You may have heard something like: here is an old woman who has a very old Bible, and here is what is written there... Like there was some original Bible, it was written a long time ago, and now everyone is making copies of it.
In reality, it is not that simple.

Let's first determine who is the author of the Bible?

2Ti.3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God...

God inspired man, and man wrote using his vocabulary and...
That is, the author is God and man.
There are no questions with God, but who is this man?

How was it?

It seems that Moses sat down and wrote the Pentateuch in the form in which we have it now.

Not that simple. The logic of one book - one author is suitable for pulp novels or a small book. The Bible should not be read, but studied. Textbooks are written by a group of people, where there is a project manager and the authorship belongs to the organization that stands behind this work.

So is the Bible, people wrote the material that was then used by the scribes, and the real author was:

in the Old Testament - the Masoretes.
in the New Testament - the church.

They were the ones who determined what would be included in the canon, what would not be included and in what form. They determined whether it would be Holy Scripture or just historical books.

Not literally

Now we have such a concept as copyright.
The text is copied literally and cannot be changed in any way.
It was not like that before, and there was no technical possibility to copy the text.

Firstly, many texts were transmitted orally, as traditions.
For example, the history of creation, parables.
For example, the Proverbs of Solomon were collected and written down by order of the king who ruled hundreds of years later (Prov. 25:1 And these are the proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, collected.).
Traditions were not memorized and passed on, but the essence, key moments were remembered, the rest in one's own words.

The attitude to the written text was similar.
Of course, the text was rewritten literally, but if the author saw an inaccuracy, a discrepancy, he could change it.
For example, if a word became obsolete, it was replaced with a new one.
Thus, there was no need to make a new version of the text, it could never be outdated.
After the advent of printing, texts began to become outdated and there was a need to create new translations of the Bible.

Not all text was rewritten literally, the text could be used as material.
Then there was no requirement to indicate authorship when quoting.
It was possible not to quote literally, but to use a thought, a fact ...
For example, let's take the books of Kings.
Obviously, many chroniclers worked on the text, and then the scribes took their material and used it to write these books.
The material could change, facts and key things could not change.
Therefore, there is some discrepancy between the texts of Kings and the texts of Chronicles.
The discrepancy is not in essence, not in facts, but in description, in details.

The Pentateuch was created in a similar way. Only Deuteronomy belonged to one author and was one whole book.
The rest is a collection of texts and traditions.

When was Tanakh (Old Testament) written?

Stage 1

Creation of the material itself - texts, traditions.

Stage 2

The scribes in Babylon did most of the work.
The thing is that the priests in Israel were very busy, they had to:

conduct worship in the temple,
organize the delivery and maintenance of animals intended for sacrifice in the temple,
slaughter an animal for sacrifice, cut it up, cook it,
clean up after all this,
someone had to organize the whole process,
provide firewood for the altar,
water for ablutions,
wash clothes after each sacrifice
and much more ...

And what happened during the captivity in Babylon? They did not have these concerns.
Synagogues appeared in Babylon as a place of assembly and a library.

Then the time of the scribes came, they began to collect and organize the Scriptures.

Stage 3

The Masoretes brought the text to the form we use now:

defined the canon and order of books,
defined the content of the books - collected many manuscripts, determined the text that best corresponded to the original,
added spaces (separated words),
divided into verses (there were no punctuation marks yet, and the scripture was read in a singsong voice),
created and added vowel marks.

And they did all this during the first millennium, they did not record exact dates.

When and by whom was the New Testament written?

At the end of the 1st century.
At first they expected the quick 2nd coming of the Messiah, but when Jesus' disciples began to die, they decided that it was necessary to record their testimony on paper.
The teaching should be written by the 12 apostles or with their approval.

The real author of the New Testament was the church.
It determined which book and in what form would be included in the canon.

There was also a natural selection, the choice was among the books popular in the churches.
Unpopular books were simply not copied and died.
Would you rewrite a book if you were not sure that it would be interesting to someone?

For example, the Gospel of Luke in the first edition began with the 2nd chapter.
No one was interested in the birth of Jesus, they were interested in the service Jesus.
Later, when everything became interesting, the Gospel of Luke began to be used in its entirety.

The story of the woman caught in adultery with the famous phrase of Jesus: "He who is without sin among you, let him first throw a stone at her" (John 8:7)
This story is a late insertion. It was not in the early manuscripts.
The story was simply so good and the authorship so convincing that it had to be included in the canon somehow.
So they inserted it into the Gospel of Luke, then the Gospel of John, first in one place, then in another.
There is nothing strange here. After all, an attempt was made to make a single gospel from 4 gospels by removing repetitions.

"The Epistle to the Hebrews" had no authorship, perhaps the author wanted to remain anonymous, perhaps for security reasons.
But for inclusion in the canon, authorship approved by the apostles was required, such is the order.
Apostolic authorship is obvious, Paul's teaching, but it was definitely not written by Paul.
Purely formally, authorship was attributed to Paul in order to include it in the canon.

Text Changes

But it wasn't just the church that changed the text.
The monks added fasting to the text:

Mark 9:29 This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting

1Cor 7:5 Do not deprive one another, except by agreement for a time, that you may devote yourselves to fasting and prayer

These places didn't have the word FAST, but the monks often practiced fasting, so they added it, though for themselves.
And we found these manuscripts and are using them.

The Literality of the Old Testament

The Masoretes brought the Tanakh to a single standard and now there is a single version, almost literal.
What does this give? - it gives the opportunity to perceive the Scripture literally, not to follow, but to twist it as you please.
Like lawyers with the law. Today, the court does not protect the weak and the offended, but makes money on trials, where the most skilled lawyers win cases.

But in fact, do the Masoretes have the right to determine the content of the Tanakh?
The Scripture already existed before the coming of Jesus, the Septuagint translation was made from it.
The Qumran scrolls are recognized as the original text, and they date back to about the time when Jesus walked the earth and preached.

By the way, today, when translating the Bible, among other things, the text of the Septuagint and the Qumran scrolls is used.

Inaccuracies in the New Testament

Late insertions of the New Testament

The number of discrepancies in the manuscripts of the New Testament, according to some estimates, is more than 5 thousand, according to others - 200-400 thousand.
It's just a matter of counting. The overwhelming majority of variant readings are obvious typos: missing letters, words ...

Types of New Testament text

The text of the New Testament manuscripts can be divided into 4 groups:

Alexandrian text
Western text
Caesarean text
Byzantine text

There is some difference in the texts, but not in essence, does not change the teaching of the church one iota.

The main thing we need to know about this:

All the variant readings did not affect the essence of Scripture in any way - it is not that in one place Jesus was resurrected, and in another He was not resurrected ...
We do not have the exact literal text of the New Testament

Jh 1:1 In in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Word — (ancient Greek λόγος — thought, word, understanding, law, meaning, concept, reason)

Why did God allow all these mistakes and inaccuracies to happen?
What is more important here is LOGOS - thought. It is now that people become lawyers, and lawyers study the law in order to manipulate it.
Therefore LOGOS.

Another thing, ordinary people do not know the Bible text literally, they have the opportunity to read the translation.
And this is more than enough, otherwise salvation would not be available.

So the truth is true:

Mat 23:24 Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!

2Cor 3:6 ... the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Trinity

1Jh 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one.

1Ti 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh

The Church added texts about the trinity that were not in the source, in order to add proof to its teaching.
A very strange position, the truth does not need help, it is capable of standing up for itself.

Moreover, these insertions did a bad service, they say that since they were added, it means that there are no convincing places about the trinity in the Bible.
Therefore, if you talk to a Jehovah's Witness, do not quote these places, otherwise he will be right.