The Bible's grand narrative about Israel's Exodus from Egypt is central to Biblical religion, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim identity and the formation of the academic disciplines studying the ancient Near East. It has also been a pervasive theme in artistic and popular imagination.Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspectiveis a pioneering worksurveying this tradition in unprecedented breadth, combiningarchaeological discovery, quantitative methodology and close literary reading. Archaeologists, Egyptologists, Biblical Scholars, Computer Scientists, Geoscientists and other experts contribute their diverse approaches in a novel, transdisciplinary consideration of ancient topography, Egyptian and Near Eastern parallels to the Exodus story, the historicity of the Exodus, the interface of the Exodus question with archaeological fieldwork on emergent Israel, the formation of biblical literature, and the cultural memory of the Exodus in ancient Israel and beyond.

This edited volume contains research presented at the groundbreaking symposium"Out of Egypt: Israel s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination"""held in 2013at the Qualcomm Institute of the University of California, San Diego. The combination of 44 contributions by an international group of scholars from diverse disciplines makes this the first such transdisciplinary study of ancient text and history. In the original conference and with this new volume, revolutionary media, such as a 3D immersive virtual reality environment, impart innovative, Exodus-based research to a wider audience. Out of archaeology, ancient texts, science and technology emergean up-to-date picture of the Exodus for the21stCentury and a new standard for collaborative research."

Exodus is the heart of the Hebrew Bible, the defining moment in Israel's birth as a people, the dramatic triumph of their God. Yahweh, Pharaoh, Moses, Aaron, the Hebrew slaves, the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea-these larger-than-life characters and epoch-making events capture the imagination of everyone from biblical scholars to moviemakers. However, the meaning and significance, the beauty and nuance, of this captivating biblical book are lost unless we have a world-class Scripture scholar to open our eyes to its riches. In Exodus 1-18, William H. C. Propp translates the original text in all its grandeur, then provides a masterful exploration and analysis of the book's first eighteen chapters. Here the fate of the Hebrew slaves hangs in the balance of the dramatic conflict between the God of Israel and the Pharaoh of Egypt. From the discovery of Moses in a basket made of bulrushes to the story of the Burning Bush, from the ten plagues visited upon Egypt by God to water from the rock and quail and manna from the skies, Exodus is filled with the miraculous and the dramatic. Doubleday is proud to be publishing the long-awaited first of two volumes of the Anchor Bible Commentary on Exodus. Exhaustive, meticulous, and brilliantly researched, Propp's Exodus 1-18 is well worth the wait, exceeding expectations and meeting the reader's every need.

The first in a series of volumes coming out of programs at the Department of Biblical and Judaic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, this book contains a number of essays originally presented at the Fourth Conversation in Biblical Studies held at UCSD, as well as pieces by each of the editors. Future volumes in the series will include both monographs and, like this one, collected essays.

For the past half-century, David Noel Freedman has had an enormous impact on the study of the Bible, both as an author and as an editor of the writings of others. As his colleagues note in their comments at the beginning of this volume, “You are quintessentially the man of the book. And perhaps what impresses us most is that your bibliography of hundreds of books is not limited to the extraordinary number of important books that you’ve written yourself. It also contains the books that you’ve edited for others. And we know what it means to have David Noel Freedman as one’s editor. For every page of manuscript that the author sends you, you send back almost an equal number of pages of advice, criticism, corrections, and improvements. You can make a bad book good, and a good book better. And you can make its author a better scholar and a better writer.” In this volume, his compatriots at the University of California, San Diego, contribute eight varied essays in celebration of his impact on them and in honor of his varied contributions to biblical studies.

The long-awaited conclusion of William H. C. Propp's masterful study of Exodus, this informative, clearly written commentary provides a new perspective on Israelite culture and on the role of ritual, law, and covenant in biblical religion. Exodus 19-40 sets a new standard in biblical scholarship. Thorough and up-to-date, it is the first commentary on Exodus to include critical textual evidence from the recently edited Dead Sea Scrolls. Informed by Propp's deep understanding of ancient cultural mores and religious traditions, it casts new light on the Israelites' arrival at Sinai, their entry into a covenant with God, their reception of the Law, their worship of the golden calf, and their reconciliation to God. The incisive commentary on the building of the Holy Tabernacle-God's wilderness abode-is supplemented by numerous illustrations that clarify the biblical text. Propp extends the scope and relevance of this major work in five appendices that discuss the literary formation of the Torah, the historicity of the Exodus tradition, the origins of Israelite monotheism, the Exodus theme in the Bible, and the future of Old Testament scholarship. By taking an anthropological rather than strictly theological approach, Propp places familiar stories within a fresh context. The result is a fully accessible guide to one of the most important and best known books of the Bible.