What was the chain of custody for the biblical manuscripts?

Question

From the beginning of when the biblical manuscripts were being written to the time they were finished to the time of The King James Version, who had custody of them?

Answer 1

This is an excellent question, being that the final version of the Old Testament didn't get compiled until appx. 600 BCE in Babylon, during the "captivity", and the Jewish calendar began circa 3750 BCE!

This implies an Oral Tradition of songs were used to pass on this cultural & religious message for 3,000 years (That's at least 150 generations)!

Additionally, Moses who allegedly composed the Torah, (The 1st five books of the Old Testament), lived around the 16th Century BCE, while Job's book was composed in the 23rd Century BCE, yet it is in the middle of the Old Testament, while Moses' book, "written" during the "middle times", comes at the begininng...

There was a good bit of editing that went on!

Finally, not only has the Bible been written in different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic, Greek & Latin), but it wasn't until the 16th Century, that it first appeared in English (King James)...

Taking into account time, memory, and the materials that it was usually hand-written on, (decaying matter), it is a bit naive to consider the reliabilityy of these transcribed documents, as containing foolproof accuracy...

Who had custody?

Many, many ordinary secular people, as well as scribes, scholars, translators, kings, monks and Popes, who spoke many different languages, from many different cultures...From Mesopotamia to the Iberian Peninsula, from England to Alexandria, from Rome to Armenia, from Ethiopia to Russia!

The ancient Judeo-Christian world covered an area twice the size of the USA, and that's without focusing on 5,000+ years of Linguistic Drift, and travel by foot, or horse-drawn cart!

Answer 2

You might look for the history written by Josephus, a Jewish author that lived not long after Jesus.  I saw the book recently in a local book store. You know if you search the word "Bible" you get 3 trillion sites, search the word "evolution" you get some musical band. LOL

Man, only one thumbs down, how did that happen?