From Brigham Young University's Maxwell Institute, this is the Maxwell Institute podcast, Faith Illuminating Scholarship.

In 26, we are releasing a series called Old Testament Reflections.

Each week, a scholar offers a short reflection on the Come Follow Me reading.

Today's piece, Saviors Before Sinai,

Lessons from the Childhood of a Prophet in Exodus 1 through 6,

is written and read by me, Rosalind F. Welch.

Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph, Exodus 1-8.

In one short sentence, the Hebrew Bible sets up what is arguably the most influential story

in human history. Many ages after its ancient roots were committed to writing,

the Exodus continues to hold a central role in the three major Abrahamic faiths, and it is as vital

and active today as it ever was. If there is a story that has moved more bodies, traveled more places, lifted more hearts,

inspired more retellings, spawned more meanings, or changed more worlds, I don't know what it is.

Our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized

unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and

did all drink the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed

them, and that rock was Christ. 1 Corinthians 10, 1 through 4. With these words,

Paul sets the stage for one of the most consequential narrative adaptations in human history.

Paul's account of Christ's death and resurrection, an account that would shape all subsequent

Christian theology, is, in essence, a retelling of the Exodus.

The world presently groans under slavery, the apostle explains, but Christ has come to

liberate us and lead us into a new world of freedom. Slaves no longer, we are in Christ, adopted heirs of God.

The Exodus was the first and is still the foremost metaphor for Christian salvation.

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