The oldest elements of the Torah, Nevim, and Ketuvim occur with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which range in age from the 3rd century BCE to 68 CE. Other than that, we have the Lenningrad Codex, which was written around 1010 CE. However, this differes from some of the Dead Sea Scrolls (many of which have nothing to do with "accepted" holy works), as it is masoretic. Hebrew has an alphabet of only consonants, as such many Rabbinical scholars in the medival period were concerned that the language would be either lost or changed irrevocably. They added vowel signs to the consanant alphabet... which makes it a fairly different read. AlsoancientHebrewoftenhasallwordswrittentogetherinastring, so it sometimes lends to interpetation. You'd be amazed at how much of an invention the vowel was, let alone spaces between words and punctuation.
But I digress. The point is, any existence of these texts and their interpretations is infered past the earliest date of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 300 BCE-ish. They obviously existed, and were probably formulated with the later kings of Israel. But there are no set dates (a stern eye to hoaryhead).
It is probably best to be conservative and apply the oldest dates for initial writings for roughly 750-700 BCE, just to be on the safe side, though this does not include oral tradition. I would argue that the Rig Vedas are older even when conservatively dated, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics older still. But on the subject of Aborigional art in Australia, I heard it suggested that some cave paintings were 50,000 years old. This is odd as the oldest confirmed existence for anyone in Australia is roughly 46,000 BCE... which coincidentally coincides with the obliteration of Australia's marsupial megafauna. But hands down, Australia has the oldest contextual religious(?) representation... but don't assume that foragers don't change. Religions interpretations by aborigional people probably have changed radically, perhaps more so than Judaisim or Hinduism, don't fall into the trap that all foraging peoples are alike. I would give the medal to either Chauvet cave in France (35,000 BCE) or Australia at 50,000, 46,000 BCE... whatever their dates may be.
Interesting that the margin between Australia and Chauvet is far greater than the range of proposed existence of all the other major religious texts of Egypt, Israel, and India put together. Perhaps we are missing the point entirely, and it is the fact that they are written down that is important... that the authors recognized and feared cultural change and sought to limit it by codifying beliefs.
Au revoir,
Theus
Veri Omni Veritas
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