Exodus Study Guide

Like the other books of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament), Exodus has traditionally been attributed to Moses. Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt as described in Exodus and the books following: Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy begins, “The words that Moses spoke to all Israel,” and by late antiquity, Moses had come to be regarded as the writer of all of the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch. In Exodus itself, Moses is described as writing down Israel’s laws as given to him by God. Beginning in the early modern period, scholars have usually rejected Mosaic authorship. Some scholars have regarded Exodus, like Genesis, as a composite book gathered over time from several divergent literary traditions, the most prominent being the so-called “Priestly” source. This compilation is thought to have taken place during the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.E. However, there is no scholarly consensus on the book’s complex prehistory. What’s clear is that the writer(s)/compiler(s) meant to provide a narrative of Israel’s origins and identity as a nation established by God.

The historical context of Exodus is contested by modern scholars. Traditionally, the Israelites’ departure from Egypt is dated to around 1446 B.C.E. This dating is based on a figure found in the book of 1 Kings which counts 480 years from the time of the exodus until the fourth year of King Solomon’s reign. Others have linked the exodus from Egypt with the reign of pharaoh Ramesses the Great, which would place the departure from Egypt around 1260 B.C.E. Exodus itself doesn’t provide much internal evidence because, while it refers to some details, like the cities the enslaved Israelites were building (Pithom and Raamses) and the length of time Israel lived in Egypt (430 years), it doesn’t name any kings of Egypt during this period. While this lack of evidence has led a minority of scholars to question the historical basis of the exodus altogether, many contend that the Israelites would have been unlikely to fabricate a history of slavery and oppression.

Exodus is the second book in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament), or Torah (from “law” or “instruction” in Hebrew). Exodus picks up where Genesis, the first book of Pentateuch, leaves off, and traces how God builds a nation—Israel, his chosen people—out of the descendants of Genesis’s patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Allusions to Exodus can be found throughout medieval works that draw heavily on biblical imagery, like Dante’s Divine Comedy and the mystery play Piers Plowman. George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda (1876) features a Jewish protagonist who decides to leave his English upbringing to return to his ancestors’ promised land. In a more general way, the theme of long wanderings toward a promised land features in other literature like The Aeneid (1st century B.C.E.) and the 17th-century Christian work Pilgrim’s Progress. Exodus imagery featured in early American writings like John Winthrop’s “A Modell for Christian Charity,” a sermon which pictured the Atlantic crossing as an “Exodus” for New England-bound Puritans. The famous African American spiritual, “Go Down Moses,” draws directly from God’s command to Pharaoh to “Let my people go” and may have been used by fugitive slaves to pass messages. William Faulkner’s short story collection Go Down, Moses, touches on related themes of Black spirituality and the Southern American legacy of slavery. Robert Hayden’s poem “Runagate” is another example of this visceral connection between the Exodus story and Black history.