Where did the Bible we read today come from?

1. Orgin 1450BC - 600AD

The roots of the Bible go back over 3000 years, and we must consider the society and practices in that era.

An excellent oral tradition - something that we have lost. e.g. the ability to memorise all the Psalms as an on-line hymnary.
The few scholars that had access to documents had poor documentation control. Old documents were not handed down to us because they were used, then copied just before they ended their useful life. The copiers were very accurate, but this does account for the difficulty in finding ancient manuscripts.
Up to Jesus' time, writing something as a ghost writer was seen as veneration of that person not forgery, as is sometimes suspected with some NT writings.

HEBREW
The original manuscripts for the OT. Written between 1450 BC and 400 BC. Written in archaic Hebrew, gradually changed to modern square script Hebrew after 400 BC, and still used to this day. Around 500 AD the Masoretes developed a system of vowel and accents to punctuate the text, they also standardised the text and content, preparing it for printing much later (Psalter 1477, Full OT 1488). The oldest surviving material was the Masoretic from the 9C, until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 from 2-1C BC

Certain portions of the Old Testament (Daniel and Ezra mainly) are written in Aramaic. Aramaic was used from 900BC onwards. Aramaic was used by the common people, while Hebrew remained the language of religion and government and of the upper class. Jesus and the Apostles are believed to have spoken Aramaic, and Aramaic-language translations (Targums) of the Old Testament circulated. Aramaic continued in wide use until about 650AD, when it was supplanted
by Arabic.

SEPTUAGINT
or LXX, from the story that 72 scholars (6 from each of the 12 tribes) working in 12 groups produced 12 identical Greek translations from Hebrew, although analysis shows widely differing Greek styles.

As Greek became the daily language of the Jews in Egypt the translation was made. The Torah, or Pentateuch (first 5 books of the OT) in 3C BC and the rest in 2C BC. The Septuagint contains 29 Old Testament and 14 Apocrypha books.

The language of much of the early Christian church was Greek, the Jews did not like this "highjacking" of their scripture, so Rabbis met at the city of Jamnia or Javneh in 90 AD to determine which books were truly the Word of God. They pronounced many books, including the Gospels, to be unfit as scriptures. This canon also excluded seven books (Baruch, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, and the Wisdom of Solomon, plus portions of Esther and Daniel) that Christians considered part of the Old Testament. The Septuagint's subsequent history lies within the Christian church.

In the 3 C AD Origen attempted to clear up copyists' errors that had crept into the text of the Septuagint, which by then varied widely from copy to copy. Other scholars also consulted the Hebrew text in order to make the Septuagint text more accurate. But it was the Septuagint, not the original Hebrew, that was the main basis for the

Old Latin,
Coptic, peasant communities of Egypt (late 3 C AD)
Ethiopic, written after conversion to Christianity 4-5 C AD. Earliest surviving version 13 C AD.
Armenian, result of nationalist upsurge and church split in 5 C AD. Noted for its beauty & accuracy.
Georgian, 5 C AD, some parts may be based on the Armenian version.
Slavonic, numerous translations over the centuries starting 1 C AD.
and part of the Arabic translations of the Old Testament.
It has never ceased to be the standard version of the Old Testament in the Greek church, and from it Jerome began his translation of the Vulgate Old Testament.

Earliest surviving versions of the Septuagint (& therefore the NT) are Codex Vaticanus (B) and the Codex Sinaiticus (S), both from the 4th C AD, and the Codex Alexandrinus (A) from the 5 C AD. Fragments of Acts, Revelation, John and Luke from as early as 3 C AD also exist in various documents.

VULGATE
This most famous Latin translation was by St Jerome, sponsored by Pope Damasus, with it's first edition in 383 AD. It was initially from the Septuagint Greek version of the Old Testament, but the revised version of 405 AD was

OT from the Hebrew (Jerome felt the Greek was inadequate so re-translated it),
New Latin translations of the Psalms (the so-called Gallican Psalter),
The NT was compiled mainly from already existing Latin versions.
The 80 book bible (39OT, 14A, 27NT) was revised and corrected over the years, the first printed versions were the much respected University of Paris edition from the 13C.

In 1546 the Council of Trent decreed that the Vulgate was the exclusive Latin authority for the Bible. It required its printing with as few errors as possible, resulting in the so-called (Pope) Clementine (VIII) Vulgate of 1592, with 80 Books. It became the authoritative biblical text of the Roman Catholic Church. From it the Confraternity Version was translated in 1941 and in 1965 the revised edition authorised by the second Vatican Council.