Interesting Ideas : Documentary Hypothesis

Last night before bed, I conducted in my not-unusual practice of ODing on Wikipedia. I don't know where I started nor where I ended, but somewhere in between, I got on to reading about the Old Testament of the Bible. I am in no way shape or form a biblical scholar, nor do I aim to be, but I do sometimes think about the historical context to things... sometimes of which is the bible. I didn't read the Davinci Code, but around the time of all the hubub regarding it, as well as the references in HBO's Carnivale series, I got somewhat interested in Gnostic texts - specifically why these texts were not part of the bible, yet others were. Additionally, why do Islam, Judaeism, and Christianity essentially share the same old Testements, but only "essentially" (i.e. some differences and texts left out or included). To be fair, I have not given this much thought outside of "huh, that is kinda weird" and then go back to doing whatever I was doing. However, last night, I read quite a few of the articles related to the Documentary Hypothesis and it was pretty interesting. So, if you have ever been interested in the context of the bible, give the below a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_Hypothesis