jesus.

In Chapter 5 Andreas J. Köstenberger examines the Exodus in John’s Gospel. He focuses little on specific citations from the book of Exodus, instead tracing Moses/exodus typology, exodus events and themes, and new exodus imagery from throughout the OT. Some of these include: God’s self-revelation in the tabernacle and the giving of the law being surpassed by God’s definitive self-revelation in the Son; John the Baptist as the harbinger of the new and greater exodus led by Jesus; the depiction of Jesus as the Moses-like signs-working Messiah, providing heavenly manna; and the portrayal of Jesus as God’s ultimate Passover lamb. According to Köstenberger, the identity-defining Exodus narrative “hovers constantly in the background of John’s story” (p. 88).

Chapter 6, by David M. Westfall, examines the references to Exodus in the undisputed Pauline letters (discussing texts in Galatians, 1–2 Corinthians, and Romans). While Paul only occasionally quotes from Exodus, events that occur there, like the covenant at Sinai and the golden calf incident, play a major role in Paul’s theological reflection and examples for exhortation to his churches. Westfall concludes that “Exodus played a deeply formative role in Paul’s theological imagination, providing him with a pattern for understanding God’s new act of eschatological redemption in Israel’s Messiah and the situation of his people in the last days of the present evil age” (p. 126).

In Chapter 7 Seth Ehorn (editor of the volume as a whole) discusses allusions to the exodus tradition in the disputed Paulines (Ephesians, Colossians, Pastorals). While the theme of exodus does not play a major role in these letters, individual texts and Jewish traditions (e.g., 2 Tim 3:8–9) are utilized for encouragement and admonition.

In Chapter 8 on the book of Hebrews, David Moffitt argues that while Hebrews likely quotes explicitly from Exodus (LXX) only two times (8:5; 9:20), Exodus provides narrative elements that help to structure the main contours of the author’s argument. This is especially true in chapters 1–4, where the author’s exodus-generation metaphor serves to shape the identity of the intended audience as those who have been freed from bondage and are now in the wilderness waiting to receive their inheritance. Furthermore, Exodus provides material that influences the author’s belief in the existence of significant heavenly realities, especially the heavenly tabernacle (p. 147). As a creative theologian, the author not only draws from the exodus narrative but also feels free to adapt it for moral and theological illustration (cf. 11:23–29; 12:18–24).

Chapter 9, by Katie Marcar, examines the quotations and allusions to Exodus in the General Letters. While these vary from letter to letter, none of the letters demonstrates a systematic or sustained interest in exodus traditions. James contains only one likely quotation, in a reference to the Decalogue (James 2:11). First Peter makes the greatest use of Exodus. Yet these quotations and allusions are less about the central themes of Exodus than a part of a larger hermeneutical strategy of appropriating Israel’s scriptures and narrative for the church through Christ (p. 169). Exodus material appears only once in Jude, where the wilderness generation is one illustration of those who suffered God’s judgment because of unbelief (Jude 5).

Michelle Fletcher begins Chapter 10, on Revelation, by discussing the unique hermeneutical challenges of the book’s use of the OT. While Revelation is infused with the Hebrew Bible at every level, the OT is never explicitly quoted and Exodus themes are often mediated through earlier Jewish traditions. She proposes to read Revelation “with” Exodus rather than “for” Exodus, using Exodus to give a flavor of the complex way the Hebrew Bible resonates throughout Revelation. Some of the traditions discussed include the divine name (Rev 1:4), manna (Rev 2:17), the Lamb (Rev 5), the Son of Moses (Rev 15), and the plagues of Egypt (Rev 16).

The volume concludes with a review essay by Carmen Joy Imes, who focuses on several common themes, including the indispensability of the book of Exodus for NT theology, the complexity of Exodus traditions, and the challenges and possibilities for future work. This is followed by two case studies, one on “Jesus as a New Moses?” and the other on the source of allusion in 1 Peter 2:9.

This volume as a whole does an excellent job of surveying the scope and significance of Exodus citations and allusions throughout the NT corpus. As such it is a commendable addition to the series. The greatest challenge (and inconsistency) throughout is that while most authors survey quotations and allusions from Exodus in their respective NT books, others focus almost exclusively on exodus themes, such as God’s deliverance, the Sinaitic covenant, obedience to the law, Moses typology, etc. (see Imes’s comments with reference to Köstenberger on p. 203). Indeed, when I first saw this book I misread its title as the theme of exodus rather than the use of the book of Exodus in the NT. For my own research, I was particularly interested in the expansion and transformation of the exodus theme in Isaiah and the prophets, and how the NT writers exploit this motif.

Clearly aware of this challenge, Ehorn says in his introduction, “Following the pattern of prior books in the series . . . contributors have been allowed to work within their own preferred intertextual framework(s)” (p. 3). This, then, is less of a weakness than a necessary observation. Indeed, the diversity of approaches by these authors echoes and recalls the diverse ways the text and themes of Exodus are picked up and developed in Second Temple Judaism and among the various NT authors.

Mark L. Strauss

Mark Strauss is University Professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary.

Other Articles in this Issue

The individual and collective offspring of the woman: the canonical outworking of genesis 3:15.

Studies on Genesis 3:15 often debate whether the seed of the woman refers to an individual or a collective group...

Genealogy and Doctrine: Reformed and Confucian Sociologies of Knowledge

This article presents comparative textual analyses toward a basic grammar for understanding the interface between Reformed and Confucian sociologies of knowledge...

Failure to Atone: Rethinking David’s Census in Light of Exodus 30

Various interpretations have been offered on how David sinned in taking the census of 2 Samuel 24, but too few have seriously grappled with the implications of Exodus 30:11–16 or the structure of 2 Samuel 21–24...

What Shall We Remember? The Eternality of Memory in Revelation

This essay considers the concept of the eternality of human memory and what the Christian may expect to remember after death...

Christological Arguments for Compatibilism in Reformed Theology

Christian compatibilists believe that human freedom and moral responsibility are compatible with theological determinism, i...

Other Reviews in this Issue

Seeking God’s Face: Practical Reflections on Honor and Shame in Scripture

Trauma and Coping Mechanisms among Assemblies of God World Missionaries: Towards a Biblical Theory of Well-Being

Ann Judson: A Missionary Life for Burma

Reaching your Muslim Neighbor with the Gospel

Learning to Lead: The Making of a Christian Leader in Africa

How to go to Heaven

How to get right with god.

Who wrote the book of Exodus? Who was the author of Exodus?

For further study, related articles, subscribe to the, question of the week.

Get our Question of the Week delivered right to your inbox!