Exodus

English: Israel’s Escape from Egypt, illustration from a Bible card published 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Exodus is the second book of the Pentateuch (and Old Testament of the Christian Bible). It outlines God’s punishment of the Egyptians and Israel’s departure from bondage in Egypt, facilitated by the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, and their subsequent travel through the wilderness, as led by God through the intercession of the prophet Moses.

Although no Egyptian historical records tell of the parting of the Red Sea and Israel’s escape from captivity, the New Oxford Annotated Bible claims

There can be little doubt that the story rests upon actual historical occurrences.¹

Other respected, mainstream scholars concur that, while it was once fashionable to give too much credence to the alleged historicity of Jewish scriptures and, later, to conversely discount them as myth,

It is reasonable to believe that a good part of the biblical stories have a historical background.²

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¹ New Oxford Annotated Bible , 1991, p. 69.

² Mircea Eliade, Ioan Couliano and Hillary S. Wiesner, The Eliade Guide to World Religions, New York: HarperCollins, 1991, p. 169.

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