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Exodus

First Testament

Second Testament

Exodus
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Excerpt

Stories that have 'character,' that shed light upon the present from the past, and, above all, that possess religious interest, must find a place somewhere. If, then, to reverence for God and kin and country we of this age add reverence for the very past as it was, we owe it to these memorials of an eventful period of the pre-Christian age to sift out those that have more of fancy, to appreciate in them the good that is there instead of reading into them what we think better but which only came later, and to set them, as best we may, in their true order and their right relations.

Many of the stories deal with persons, and of these Moses stands out pre-eminently, the mass and variety of material showing how deep a mark he left on his time, and reducing other figures, Aaron, Miriam, Jethro, Hur, Joshua, Nadab, and Abihu, to relative insignificance. His cradle in the bulrushes (2:1-10) preaches God's care for His own. His early championship of the oppressed (2:11-14) proves his impulsive sympathy. His flight to Midian (2:15) betrays his spiritual ancestry. His courtesy to women wins him (2:16-22) home and wife. And so the list might run on. Other stories deal with Israel, or its component tribes.

George Harford Peake's Commentary on the Bible 1920

Timeline

The Torah is presented here with the first six books of the Nevi'im. Together they constitute the earliest history of the Abrahamic faith and it peoples.

Monarchic (pre-586 BC) Exilic (586-538 BC) Persian (538-332 BC)
1000 900 800 700 600 500 400 BC
Solomon's Temple builtc. 960 BC Destruction of Jerusalem & First Temple587/586 BC Second Temple completed515 BC

Chapters

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Outline

  1. Oppression in Egypt and the call of Moses 1:1-7:7
  2. The plagues and the Passover 7:8-13:16
  3. Deliverance at the sea and the wilderness 13:17-18:27
  4. Covenant and Law at Sinai 19:1-24:18
  5. The tabernacle: instructions and construction 25:1-40:38

Manuscript witnesses

Earliest papyri

Nash Papyrus — c. 150-100 BC
A Hebrew papyrus of the Decalogue and the Shema; before Qumran, the oldest known biblical Hebrew manuscript.

Major codices

Leningrad Codex (B19A) — 1008 AD
The oldest complete Masoretic Hebrew Bible and the base text of modern critical editions.

Other witnesses

Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran) — c. 250 BC - 68 AD
The Qumran biblical manuscripts, the oldest Hebrew and Aramaic witnesses by roughly a millennium.
Samaritan Pentateuch — tradition; oldest mss c. 12th c. AD
The Samaritan community's distinct Hebrew Torah, differing from the Masoretic Text in thousands of readings.

Sources

  1. a Coogan, Michael D. The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, 4th ed. Oxford University Press, 2018.
  2. b Harford, George. Peake's Commentary on the Bible. London T.C & E.C. Jack, 1920.