SOURCE: Coggins, Richard. Introduction to The Book of Exodus, pp. xi-xix. Peterborough, England: Epworth Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Coggins discusses various approaches to reading and analyzing Exodus.

The Book of Exodus is a strange mixture. Its first half offers us an exciting story of the escape from Egypt of a group of slaves, under the human leadership of Moses but with God pictured as playing an active role. They reach a holy mountain, Sinai, and are given commandments to shape and guide their life. But at that point the story seems to lose momentum. Instead of making further progress on their journey to the land which has been promised to them as their goal, they become involved in the detailed preparation of religious impedimenta. This is described in what to many modern readers will seem intolerable detail, and the book ends with a religious task—the construction...