When where did the first book appear?

Answer 1

It is widely believed that Moses wrote the first five books of The Bible, although there is no evidence to support this tradition. If true, this would mean that the first books of the Hebrew Bible appeared around 1400 BCE.

However, many scholars believe that the Bible evolved during the first millennium BCE, with Deuteronomy, the first book of the Bible as we know it, appearing during the reign of King Josiah, around 622 BCE.

The New Testament was not completed until the middle of the second century CE. It only remained for the Church to decide on which books to incorporate in its canon.

Answer 2

The final form of the biblical canon, or books considered to be inspired, was not settled until some time later, although many of the books which found their way into the final collection were regarded as authoritative very early on. Of course, we are here talking about an Old Testament in Hebrew (and a little aramaic in Daniel) and a New Testament in Greek.

The translations of the whole Bible into various languages began with the Latin Vulgate of Jerome, which he continued to revise up until 385 AD. Later there came translations of the Bible by Erasmus, Wycliffe (into English from Jerome's Latin) Luther into German (from the Greek and Hebrew) and many others down to this present day.

As far as the earliest written records, which eventually found their way into scripture, a number of theologians attribute these to around the time of Abraham, given that writing is known to have been in wide use well before his time (born c. 2161 BC). It has been suggested that Moses merely put into final form the records he inherited, since he obviously could not have had personal knowledge of these events. Scholars have recognized various 'tablets' marked by particular phrases which mark the subject matter contained in each one, throughout the book of Genesis.

Thus, if Abraham wrote these, they would have been in existence sometime around 2100 BC or shortly after. The final form into which they would have been edited by Moses, would have been sometime before the entry into Canaan in c.1400 BC.

Answer 3

The first book appeared many thousands of years ago-actually on scrolls.