"Remember This Day on Which You Came Out of Egypt"

This dissertation is a study of the systematic repetitions of the exodus motif in the Hebrew Bible. I argue that the textual enmeshing of the past exodus event within the biblical legal material is both innate to the fuller expression of the exodus tradition and further developed in the Hebrew Bible for the strategic purpose of shaping the future identity and covenantal obligations of its receivers. The dissertation itself is composed of three case studies. The first (chapter 2) addresses the enmeshing of sea and Sinai through constructed monuments in the Former Prophets. Specifically, it examines how these monuments became lieux de memoire (sites of memory) that mark epochs within a helical model of time—a historical slinky—capable of memorializing covenant renewals through allusions to the exodus event. I argue that each of these monuments functioned to signify what I refer to as parallel loops of a temporal slinky. The second case study (chapter 3) scrutinizes how the temporal slinky articulated in chapter 2 is subsequently codified within the prophetic literature. This chapter demonstrates how allusions to portions of the Holiness Code—specifically Leviticus 18–20—in Ezekiel’s