Did the Jewish people have a religion before the Book of Exodus was written?

The short answer is yes, but in order to fully answer your question, we’ll need to dig into both the history of the Book of Exodus as well the history of Judaism. First, we’ll try to determine when the Book of Exodus was written; after that, we’ll look at how far back anything resembling Jewish belief can be traced.

Exodus in the form we have it was probably produced between 600 BC and 400 BC,...

The short answer is yes, but in order to fully answer your question, we’ll need to dig into both the history of the Book of Exodus as well the history of Judaism. First, we’ll try to determine when the Book of Exodus was written; after that, we’ll look at how far back anything resembling Jewish belief can be traced.

Exodus in the form we have it was probably produced between 600 BC and 400 BC, during and after the Babylonian Exile. It is during this period that much of Judaism as we know it developed. A prevailing theory for understanding the history and composition of the Hebrew Bible is the Documentary Hypothesis, which uses textual analysis to identify distinct literary traditions that were edited together to make up the Hebrew Bible as we know it. This blending together of multiple accounts helps to explain contradictory or duplicate accounts in the Bible (for example, the two creation stories present in the first few chapters of Genesis).

Though Exodus was probably written no earlier than 600 BC, it represents stories that are claimed to take place much earlier. The Exodus itself is traditionally dated to around 1400 BC to 1200 BC, though a lack of archaeological evidence for this event throws its historicity into question. Traces of these older stories and beliefs can be found in the oldest layers of the Hebrew Bible, but the more compelling evidence comes from even more ancient non-Hebrew sources. For example, the earliest potential mention of Yahweh, the Jewish god, comes from around 1300 BC in an Egyptian text dating to the time of Amenhotep III. A Jewish-like belief, corroborated by non-Hebrew sources, can be said to date back to at least this time.

However, the beliefs of the ancient Hebrews/Israelites are distinct from the later traditions of Judaism in a few noticeable ways. Though Jews are today monotheistic, their Hebrew forebears ranged anywhere between polytheistic (worship of many gods), henotheistic (acknowledgement of many gods with the worship of only one), and monolatristic (acknowledgement of many gods with only one being worthy of worship).  While it’s accurate to say that within the greater tradition of Hebrew and Jewish beliefs there has been a consistent lineage of religious belief going back at least 700 years before the time the Book of Exodus was written, it can be difficult to call the religion that was practiced by these ancient Hebrews “Jewish.”

If you’re interested in further investigation, I would recommend looking into the history of the Hebrew Bible, as well as the texts discovered at the Canaanite city of Ugarit, which offers greater perspective on the range of religious beliefs that existed in ancient Canaan (links are provided below).