"Exodus" (meaning in Greek "a
going out") is the second book of the Old Testament. The book is a witness to
the pivotal Jewish event (from about 1350 to 1200 BC): God's deliverance of a
band of slaves from Egyptian bondage and their creation as the community bound
in Covenant with their liberating God. The Exodus provides the historical
backdrop for the entire Old Testament and the annual Passover observance. A
focus of the Exodus was Moses, to whom authorship of the account has
traditionally been ascribed. Contemporary scholarship, however, reveals the
book's long process of formation during the 9th to the 5th centuries BC and
indicates that it is the result of several inspired writers and editors.