Abstract
This chapter deals with a brief discussion of how the biblical figures were engaged in later Jewish and Christian traditions. Christians continue to interpret the Pentateuch in response to emerging challenges. The stories of the Pentateuch remain fruitful sources for moral theological reflection, as Christians seek to discern what God requires in the midst of injustice. In the twentieth century, the most influential reconstruction of the composition of the Pentateuch was that of Julius Wellhausen, who published his reconstruction in the 1890s. For many Jews and Christians, their function as authoritative revelation from God is actualized within the worshipping community as a whole. Ancient Israelite families had a distinctly different social configuration than contemporary Christian families. The Jewish festival of Passover celebrates the night the Hebrews were delivered from slavery in Egypt, when the angel of death passed over the houses of the Israelites.