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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.
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 God, who chose them as his people. The Israelites then journey with the prophet Moses to Mount Sinai, where God gives them the Law of Moses and enters into a covenant with them and their descendants. God 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 had 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. Modern scholars see its initial composition as a product of the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), based on earlier written sources and oral traditions, with final revisions in the Persian post-exilic period (5th century BCE). 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.
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