The Book of Exodus is the second book of the Bible. It narrates the story of the Exodus, in which the Israelites leave slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of Yahweh, who has chosen them as his people. The Israelites then journey with the prophet Moses to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh gives the 10 commandments and they enter into a covenant with Yahweh, who promises to make them a "holy nation, and a kingdom of priests" on condition of their faithfulness. He gives them their laws and instructions to build the Tabernacle, the means by which he will come from heaven and dwell with them and lead them in a holy war to possess the land of Canaan, which has earlier, according to the story of Genesis, been promised to the seed of Abraham.
Yahweh was an ancient Levantine deity, and national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Though no consensus exists regarding the deity's origins, scholars generally contend that Yahweh emerged as a "divine warrior" associated first with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman, and later with Canaan. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age, if not somewhat earlier.
The Israelites were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan.
The historicity of the Bible is the question of the Bible's relationship to history—covering not just the Bible's acceptability as history but also the ability to understand the literary forms of biblical narrative. One can extend biblical historicity to the evaluation of whether or not the Christian New Testament is an accurate record of the historical Jesus and of the Apostolic Age. This tends to vary depending upon the opinion of the scholar.
Ethics in the Bible refers to the system(s) or theory(ies) produced by the study, interpretation, and evaluation of biblical morals, that are found in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. It comprises a narrow part of the larger fields of Jewish and Christian ethics, which are themselves parts of the larger field of philosophical ethics. Ethics in the Bible is unlike other western ethical theories in that it is seldom overtly philosophical. It presents neither a systematic nor a formal deductive ethical argument. Instead, the Bible provides patterns of moral reasoning that focus on conduct and character in what is sometimes referred to as virtue ethics. This moral reasoning is part of a broad, normative covenantal tradition where duty and virtue are inextricably tied together in a mutually reinforcing manner.
Biblical studies is the academic application of a set of diverse disciplines to the study of the Bible. For its theory and methods, the field draws on disciplines ranging from ancient history, historical criticism, philology, theology, textual criticism, literary criticism, historical backgrounds, mythology, and comparative religion.
The Exodus is the founding myth of the Israelites whose narrative is spread over four books of the Torah, namely Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
John Van Seters is a Canadian scholar of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Currently University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, he was formerly James A. Gray Professor of Biblical Literature at UNC. He took his Ph.D. at Yale University in Near Eastern Studies (1965) and a Th.D. h.c. from the University of Lausanne (1999). His honours and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH fellowship, an ACLS Fellowship, and research fellowships at Oxford, Cambridge, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and National Research Foundation of South Africa. His many publications include The Hyksos: A New Investigation (1966); Abraham in History and Tradition (1975); In Search of History ; The Edited Bible (2006); and The Biblical Saga of King David (2009).
The Stations of the Exodus are the locations visited by the Israelites following their exodus from Egypt, according to the Hebrew Bible. In the itinerary given in Numbers 33, forty-two stations are listed, although this list differs slightly from the narrative account of the journey found in Exodus and Deuteronomy.
The Covenant Code, or Book of the Covenant, is the name given by academics to a text appearing in the Torah, at Exodus 20:22–23:19; or, more strictly, the term Covenant Code may be applied to Exodus 21:1–22:16. Biblically, the text is the second of the law codes given to Moses by God at Mount Sinai. This legal text provides a small but substantive proportion of the mitzvot within the Torah, and hence is a source of Jewish Law.
Women in the Bible are wives, mothers and daughters, servants, slaves and prostitutes. As both victors and victims, some women in the Bible change the course of important events while others are powerless to affect even their own destinies. The majority of women in the Bible are anonymous and unnamed. Individual portraits of various women in the Bible show women in a variety of roles. The New Testament refers to a number of women in Jesus' inner circle, and he is generally seen by scholars as dealing with women with respect and even equality.
The origins of Judaism lie in the Bronze Age amidst polytheistic ancient Semitic religions, specifically evolving out of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion, then co-existing with Babylonian religion, and syncretizing elements of Babylonian belief into the worship of Yahweh as reflected in the early prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.
Michael D. Coogan is lecturer on Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Harvard Divinity School, Director of Publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum, editor-in-chief of Oxford Biblical Studies Online, and professor emeritus of religious studies at Stonehill College. He has also taught at Fordham University, Boston College, Wellesley College, and the University of Waterloo (Ontario). Coogan has also participated in and directed archaeological excavations in Israel, Jordan, Cyprus, and Egypt, and has lectured widely.
Pheme Perkins is a Professor of Theology at Boston College, where she has been teaching since 1972. She is a nationally recognized expert on the Greco-Roman cultural setting of early Christianity, as well as the Pauline Epistles and Gnosticism.
James L. Crenshaw is the Robert L. Flowers Professor of the Old Testament at Duke University Divinity School. He is one of the world’s leading scholars in Old Testament Wisdom literature. He proposes that much of Proverbs was brought together at a time well after Solomon. He has been described as "a highly respected scholar" and an "excellent teacher".
Athalya Brenner-Idan is a Dutch-Israeli biblical scholar known for her contribution to feminist biblical studies.
Phyllis Trible is a feminist biblical scholar from Richmond, Virginia, United States. Trible's scholarship focuses on the Hebrew Bible and she is noted for her prominent influence on feminist biblical interpretation. Trible has written a multitude of books on interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, and has lectured around the world, including the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Canada, and a number of countries in Europe.
Carol A. Newsom is an American biblical scholar, historian of ancient Judaism, and literary critic. She is the Charles Howard Candler Professor Emerita of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology and a former senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. She is a leading expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Wisdom literature, and the Book of Daniel.
The Exodus is the founding myth of the Israelites. The scholarly consensus is that the Exodus, as described in the Torah, is not historical, even though there may be a historical core behind the Biblical narrative.
Biblical maximalism is the movement in Biblical scholarship that, as opposed to Biblical minimalism, affirms the historicity of central Biblical narratives, such as those pertaining to the United Monarchy, and the historical authenticity of ancient Israel as a whole. Due to differences between the Bible and 19th- and 20th-century archaeological findings, there exists discordance between these two parties of biblical exegetists: the biblical maximalists argue that prior to Judaism's Babylonian Captivity, the Bible serves an accurate historical source and should influence the conclusions drawn from archaeological studies; whereas biblical minimalists assert that the Bible must be read as fiction, unless proven otherwise by archaeological findings, and ought not be considered in secular studies.
