I would like this thread to be about the Bible, the history of how it was written, what it meant to the people while its writing was still in progress, how the Canon was selected, why some books are omitted or rejected by Jєωs, Protestants, and so forth, and what other books almost made it, or are even honored by certain (ancient schismatic) groups of Christians such as the Coptics, the Ethiopians, and even the East Orthodox and what the Church thinks of such books, and the various biblical texts, and so forth.
As St. Jerome says, "ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ," and I believe that goes as much for the Old Testament as it does for the New. Whatever Catholics may think about modern Jєωs (all who did not follow Christ), the ancient Jєωs of the Bible days (especially Old Testament times) were our spiritual progenitors and as such deserve our highest regard and veneration, and it is they and their religion which fascinates me.
I'd like to start with the Biblical book of Genesis. By tradition, Genesis is attributed to Moses, even called the "First Book of Moses." Some scholars have speculated that it was actually written much later by others, and often go on about "Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomic, and Priestly" sources for it. However, there is another explanation which makes more sense and which I think these scholars have overlooked.
I really don't think Moses just sat down and wrote Genesis from scratch, either from his own personal wisdom or even with an angel at his side giving dictation. Clearly he appears to have been assembling it from a variety of sources, perhaps some written and others oral or even familial, as known among the Jєωs of his own time. So let's look at this time.
The Jєωs were then currently enslaved to the Egyptians, foreigners to them who rarely interacted socially with their Egyptian slavemasters but kept to themselves, evidently believing in there being a sacred promise made out to them by God, to deliver them and bring them to the Promised Land one day. It was this belief from God which sustained the ancient Israelites, through the drudgery of their servitude. It is mind-boggling to me to realize that at that time the only "Bible" as existed thus far was what would amount to the book of Genesis - all of the rest, Exodus on through the Torah (Law), the Prophets, the Psalms and various other later writings, and finally the New Testament were all in the future, as of yet unrealized.
While God (and Moses) were raining the various plagues against Egypt and its Pharaoh, how would have "my people" (as in "let my people go") have known that it was their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that was punishing Egypt and setting them free? How would they have even known who Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob even were, unless Genesis existed, whether as a book already assembled more or less in its current form, or still as the various oral and family traditions and various scattered sacred docuмents treasured by them?
I think this traditional material - in whatever form the enslaved Jєωs knew of it - had a lot to do with why it was that even after some centuries (and many generations) of living in Egypt they never assimilated into the Egyptian culture, never accepted it gods, never (or virtually never) intermarried with the Egyptians, and socially pretty much kept to themselves, even living by a different means (sheep herding) than at least most Egyptians. I believe these accounts which we find in Genesis formed a big part of what gave them their identity as a society, race, and nation separate and distinct from the Egyptians, the Canaanites, and everyone else of the ancient lands.
Any thoughts, before moving on to Exodus?