What language was the Bible first written in, and who wrote it?

toughynutter

The christian Bible is a compulation of many stories from multiple authors over a large period of time. Therefore it is also multiple languages. " It wasn't until the first century B.C.E. (Before the Common Era, aka B.C.) that Jews settled on the canon of their scripture, and it was around 400 C.E. (Common Era, aka A.D.) that Christians agreed on all the books of their New Testament ...The oldest written parts of the Bible found were transcribed in three languages. What scholars call the Hebrew Bible (the same books Jews call the Tanakh or Written Torah and Christians call the Old Testament) was first written in Hebrew with a few chapters of the books of Ezra and Daniel recorded in Aramaic ...The Christian New Testament was written in the first century C.E. in the common Greek of the Mediterranean area and parts of the Middle East at the time. This form of Greek is called Koine Greek." http://ask.yahoo.com/20030227.html Mar 11 07, 2:10 PM

Arpeggionist

There is linguistic evidence to suggest that the Greek version of the New Testament is also translated from Hebrew and Aramaic, but if it was than the original texts are lost to posterity, and the Greek is to be considered more authentic. Mar 11 07, 2:57 PM

star_gazer

Many claim that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. Mar 11 07, 5:28 PM

Arpeggionist

If I had to place a bet on the authorship of the first five books of the Bible as well as many books of the prophets (such as Judges), I'd say that it was a project headed by King Y'ho'ash (Jehoash), and later taken over by Hezekiah. Mar 12 07, 2:23 AM

BungeeAZ

The bible was first written in Hebrew and it is called the Torah. Mar 12 07, 11:09 AM

Baloo55th

As to who wrote it, most of the earlier books are unidentifiable as to authorship. More than one original source has been combined into books like Genesis, and the attribution to a particular person (like Moses) is not reliable. Did all those kings whose exploits are recorded in the first person on walls and papyrus actually write them themselves? Highly unlikely. (Also unlikely that they even did most of the things recorded, as the same exploits almost word for word can be found for two or more kings...) When you get to the Babylonian captivity period, there are books more possibly written by the people whose name is attached to them, although there is great dispute about these - the books of Nehemiah and Malachi for two (Malachi may not even have existed but may be a mistake, and Nehemiah, while he did exist, may have written part of his book, but not all). All the parts of the Bible wre revised at dates well later than their original composition, and largely in accordance with the views of whoever was in religious or political power at the time. As it turned out, the Jehovah Party won most of the battles, defeating the Baal Party (and similar at other dates), but it could have gone the other way. In which case, we'd have a different set of books explaining how the prophets of Baal defeated the heathen Jehovah worshippers and established the true faith. Mar 12 07, 12:19 PM