The Torah takes shape
Older sources are edited into a single narrative during and after the exile.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 100 years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
The Pentateuch reaches something close to its final form between the seventh and fifth centuries BCE, drawing together older narrative, legal and priestly material — the documentary hypothesis, in various revised versions, remains the standard framework. The compilation is a response to catastrophe: a people without a state or temple assemble a portable text that defines who they are. It becomes the first scripture in the sense later religions use the word.