what is the oldest book i could read ?

Answer 1

Dating the Bible
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The Bible is a compilation of various texts or "books" of different age. While the books of the New Testament may be dated with some confidence, the dates of many of the texts of the Hebrew Bible are difficult to establish. Textual criticism places all of them within the 1st millennium BC, while traditionalist schools assign the Pentateuch a 15th century BC date.

Historical criticism of the Bible, originating in the 18th century, is divided into two main schools of thought: "maximalists", who believe that much of the Bible may be historical, to "minimalists", who accept almost none of its content as based in history. Textual criticism of the Pentateuch in particular is known as the "documentary hypothesis".

With the exception of a couple of fragments (found among the Dead Sea scrolls, discussed below), no biblical manuscripts predate the 2nd century BC. The Chester Beatty papyri are dated between 80 AD (nearly all Paul's writings, dated by Young Kyu Kim) and 200 AD. Various Gospel texts pre-date 200 AD (Rylands fragment dated to approx. 125 AD). For this reason, dating of the older texts cannot be done directly by dating manuscripts, but relies on textual criticism, philological and linguistic evidence, as well as direct references to historical events in the texts.

Contents [hide]
1 The Hebrew Bible
1.1 Torah
1.2 Nevi'im
1.3 Ketuvim (Hagiographia)
2 The New Testament
2.1 Approximate dates
3 The Gnostic Scriptures
4 Traditional school
5 See also
6 References
7 External links



[edit] The Hebrew Bible
The authorship of the Hebrew Bible is an open topic of research, and who and how many people contributed to the text is a vital and lively area of investigation to this date. Therefore, assigning solid dates to any of the texts is difficult. Since the dating of the authorship of these books depends on the particulars of the deconstruction of the texts, the range of dates assigned to the first five books is rather broad, ranging from the 10th to the 6th centuries BC.

As in the case of the Rigveda or the Iliad, it is difficult to date orally transmitted texts, since they are not in a fixed form. Individual portions may well predate the entire text by several centuries. The oldest known materially preserved fragment of a Torah text is a good luck charm, inscribed with Num 6:24–27, and dated to approximately 600 BC (Dever, p. 180). Though whole copies of the Bible were not found at Qumran, the documents of the Dead Sea scrolls contained versions of many books of the Hebrew Bible. The Scrolls have been dated from the 3rd century BC to 68 AD. It is largely undisputed that the text of the Torah had become fixed by 400 BC.

In terms of the dating of complete authoritative texts, there are three main versions of the Hebrew Bible. There is the Masoretic text of the Torah, thought to have been first assembled in the 4th century AD. The oldest known copy (the oldest is the Aleppo Codex; the oldest complete text is the Leningrad Codex) now dates to the tenth century AD. There is the Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the Torah, made under Ptolemy in the 3rd century BC. The oldest copy of the Septuagint is centuries older than the oldest complete Masoretic text, and fragments of the Septuagint date to the 2nd century BC. There is also the Samaritan Torah, which emerged after the Assyrian occupation of the northern kingdom of Israel. The Peshitta, a translation of the Christian Bible into Syriac, a variant of Aramaic, can be useful in determining authenticity of passages and hence help establish dates. The earliest known copy of the Peshitta dates to the 2nd century.

Answer 2

Unless you learn ancient languages, a translation of the Bible is the oldest book you can read.

Answer 3

.... I heard that the oldest book in the world is on corn husks from the Pagans' writings of the God and the Goddess, but they have already been destroyed in an attempt to wipe out the Pagans.

Answer 4

Interesting....

The oldest book you could read would have to be in your language, which wouldn't make it THAT old, unless you can read Sanskrit.

For English....Domesday Book, or the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer.

Answer 5

The Bible unless you want to read ancient language written by pagans. Satan couldn't get his pagan words translated into every language, only God can do that.

A lot of pagan literature clay tablets passed away from Sumerimus and Nimrod but a Brittish Museum has some you can look at if you want to waste your time.

The oldest Book in the Bible is the Book of Job. One of my favorites because God lets man know who he really is and what limitations he has. The book of Job is all about us.

Answer 6

I can offer The Republic by Plato, that's around 2,500 years old, and there is one by Xenophon that was written around the same time about the Peloponnesian War it is an eyewitness account of real events, unlike some fantasy books mentioned above and below me.

Answer 7

There is a Christian bible translation that goes back to the third century but there are many old books around. It just depends on what you are looking for. Quality of content or age

Answer 8

The Enuma-Elish, the Vedas, the I Ching, the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Answer 9

Thanks For Your Question

Well there are many old books but the oldest unchanged book till now and yet the most authentic is definitely the Quraan the book of Muslims which is written 1400 years ago

Answer 10

Maybe A Dr. Seuss book, or something about sesame street