User:Carchasm/sandbox/Dating the Bible

Dating methods and choronology
Dating the composition of the texts relies primarily on internal evidence, including direct references to historical events—textual criticism and philological and linguistic evidence provide more subjective indications. The oldest surviving Hebrew Bible manuscripts—including the Dead Sea Scrolls—date to about the 2nd century BCE (fragmentary) and some are stored at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. The oldest extant complete text survives in a Greek translation called the Septuagint, dating to the 4th century CE (Codex Sinaiticus). The oldest extant manuscripts of the vocalized Masoretic Text (the basis of modern editions), date to the 9th century CE.

With the exception of a few biblical sections in the Prophets, virtually no biblical text is contemporaneous with the events it describes.

Internal evidence in the texts suggests dating the individual books of the 27-book New Testament canon in the 1st century CE. The first book written was probably 1 Thessalonians, written around 50 CE. The final book (in the ordering of the canon), the Book of Revelation, is generally accepted by traditional scholarship to have been written during the reign of Domitian (81–96).

Torah (Law)
Documentary hypothesis, Supplementary hypothesis. Fragmentary hypothesis The five books are drawn from four "sources" (distinct schools of writers rather than individuals): the Priestly source, the Yahwist and the Elohist (these two are often referred to collectively as the "non-Priestly" source), and the Deuteronomist. There is general agreement that the Priestly source is post-exilic, but there is no agreement over the non-Priestly source(s). The majority of modern biblical scholars believe that the Torah – the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – reached its present form in the post-Exilic period.

Former Prophets
This group of books, plus Deuteronomy, is called the "Deuteronomistic history" by scholars. The proposal that they made up a unified work was first advanced by Martin Noth in 1943, and has been widely accepted. Noth proposed that the entire history was the creation of a single individual working in the exilic period (6th century BCE); since then there has been wide recognition that the history appeared in two "editions", the first in the reign of Judah's King Josiah (late 7th century), the second during the exile (6th century). Noth's dating was based on the assumption that the history was completed very soon after its last recorded event, the release of King Jehoiachin in Babylon c. 560 BCE; but some scholars have termed his reasoning inadequate, and the history may have been further extended in the post-exilic period.

Isaiah
Scholars recognise three "sections" in the Book of Isaiah: Proto-Isaiah (the original 8th century Isaiah); Deutero-Isaiah (an anonymous prophet living in Babylon during the exile); and Trito-Isaiah (an anonymous author or authors in Jerusalem immediately after the exile).

Jeremiah
The Book of Jeremiah exists in two versions, Greek (the version used in Orthodox Christian Bibles) and Hebrew (Jewish, Catholic and Protestant Bibles), with the Greek representing the earlier version. The Greek version was probably finalised in the early Persian period and translated into Greek in the 3rd century BCE, and the Hebrew version dates from some point between then and the 2nd century BCE.

Ezekiel
The Book of Ezekiel describes itself as the words of the Ezekiel ben-Buzi, a priest living in exile in the city of Babylon, and internal evidence dates the visions to between 593 and 571 BCE. While the book probably reflects much of the historic Ezekiel, it is the product of a long and complex history, with significant additions by a "school" of later followers.

Twelve
In the Hebrew Bible the Twelve Minor Prophets are a single collection edited in the Second Temple period, but the collection is broken up in Christian Bibles. With the exception of Jonah, which is a fictional work, there exists an original core of prophetic tradition behind each book:

Ketuvim (Writings)

 * The books of Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs share a similar outlook which they themselves call "wisdom".

Greek New Testament
Traditional accounts - Papias, Irenaeus, Eusebius, Augustine of Hippo

Synoptic Gospels
Marcan priority, First Jewish-Roman War, Little Apocalypse

Timeline
This table summarises the chronology of the main tables and serves as a guide to the historical periods mentioned. Much of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament may have been assembled in the 5th century BCE. The New Testament books were composed largely in the second half of the 1st century CE. The Deuterocanonical books fall largely in between.

Index of Date Ranges
This table lists the scholarly consensus of date ranges for composition and redaction of the books of the bible.

Biblical Commentaries
New Oxford Annotated Bible

Eerdmann's Commentary on the Bible-