No set of scripture dates for the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament will satisfy all readers and scholars. Choices based on scholarly evidence must be weighed. The dates of this timeline are based on research as presented in the Jerome Biblical Commentary by Raymond Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer and Roland Murphy, The Bible Timeline by Thomas Robinson, and The Handbook of Biblical Chronology by Jack Finegan. Brown, Fitzmyer and Murphy also present their findings in The New Jerome Bible Handbook. The crucial date chosen from all this research in creating a baseline for the timeline is the time of the Exodus. The evidence that Rameses II was the pharaoh of the Exodus is cogent enough to warrant its use in building this timeline. As with most research, some set of criteria must be chosen to present the dates of the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament books. This timeline uses periods of time during which the particular books were either collected, formulated and/or written. The oldest Christian canon of Old Testament books, the Septuagint canon, as affirmed by the North African Church Councils of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) was also used. This list of 46 books remain intact until this day and possess the most authority. The 46 books were the canon of the Christian Old Testament for almost 1100 years until the 16th century. The shaded rectangles for each book do not propose to be chronologically accurate in terms of length of development and serve only to denote the period of time during which the book probably developed. Accuracy of length of development can never be determined. The heavily shaded portion of the rectangle approaches the date(s) research shows as most probable for the event. If there are more specific dates calculated for the period of the development of a book, they are given with the shaded area of the rectangles.