Exodus and Genesis

The history and religion of the ancestral period connects to the subject matter of chapters 1 through 15 of Exodus. These chapters tell the history of the sons of Jacob and of the story of Israel in Egypt, the oppression the struggle for freedom, and the final liberation, and the opening section seems to preserve the memory of clan movements and social relationships which were later seen as a preparation for the decisive event of Exodus and the formation of the people of Israel; namely, the story of Moses. Chapters 14 and 15 concern the story of the parting of the Red Sea during the escape from Egypt, and these chapters also show the influence of the three writers and suggests how the three were put together into one narrative.

The historical antecedents to the stories in this early section of Exodus create problems for analysts and historians. The first reason for this derives from the fact that the stories have come down through a long process of oral and written tradition and have been shaped to confess faith in God. The beginning of Exodus also links directly with the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph as if there were a unified sense of nationhood for Israel which in fact did not then exist. The passages present an oversimplified picture of the history of Israel extending back into the ancestral period. A second reason why the story of Exodus offers difficulty for those trying a historical assessment developed from the fact that the only source for our knowled

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is seen as probably the Pharaoh of the oppression and Ramses II the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The writing of the story and the time in which the story would have taken place stand separated by some seven centuries, so folklore may play a role in the creation and dissemination of these stories. At the beginning of Chapter 14, the people of Israel are already on their way out of Egypt. The chapter begins with the divine command to turn back, represented by the P author for the purpose of encouraging the pursuit to that Yahweh may get glory over Pharaoh. This explanation is apparently an attempt to reconcile two different traditions of the itinerary. The first of these begins at the Wadi Tumilat around Succoth from 12:37 and 13:20; the second begins in the north east Delta near Rameses at 12:37. Charles Laymon sees it likely that the southern route preserves an older tradition while the North reflects the memory of Jewish refugees who came that way on the road to Egypt after 586. A conflict can be found between the statement in 13:17 that the Pharaoh let the people of Israel go and the statement in 14:5 that the Pharaoh was told that the people had fled and so he set out after them. In either case, though, the people of Isr

Category: Philosophy - E