The Exodus [how it happened and why it matters]

MARTIN LUTHER: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World, by Eric Metaxas. (Viking, $30.) Metaxas' effort to make Luther attractive to a wide readership presents its subject as a titanic figure who rescued God from medievalism, invented individual freedom and ushered in modernity. THE STORY OF THE JEWS: Volume 2, Belonging: 1492-1900, by Simon Schama. (Ecco, $39.99.) Schama's panoramic study begins around the time of the Spanish Inquisition and ends with the Dreyfus case, circling around the question of whether the Jews could ever find a safe haven. Across four centuries, that quest seemed never quite attainable yet never definitely out of reach. FURNISHING ETERNITY: A Father, a Son, a Coffin, and a Measure of Life, by David Giffels. (Scribner, $24.) Giffels lovingly but never worshipfully traces the craft of coffin-making, and in so doing lets the essence of himself and his father be revealed through the action of building one together. MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MANUSCRIPTS: Twelve Journeys Into the Medieval World, by Christopher de Hamel. (Penguin Press, $45.) A gloriously illustrated introduction to a collection of extraordinary illuminated books, conducted by a supremely learned and cheerfully opinionated guide. WHAT THE QUR'AN MEANT: And Why It Matters, by Garry Wills. (Viking, $25.) When a leading Catholic intellectual reads the Quran, especially one as attuned to language as Wills, the result is a delight. He challenges religious and secular ignorance, yielding an overview that is both elegant and insightful. THE EXODUS, by Richard Elliott Friedman. (HarperOne, $27.99.) Friedman seeks to answer, once and for all: Was there an exodus from Egypt? He insists there was, just not quite the way the Bible describes; his Exodus story is really the tale of how the people we call Levites left Egypt and joined up with the Israelites already in Canaan. WHERE THE WILD COFFEE GROWS: The Untold Story of Coffee From the Cloud Forests of Ethiopia to Your Cup, by Jeff Koehler. (Bloomsbury, $28.) An absorbing, almost Tolkienesque narrative of politics, ecology and economics that documents the spread of (the misnamed) Coffea Arabica. THE BOOK OF SEPARATION: A Memoir, by Tova Mirvis. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26.) Mirvis tells an intimate tale of departure - of leaving the Modern Orthodox community that served as the inspiration for her first two novels, and of leaving her marriage too. She movingly conveys the heartache that accompanies the abandonment of one way of life in search of another. SLEEP NO MORE, by P. D. James. (Knopf, $21.) Half a dozen murderous tales from the late great crime fiction writer. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Friedman (Who Wrote the Bible?), a Bible scholar and professor of Jewish studies at the University of Georgia, sets out to prove the historical authenticity of the exodus from Egypt and underscore its significance in this multipronged book. By investigating verses from the Bible, evaluating inscriptions, incorporating material from archeological excavations, and assessing relevant historical data, Friedman builds his case that a small contingent of Levites were the actual group to leave Egypt, and soon after they joined the societies of Israel and Judah. He also claims that the Levites and the Israelites fused their individual gods to worship just one, which was a "necessary step in the formation of monotheism." Furthermore, Friedman professes that the Levites' status as "other" in Egypt led to the ethic of caring for the stranger. In an attempt to prove his assertions, Friedman includes many details and takes pains to provide as much evidence as possible-at times falling into prose too dense for the layperson. Christian readers with a strong interest in the Bible will appreciate Friedman's exploration. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.