History of the Bible
The Old Testament was mainly recorded in Hebrew. The Jews did not settle on a definite number of books or an exact translation they all agreed on until the second or third century AD. We must also keep in mind that books as we know them did not exist until Roman times. "Books" were written on scrolls, and in the case of the Bible, each book was on a separate scroll. So the notion of putting them into a certain sequence existed, but wasn't as urgent as it might be for someone who faced the task of writing things down to be bound in a book that can never be changed around afterwards.
The first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, never varied from version to version. The sequence of the rest of the Old Testament varied, but Jews mainly put the Prophets first, then the Writings. Christians put the Writings first, then the Prophets. The reason for this is to put the Book of Micah last as a transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Micah talks about the coming of another great prophet or messenger: "Behold I will send my Messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me" (Micah 3:1a). John the Baptist describes himself in almost exactly the same words in the New Testament, and all three of the synoptic Gospels make specific references to this phrase.
One of the main versions of the Hebrew Bible is known as the Septuagint, meaning "seventy." Legend has it that about 275 BC, seventy-two elders translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek in 72 days. This was considered miraculous. The Septuagint is also known as the Alexandrine or Alexandrian Bible was most likely the version known to Christ and his Apostles. It was the version accepted by the Pharisees. Another group of Jews accepted a different version of the Bible, known as the Palestinian Bible (just to confuse us all!).
The Septuagint included the Apocrypha.
The New Testament was written in Greek, although some phrases were recorded in Aramaic, a Semitic language that was the language of the common people in Palestine at the time of Christ. Jesus most likely spoke Aramaic, while the language of the Roman Empire, which occupied the Holy Land during his time, was Latin. But the language of most educated people who could write was Greek. The Gospels were all written in Greek.
With the adoption of Christianity by the Roman state, Latin became the language of the Church. Beginning in 387 AD, St. Jerome translated the Septuagint and New Testament from Greek into Latin. He was not satisfied with the result, and learned Hebrew and Aramaic to use Hebrew sources for another version of the Bible, which he considered more authoritative. This version was known as the Vulgate, or the commonly known Bible. The Vulgate was the only version of the Bible permitted by the Catholic Church for centuries.
Latin became the language in which Christian teaching was transmitted. The Catholic Church still uses Latin as the official form of all of its important documents, even though they will then be translated into whatever languages are necessary for that specific use.
The form of the New Testament was settled on by 190 AD. The entire form of the Bible as used by the Catholic Church today was formally adopted by the church in 405AD. The authorized form of the Bible and the books accepted as part of it are referred to as the Canon.
Prior to the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries, most Christians did not read the Bible themselves. Most people could not read. And to read the Vulgate, one had to read Latin. However, people were very familiar with stories from the Bible, such as Noah's Ark, the story of Abraham, the wooing of Bathsheba by King David. Many stories were enacted in plays or told as stories around the fire. When people went to church, they heard parts of the Bible read out, they heard sermons based on the Bible, and most of the service, or liturgy, was based on the Bible. People who worked in a church or monastery heard the Gospels read out daily. Monks and nuns would take turns reading out sections of the Gospels while the others ate.
Did Medieval People Know the Bible? A Personal Viewpoint
It's commonly assumed that the Church was deliberately keeping the Bible away from the common person during the Middle Ages. Yet it's also assumed that the purpose of much religious art was didactic, that is, for teaching. If this art was didactic, the people being taught had a highly sophisticated understanding of the Bible. The concept of prefiguration, which I discuss on the main Bible page, requires an understanding of two sets of stories and how they interrelate, and a deep knowledge of symbolism.
My own opinion is that assuming that reading the Bible is superior to hearing the Bible read is cultural chauvinism on our part. People who don't read are just as intelligent as we are, and usually have much better memories. A person who has memorized 150 Psalms, several dozen stories from the Old and New Testaments, three Creeds, and several dozen prayers, has a vast range of experience, expression and wisdom to draw upon at will. A person who owns many books and never reads them, or reads them and forgets what they said,  is not any smarter or better-equipped to face the world. And certainly not better-equipped to understand medieval symbolism. It's clear from the vast amount of Biblical imagery in medieval art that artists and the church assumed everyone had a good knowledge of the Bible. Biblical imagery was as familiar and as clear in its content and meaning as a brand name or a well-known program on television is today. Everyone knew what it was, everyone recognized it quickly, everyone knew what it referred to. If that were not the case, the people who made the art, commissioned it and paid for it, would not have bothered.
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