(1) the Torah, or The Law is the first five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers), generally attributed to Moses. While the nearly mythological Moses may have originally compiled the Law, it is clear that he did not finish the work himself, and that it was compiled (partially at least) from older documents. The first part of Genesis still contains ancient Hebrew hieroglyphic elements which are ignored by most translators, but which are keys to the meanings of these otherwise obscure passages. Genesis tells the story of Creation up to the death of Joseph. The rest of the Law chronicles the life of Moses and exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land.

(2) the Prophets, consisting of Joshua, judges, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve (or Minor) Prophets;

the Writings (Hagiographa), a heterogeneous group to which belong (a) Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, (b) the Scrolls (tvlegillot), consisting of the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs), Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, (c) Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and First and Second Chronicles.

Moses (or whoever compiled the Torah) took ancient writings and added the story of the Exodus and a compilation of Jewish legal rulings.

It is believed that a single author took the writing of Samuel and other authors and edited them into Joshua, Judges, I & II Samuel, and I & II Kings.

Another set of editors compiled the foregoing and a number of other writings into the present Old Testament.

The canon of the Jews as it stands was adopted A.D. c.100; the traditional order and the extant Hebrew texts all derive from one Hebrew source of the first centuries of the Piscean Age, the Masora. The origin of the Masoretic version is unknown. The Old Testament long used in the Christian church was derived not from the Masoretic but from an entirely different text. The Septuagint, a Hellenistic Jewish translation into Creek about the 3d cent. B.C., became the Old Testament of Christianity, and later translations were made from it or patterned after it. The Septuagint version was an attempt to bring the Jewish texts in line with the Pagan/Gnostic teachings of the Mediterranean world. The canon of the Septuagint was different from that of the Masora.

The New Testament is composed of two parts: The Gospels and the Epistles.

(1)The Gospels are: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Book of Acts is the second half of the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Mark is not included in the canon of the New Testament, but is regarded by most scholars as a legitimate gospel.

(2) The Epistles are (a)Paul's letters to: the Romans, the Corinthians (1 & 2), the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Colossians, the Thessalonians (1&2), Timothy (1&2). Titus, Philomon, the Hebrews, (b) the general epistle of James, two epistles by Peter, three epistles by John, the general epistle of Jude, and the Revelation of John the Divine.

Paul probably never existed by is a fabrication to cover-up the true author and character, Apollonius.

Revelation was originally written by Judas Iscariot and added to by others over the decades.

Celebrated manuscripts of the Bible include Codex Vaticanus (Greek, 4th cent.) at the Vatican;

Codex Sinaiticus (Greek, 4th cent.) in the British Museum (discovered by Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin von Tischendore on Mt. Sinai),

Codcx Alexandrinus (Greek, 5th cent.), in the British Museum, given to King Charles I by Cyril Lucaris;

Codex Bezae (Greek and Latin, 6th cent.), at Cambridge, England, given by Theodore Beza.

The most ancient fragments of the Hebrew text are the 2nd cent. B.C. papyrus of Nash, discovered in 1902 in Al Vayyum, Egypt, and the Dead Sea Scrolls , containing several books and fragments of the Old Testament. The most ancient fragments of the Greek test are found in the 2nd cent. AD Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in 1945. 

The first great translation of the whole Bible was the Vulgate of St. Jerome, the Latin version still used by the Roman Catholic Church. The Greek text generally received in the East is, for the Old Testament, that of the Septuagent; the first translation of the Old Testament was the Aramaic Targum. The New Testament has come down to us in Greek. In England there were current from early times vernacular versions of parts of the Bible, especially of the Gospels, since the Gospel was often read at Mass in the vernacular after its recitation in Latin. John Wyclif was one of the first to project the publication and distribution of the Bible in the vernacular among the English people, and two translated versions go by his name. In the 15th cent. the Lollards did much to extend the use of the Wyclifite translation. The next name in the history of the English Bible is that of William Tyndale, whose translation was not from Latin. like Wyclif’s. but from Hebrew and Greek. Its excellence is why it was made the basis of the Authorized Version. Tyndale’s New Testament (1525-26) was the first English translation to be printed. Contemporary with Tyndale was Miles Coverdale. The second version of Coverdale and the translation of Thomas Matthew closely followed Tyndale. In 1539 the crown issued its first Bible, in the name of Henry VIII. This, the Great Bible, was done principally by Coverdale. The Geneva Bible, or Breeches Bible (“. . . made themselves breeches,’ Gen. 3.7), was a revision of the Great Bible, financed and annotated by the Calvinists of Geneva. The Bishops’ Bible (1568) was a recasting of Tyndale. The greatest of all English translations was the Authorized Version (AV), or King lames Version (KIV), of 1611, made by a great committee of churchmen led by Lancelot Andrewes  and cornposed of many of the finest scholars in England. The beautiful English of this version has had great influence and is generally ranked in English literature with the work of Shakespeare. This is because the final work was edited by the Poet Laureate, Frances Bacon, who, of course was Shakespear's ghost writer. 

 The Douay, or Rheims-Douay, Version was published by Roman Catholic scholars at Rheims (New Testament, 1582) and Douai, France (Old Testament, 1610); it was extensively revised by Richard Chalioner.