“In the beginning, God…” so begins the first book in the modern Bible. While most of the books which comprise the composite Bible have references to those who wrote them down, these writers wherever source is mentioned attribute the authorship to God. This is summed up by the writer Paul in the second book to Timothy, chapter 3, verse 16:
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” (KJV)
No proof of authorship is given although references abound in the texts that God “gave” the message. The writers were typically scribes, priests who were also scribes, leaders who dictated to scribes or later in the later books after the earthly life of Jesus, men educated enough to write in Greek or having access to those who could write.
While the first mention of writing in the Bible itself was by the finger of God on tablets of stone, that account itself was transmitted on papyrus. Papyrus was an early type of ‘paper’ which was made out of reeds matted together into scrolls. There are some examples of texts on clay inscribed by a stylus but clay would have be too cumbersome for books. The earliest books are not necessarily the first in the sequence of the modern Bible. The Jewish Talmud (the entire first 39 books were Jewish recordings) has the Torah (Pentateuch) as the first five books of the modern Bible and are a primarily sequential record of the ancestors and God’s workings before the nation of Israel began to occupy Palestine Major. While many have tried to timestamp the early chapters of Genesis, book of beginnings, and Bishop Usher’s date notations appeared in Bible editions within 100 years of his 1654 publishing, there is no date stamp in the Bible for the “beginning” of creation or even the creation of man. While some make a case for adding all the “begat’s” in Genesis, other later chronologies imply some begat links are father to grandson. While we have records of the lineage of ethnic groups, these always have a specific purpose which is not an inclusive history. Most of the rest of the earlier books are grouped by types – Law, History, Poetry, Prophets – which are the content or source and not sequence.
The means of the transmission – scribal tradition – is quite important in believability of the texts as far as the accuracy of the transmitting over the centuries. All of what Christians know as the Old Testament was subject to the Rabbinical law which required painstaking accuracy in copying the source manuscript. This was before white-out, erasers or backspacing and corrections were not allowed in copies. Scribes would have to start over, at the least going back and removing the page they were on, binding in a new blank sheet of papyrus and then beginning again. Depending upon the rabbinical school, the scribe might well have to start the scroll over again. Accuracy meant that much to the copying of God’s words to them. It was sacred, rare, honored, esteemed, valued, cherished.
The original manuscripts did not survive. Moses was attributed as the writer of parts of the Torah which would have placed those originals circa Second Millennium BC would likely have been written in early Aramaic but Biblical Hebrew was the language for later generations. In the late Old Testament era, the entire Hebrew Canon was translated into Koine Greek, the trade language before (4th century BC) and through the time of Jesus (to mid-6th century AD) and was a direct translation from Hebrew. This Greek translation was done in Alexandria, Egypt as is known as the Septuagint translation.
The Christian New Testament was also written with few exceptions in Koine Greek which was the trade language of the era and was unusually well-suited for recording the message of the text. Koine has better tenses, more denotative characteristics, is a much more precise language than any other for having definitive meaning.
Additional Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology
