Origins of Judaism century BCE, including the Torah (the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), the historical works, and much of the prophetic and Wisdom literature. The Bible narrates the discovery of a legal book in the Temple in the seventh century BCE, which the majority of scholars see as some form of Deuteronomy and regard as pivotal to the development of the scripture. The growing collection of scriptures was translated into Greek in the Hellenistic period by the Jews of the Egyptian diaspora, while the Babylonian Jews produced the court tales of the Book of Daniel (chapters 1–6 of Daniel
On the Reliability of the Old Testament the Old Testament. The book opens with an introductory chapter surveying the history with which it intends to deal, the continuous narrative in the Hebrew Bible from the Genesis creation narrative to the return of the Jews to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity in the early days of the Persian Empire in the 5th century BC. The author claims that this history was written at the same time as the events it describes in its various sections, and that this can be confirmed by comparing the Old Testament with non-Biblical sources, both written and archaeological. He clarifies by stating that