Thank you for the question on the history of the Bible, “What is the history of all the Bibles? When did the first Bible come out? What was it, and in what language was the bible in, up to the Bible’s we use now?”
The history of the Bible is subjected to much discussion and debate depending on one’s dating of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Regarding the Old Testament, there is the “early” dating and the “late” dating for the scrolls in the Old Testament. There are biblical scholars who predate the Old Testament before the Babylonian Exile of 586 BCE and those who postdate the Old Testament after the Babylonian Exile. My position is that the Old Testament Scrolls of the Books were formed and collected prior to the Babylonian Exile.
The Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures are divided in this manner: “The Hebrew Bible is often known among Jews as TaNaKh, an acronym derived from the names of its three divisions:
“Torah (Instruction, or Law, also called the Pentateuch), Neviʾim (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings).
The Torah contains five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Neviʾim comprise eight books divided into the Former Prophets, containing the four historical works Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the Latter Prophets, the oracular discourses of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve (Minor—i.e., smaller) Prophets—Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The Twelve were all formerly written on a single scroll and thus reckoned as one book. The Ketuvim consist of religious poetry and wisdom literature—Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, a collection known as the Five Megillot (Five Scrolls; i.e., Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, which have been grouped together according to the annual cycle of their public reading in the synagogue)—and the books of Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, and Chronicles.” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literture/Old-Testament-canon).
As one reads the Old Testament, The Torah or the Book of Moses is the core of the Israel’s faith. Their religious and cultural life of the Israelites were built on the Torah. Every facet of their lives were affecting by the commands of God. The priests were keepers, teachers, and judges in the application of the Law. It would be reasonable to assume that the Law was kept and treasured by the priests. The Law specify when Israel was to have a king, he was to take a scroll and copy the Law from which he would meditate and apply the Law when people came to him for justice (Deut. 17:18). The the Law was to be preserved.
Israel’s first king is Saul but it was David and Solomon who established the Israel kingdom by defeating the surrounding nations. It was David who helped organized the Levitical priesthood in the worship of the YHWH and Solomon who built the Temple. As an establish nation with a centralized government and religion, it would also be reasonable that a history of that nation would be written. The likely writer would have been Samuel being the first judge and prophet for Israel as he grew up in the Tabernacle but before the Temple was built or someone who had the oral tradition transmitted to him. The Poetry books would have been collected and organized during the reign of David-Solomon. As Israel declined into idolatry, the prophets and their words were recorded in scrolls which were likely preserved by the priests. Daniel had access to the writing of Jeremiah of 70 years of captivity and to the writing of Moses which he cites in his prayer to God (Dan. 9:1–19).
The question becomes how organized were the scrolls in the Old Testament? The three fold division would be a reasonable one as the judges and priests would organized the various scrolls into some order. It just wouldn’t be place in a pile of scrolls since the scrolls were read on the Sabbath Day and the Israelites Festivals. The scrolls were viewed as being the Words of God.
With the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the priest would have preserved them so that returning exile Jews could re-institute the worship of YAHWEH. Ezra is known as the Teacher of the Law during the exiled time period. The three fold division of the Old Testament would be a natural division of the Old Testament books: The Laws, The Prophets, and the Poetry books.
As one reads on canonicity, the New Testament Books would also follow along the the context of the writings: The Gospels, the Epistles, and History of the Church being Acts. The various Gospels and Epistles were written on animal skins or parchments, depending what was available in the origin autographs. With the early church being persecuted from time to time, Christian centers as Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Constantinople, and Rome had copies of the various scrolls. As Constantine ended the persecution of Christians and become the “state” religion, the Council of Nicea was called to discuss the newly accepted religion for the Roman Empire. Part that discussion dealt with the deity of Christ and the Scriptures. It was at this gathering that the Old Testament and New Testament was formed into one book, now known as the Bible.
The earliest surviving completed “Bible” is the Codex Sinaiticus dating to the fourth century. The Muratorian Canon lists books of the New Testament which reflects that the early Christians had a recognized listing of books of the New Testament.
The Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek, known as the Septuagint in the 3rd BCE, while the New Testament writings were in Greek. There is some debate as to whether the Gospel of Matthew was written in Aramaic.
Wikipedia states that the Bible has been translated into 704 languages and the New Testament in over 1500 languages.
One can read about the history of the Bible under the topic, canonicity of the Bible, on the internet. I have given a perspective and general overview.
For more perspectives: