I've been poking around on how the Jews collected the Old Testament. My personal library doesnt contain any books on the subject. So I haven't gotten past these two references. This...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developme ... ible_canon
... which points to this.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/artic ... ible-canon
A good summary of the basics seems to be this quote from the jewishencyclopedia site:
Both wiki and jewish encyclopedia include the sources for the hebrew canon.The narrative of Neh. viii.-x., which describes an actual canonization, is of prime importance for the history of the collection of the Holy Writings. It is thus generally agreed that in the middle of the fifth century B.C. the first part of the canon was extant.
How do we extrapolate back behind that date? How did/do Jewish scholars (since it is their's?)