The book of Exodus

The Book of Exodus (from Ancient Greek: Ἔξοδος, romanized: Éxodos; Biblical Hebrew: שְׁמוֹת Šəmōṯ, 'Names'; Latin: Liber Exodus) is the second book of the Bible.

Image of Moses by Jusepe de Ribera

The book is the first part of the narrative of the Exodus, the origin myth of the Israelites, in which they leave slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of Yahweh, their deity, who according to the story chose them as his people. The Israelites then journey with the prophet Moses to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh gives the Ten 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 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 conquer Canaan (the "Promised Land"), which has earlier, according to the Book of Genesis, been promised to the "seed" of Abraham, the patriarch of the Israelites.

Traditionally ascribed to Moses himself, the formation of the Pentateuch, including the Book of Exodus, is dated to the fifth through fourth centuries BC. American biblical scholar Carol Meyers, in her commentary on Exodus, suggests that it is arguably the most important book in the Bible, as it presents the defining features of Israel's identity—memories of a past marked by hardship and escape, a binding covenant with their God, who chooses Israel, and the establishment of the life of the community and the guidelines for sustaining it.

The consensus of modern scholars is that the Pentateuch does not give an accurate account of the origins of the Israelites, who appear instead to have formed as an entity in the central highlands of Canaan in the late second millennium BCE (around the time of the Late Bronze Age collapse) from the indigenous Canaanite culture.