Old Testament – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, book of Numbers and Deuteronomy – reached their present form in the Persian period (538–332 BC), and their authors were the elite of exilic returnees who controlled the Temple at that time. The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings follow, forming a history of Israel from the Conquest of Canaan to the Siege of Jerusalem c. 587 BC. There is a broad consensus among scholars that these originated as a single work (the so-called "Deuteronomistic history") during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC. The two Books of Chronicles cover much the same material
On the Reliability of the Old Testament On the Reliability of the Old Testament On the Reliability of the Old Testament (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids and Cambridge,2003: ) is a book by British Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen (1932-). The book provides the reader with "the most sweeping scholarly case in a generation for the traditional beliefs held by Orthodox Jews and Christian conservatives", according to Richard Ostling. The book was intended to serve as a counterpart to F.F. Bruce's "Are the New Testament Documents Reliable?" (1943), and in so doing to counter the arguments of Biblical minimalism, which casts doubt upon the historical value of