Why did the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings grow in authority during the Persian and Hellenistic periods and begin to be collected and read in sequence? In this collection of essays, each of the five books is addressed by two established scholars who explore themes and topics that made that book a candidate to be read and reread in the specified periods in which most scholars would agree the book was gaining authority. The focus is not on when each book was written or the historicity of the material contained in it but on the larger impact the book might have had on primary or secondary audiences as part of emerging Torah. The volume focuses uniquely on why readers and rereaders in the Persian and Hellenistic periods found these books to encapsulate emerging Jewish identity and how they used the past to address the present and the future. This book will appeal to those who want to understand more fully the socio-religious function of emerging Torah in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods. Contributors include Klaus-Peter Adam, Yairah Amit, Thomas M. Bolin, Philip R. Davies, Serge Frolov, Susanne Gilmayr-Bucher, E. Axel Knauf, Christoph Levin, James R. Linville, and Thomas Romer, with an introduction by the editor. Book jacket.