Priestly source lost, God remained present with Israel. The history of exilic and post-exilic Judah is little known, but a summary of current theories can be made as follows: The Pentateuch or Torah (the Greek and Hebrew terms, respectively, for the bible's books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) describe the history of the Israelites from the creation of the world, through the earliest biblical patriarchs and their wanderings, to the exodus from Egypt and the encounter with God in the wilderness. The books contain many inconsistencies, repetitions, different narrative styles, and different names for God. There are, for example, two
Book of Exodus accept God as a cause of events, but in Exodus, everything is presented as the work of God, who appears frequently in person, and the historical setting is only very hazily sketched. The purpose of the book is not to record what really happened, but to reflect the historical experience of the exile community in Babylon and later Jerusalem, facing foreign captivity and the need to come to terms with their understanding of God. Although mythical elements are not so prominent in Exodus as in Genesis, ancient legends have an influence on the book's content: for example, the story of