posted on Aug, 27 2004 @ 12:53 PM
Hey Marge:
You are "kind of" correct about the AD 90 date in which the books of the OLD TESTAMENT were finally voted in "as that which defiles the hands"
(i.e. holy scripture) by the Babylonian Rebbes in Jamnia near Caesarea after Rome destroyed Israel in AD 70. No central Temple in Jerusalem meant no
Sadduccean (benei Zadok) priests and no more blood sacrifices---only rabbis and books and synagogues.
Books like The Testament of the 12, The Wisdom of Solomon, the Testament of Moses, I Henoch and the Wisdom of Yeshua Ben Sirach ("Ecclesiasticus")
were all thrown out (even though the Dead Sea Scroll Community believed these books to be Scripture, like the author of Jude seems to think the
Assumption of Moses and I Henoch were too, since he quotes them (Jude v 9 and Jude v 14) as Scripture)--but the Old Testament texts in the current
"bible" were probably not written in their final form that we read today in the various versions until around 330 BC (Daniel and Ecclesiastes a
little later, perhaps around 164 BC, late Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic gives those books away), though obviously based on older versions and re-edited
at least 4 times since BC 621).
The New Testament did not come into its present form until after the time of the Emperor Constantine and the voting of the bishops at at least 4
different councils of the 4th and 5th centuries AD (where books like the gospel of John and the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Elder (whosever he was =
Book of Revelation) were considered "heretical" for centuries and got in only by a vote or two at some councils, and outlawed altogether in
others).
Books that also didn't get into the final count like the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of the Hebrews (and I Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas
etc.) were all banned as "not inspired" as well.
In terms of how much of the socalled Bible (old and new "testaments") is actually based on history is a debateable point.
The texts about the Exodus were not written down in their present form until after 480 BC and reflect a political situation with Egypt and Canaan
during the reign of Josiah (621 BC) i.e. long after the time of Moses.
A good fairly recent book for the newcomer to this subject to get would be THE BIBLE UNEARTHED (Archaelogy's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the
Origin of Its Sacred Texts) by Israel Finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman, 2001 Free Press-Simon & Schuster ISDN 0-684-86912-8) which shows that
there is about 10% of REAL history behind the Biblical legends, but the vast majority of the material (even in the NT) is "midrashic" i.e. moral
legends and teaching, only loosely related to hard facts when it overlaps with the moral of the stories, most of which are Ziono-centric and purport
to show YHWH the clan god of Israel in the best possible light.
The same can be said for another book called WHO WROTE THE BIBLE by Richard Elliot Friedmann of Harvard who breaks down the Old Testment histories
into their respective politico-religious sources (J, E, P D) and the final redaction of the material during the time of Ezra "the scribe", his
conclusions being a layman's re-wording of the more complex Graf Wellhausen source documentary hypothesis (1873) which has stood its ground for more
than 130 years.