Yes and no.
For the individual books of the Bible, we have some cases of traditional attribution (e.g. "Psalms" was written by King David) but not solid, 100-percent certain proof of authorship.
The editing and compiling of the Bible has a very long history that isn't settled. Today, different Christian denominations use differing versions of the Bible. There are a few major stages for the editing and compiling of the Bible, though. First, what Christians would recognized as the bulk of "Old Testament" began to be compiled around 500-400 B.C.E. This came to be called the "Tanakh" or the "Hebrew Bible." According to tradition, this was compiled by a big meeting of scholars and religious leaders called the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah. All this is to say, the Christian "Old Testament" is Hebrew in origin and was recognized as scripture by the Jews long before the "New Testament."
What follows is a flurry of translation. We don't know exactly who is doing the translating or why, but the Tanakh was translated into Koine Greek and called the "Septuagint."
The development of the "New Testament" is, likewise, highly varied. Lots of texts were circulated about Jesus and his teachings in the first century CE. As Church leadership began to develop (which is a long and complicated history in itself), there was a push to come up with a "definitive" version. With the "New Testament" we have a slightly better time at naming names behind the compiling of the Bible. For example, Irenaeus was really concerned about what he felt were erroneous beliefs that were circulating in the second century. In order to cut down on what he considered heresy, he said that only certain texts that he lists, which now make up the bulk of the "New Testament," should be considered authoritative. So part of why the Bible was compiled the way it was came down to questions of what counts as "right" or "wrong" belief. Another big name to know is Jerome. He (and others working alongside him) sought to create the definitive version of the Bible in Latin--called the Vulgate. He worked off of the Septuagint, other versions of the Hebrew Bible, and versions of "New Testament" books to create what became the standard Bible of the Middle Ages (for western Europe, at least).
The Bible went through another round of revisions during the Reformation when reformers sought to trace back to an original version of the Bible outside of what they felt was some "Catholic tampering." So they looked back at the Hebrew Bible and some earlier versions of the "New Testament" when revising the Bible.
That's the main overview, but it's a very, very complex process. Cambridge published a good two part series on the Bible--"The Cambridge History of the Bible" edited by Ackroyd and Evans if you want greater depth.
Edit to add: The Vulgate was certainly not the only translation/edition of the Bible floating around in the Middle Ages, but it became the most ubiquitous.
Also, from the above paragraphs, it should be apparent that there hasn't ever truly been an official/definitive version of the Bible. It's always been a work in progress, with different groups claiming their version is the best. In other words, during the Reformation, religious leaders were trying to get as close to "original" as they could with the knowledge/sources that they had available to them.
Waking up to some edits (in trying to summarize the more than 2000-year-old history of a book that spans two religious traditions, things are bound to get complicated!):
On the Tanakh, basically, see husky54's comments (I've amended my language to take some of his/her concerns into account): as has been brought up a couple times in the comments, the Tanakh is not the complete Old Testament, there are books missing and books that are not included in the Christian Old Testament. It was, however, a pretty massive effort to bring together religious texts that Christians today would recognize as the bulk of the Old Testament--something more than the Torah, but still not the exact table of content of the NIV. Also, I'm not saying that these books were written around 500-400 BCE--again some hadn't been written yet, others had been written earlier. Another good point was that, at the time, the Hebrew Bible was not one book--it was a compiling of many different scrolls, etc. In this way it's similar to the transmission of biblical books in the Middle Ages (books would get copied as single units, one at a time, often kept and stored separately not bound together in one volume, but still recognized as part of the larger "bible"). Also, the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah (also called the "Men of the Great Assembly") had traditionally been credited (in the Talmud, Avot 1:1) with the effort to compile the Tanakh. There are debates on what the composition of this group was, how long it lasted, and whether it really existed in the first place. I read an article a while ago "The Fate of Jewish Historiography after the Bible" by Amram Tropper that deals with the question of why it was so important for there to be a "chain of transmission" for Jewish Scripture.
On the question of orthodoxy, until the Church councils, it's true that orthodoxy didn't really exist in terms of there being set beliefs championed by an organized church. But I think I made it clear that Irenaeus is responding to what he views "unorthodox." But I've amended the language to be less confusing.
There also seems to be some questions along the lines of "but how did the early church fathers decide what to include." Basically, it was trendy to make lists of the books to study, but those lists are based on several factors: 1. What was available. 2. What is believed to be most original (note: historians may or may not agree we their judgment about this today). 3. What is most complete. 4. What promotes correct beliefs (this is complicated because what is "correct" is being hashed out around the same time that these lists are being bandied about--so part of what is being discuss in several councils [possibly the Synod of Hippo Regius, Synod of Laodicea, and councils in Carthage in 397 and 419] is which books were they going to use and discussing matters of doctrine based on those sources and their own scholarship). This obviously means that the process of establishing the New Testament canon was massive (just as it was with the Old Testament--see husky54's comment!). In addition to the general source about the history of the bible that I gave above, David Brakke published an article ("A new fragment of Athanasius's thirty-ninth Festal Letter: heresy, apocrypha, and the canon") a few years ago that provides an example of how historians study these early New Testament canon lists.
Not really. For the Hebrew bible, there's a framework called the documentary hypothesis, wherein the Torah was written by 4 separate authors and combined by a redactor. However, there's a great deal of doubt regarding when these authors lived, and what perspective they represented. Needless to say, without many historical Israelite figures we can name from the period and huge uncertainty surrounding locations and dates of authorship, no specific people can be identified.
So, I'm late to the game here...but I feel like I have a lot to say, to correct a lot of "close but not quite" type comments. I'm going to restrict my comments to my area of expertise--Hebrew Bible (aka, "Old Testament"--but this title carries a lot of assumptions and baggage and we really should refer to it simply as the Hebrew Bible. "Old Testament" assumes the New Testament and a certain amount of supercessionism that isn't really pertinent to historical and contextual studies of these texts.)
Keep the following dating scheme in mind: Pre-exilic = before 586 BCE, Exilic = 586-537 BCE, Post-Exilic/Second Temple Period = 537 BCE-70 CE
Regarding the top comment by /u/adventurousabby:
The dating for the Hebrew Bible's evolution into the Tanak that was offered (500-400 BCE)--this is entirely inaccurate. The Tanak is the entirety of the Hebrew Bible and there are significant portions of the Hebrew Bible that weren't even written until 300-100 BCE (e.g., Daniel, 1+2 Chronicles, Ezra/Nehemiah, apocryphal works such as Tobit, etc.). Furthermore, this begs questions of canonization which, for the HB, doesn't happen until the 1st century CE at the EARLIEST. (People often cite the meeting at Javneh here...this is more popular myth than hard and fast canonization history. I should also note that in all my studies of the canonization process, I've never once heard of Anshei Knesset HaGedolah. That's not to say it wasn't a thing, but I'm skeptical before looking it up.) The fact is that there are countless layers within the Hebrew Bible that were composed over the course of a good thousand years. There are portions such as Judges 5 and Exodus 15 that are VERY old Hebrew poetry while there are other portions of the Hebrew Bible that are very LATE (see the aforementioned texts like Daniel). Furthermore, even books themselves have significantly lengthy compositional histories. Take Isaiah for example--scholars are, by and large, agreed that there are at least TWO Isaiahs (Isaiah 1-39 and Isaiah 40-66) with a large portion of those scholars holding that Isaiah 56-66 is a third Isaiah (Trito-Isaiah). These later additions to First Isaiah also reached back into the initial work of the 8th century prophet and added things into First Isaiah. (The composition history of Isaiah is a total wreck...)
Yes, the LXX arose from some Hebrew source--which, we're not entirely certain and the issue of reconstructing Vorlagen is extremely problematic and rife with difficulty. (See Emanuel Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible for a discussion of these issues in great depth and detail. This is really the most authoritative source on the issue--certainly better than McGrath.) This is also not to mention the Peshiṭta (HB in Syriac), the Aramaic Targums, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Vulgate, the Old Latin--and all of this is on top of the Septuagintal Traditions (bear in mind that there is not one single LXX--it is a composite of a bunch of different Greek versions...I've seen a few references to the legend contained within the Letter of Aristeas about 70 translators--this legend is bogus, purely popular myth...but we DO have lots and lots of valuable Greek sources). Then you also get what remains of Origen's Hexapla, which is a whole other beast...and all of that is not even to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls with gave us TROVES of invaluable information about textual development, composition history, history of interpretation, history of theology, scribalism, etc.
Regarding /u/gingerkid1234's comment on the Documentary Hypothesis, I should point out that he has lightly referenced the classical model of the theory and that we now have neo-documentarians and all kinds of other people who posit WAY more than the original 4 sources (JEDP) and redactor (R). Some don't believe there was ever a J (see the book of essays entitled Farewell to the Yahwist), some don't believe there was an E, etc. Pentateuchal scholarship is VERY hairy and the scholars themselves, in my opinion, tend to get into a LOT of petty fights over these issues. (While truth is at stake, it's not as important as what they do to one another in print.) Much of the Pentateuch was actually composed quite late (very little being pre-exilic, much of it is exilic, and it certainly wasn't compiled/redacted until after the Babylonian exile).
/u/BdrLen misses a few important details in his discussion of the canonization process--Athanasius was actually the first to propose the list of NT documents that now comprise the Protestant NT in 367 CE. His treatment of Jerome, furthermore, seems odd--especially given that Jerome was one of the first to return to using Hebrew sources (something he admits himself, although he also admits that he doesn't really know Hebrew all that well. Regardless, let's not give short shrift to the Hebrew and Aramaic here, people!!) I'm not any kind of expert on the Vulgate, but I do know that the details here in BdrLen's comment are not entirely accurate and need better nuance.
/u/Andytobo brings up an interesting point, although this needs refinement as well. We should look to the venerable Frank Moore Cross's treatment of the Deuteronomistic History (hereafter DH) and its authors and redactors. As complicated as the issue is for the Pentateuch, it's only slightly less complicated for the DH--but still very complicated. Cross posited two primary authors/redactors: Dtr1 and Dtr2. Cross has a full discussion of this issue in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic and his work on the topic really blew the door off of DH studies for a while. People have been starting with his stuff as bedrock for quite some time now. People tend to talk about a Tetrateuch (i.e., first four books of the Bible, keeping Deuteronomy [="D"] with the Deuteronomists and their ilk) and the DH+D. These sources are likely exilic or post-exilic (i.e., post 586 BCE).
I can go into some details on the NT, but I will restrict my comments to the following things:
-Composition for all documents in the Protestant NT happened between 55-120 CE.
-Gospel authorship is traditional, technically anonymous. I maintain that the four source theory is the best explanation of Gospel formation, this states that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke both used Mark and the hypothetical Q as their sources.
-There are only 7 undisputed letters of Paul (Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Philemon, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians). Paul did NOT write the Pastoral Epistles (i.e., 1-2 Timothy and Titus). Paul also did NOT write Hebrews. Anybody who has studied the Koine Greek of the NT can tell that the Greek style used by Paul is wildly different from that used in Hebrews.
That should do for now, I suppose.
Also, what's "new" with the Q Source? Any recent discoveries in the last few years?
This of course begs the question, which bible? Different faith traditions have different versions of the bible containing various books. Likewise there are dozens of different translations, some of which are "official" translations of various churches.
When it comes to what I believe most redditors would call the bible, I will refer to the current document that has evolved from Roman Catholic tradition.
Compiling the books of the bible it is believed that the first "canonical" bible was commissioned by Emperor Constantine and prepared by Eusebius in 331, for use in the churches of Constantinople. This canon is believed to have been made official at the Synod of Hippo Regius in 393. The records of that synod are lost, but we know of it from later references to it. This version was in Greek.
From these texts arose many local ad hoc translations of the bible into Latin in the west. These are known as [Vetus Latina] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetus_Latina) or Old Latin Bible. They were not any single unified version but at least 27 different translations.
In 382 Pope Damasus I commissioned the revision of these disparate Latin bibles into one text, using the best Greek and old Latin texts. This was the Vulgate of St Jerome. Though he compiled and did much of the writing, the work of other writers was included. An important source he is believed to have used for his translation is the Hexapla compiled in Greek by Origen of Alexandria sometime before 240.
https://archive.org/details/origenhexapla01unknuoft
https://archive.org/details/origenhexapla02unknuoft
Also, he Jerome compiled Vetus Latina for the 4 gospels. It is believed that he used a text very similar to the Codex Briaxus as main source for this. He translated the canon books from Hebrew into Latin over a period of many years. This bible also contained what is now the apocrypha in most cases.
This book was quickly adopted as the standard bible as it was complete in well translated. While the Catholic church sought to translate many of the source documents into local languages, most Protestant churches were heavily influenced by the Vulgate when preparing their own translations. The King James Version of the bible is one notable example of this. Some books of the bible were translated directly into the vernacular from the Vulgate. The Lindisfarne Gospels are one example of this. Scholarly study of the bible however was thought be be best done using the Vulgate and the influence of that Latin version was felt for centuries in the various translations.
The Vulgate as originally written remained the standard bible until the Council of Trent but by then the bible had stopped a monolithic single book, and began to appear is dozens and then hundreds of versions and translations with the spread of Protestantism and the printing press.
Edit: link formating/pronouns
If you're interested in digging into the authorship of specific books I'd recommend 'Forged' by Bart Ehrman. It deals with your question regarding New Testament authorship, mostly focusing on the epistles.
I am interested what the house historians think of Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels... I read it years ago as a part of an ancient history class and if I recall it had a lot of information about the authors of the gospels, what books were left out, and the council of Nicea, which presided over the whole process. I remember finding it all fascinating because it was my first foray into that topic, however I do not remember many details.
Gingerkid1234 points out the documentary hypothesis which is important. Essentially the argument is that four (or sometimes more) documents are responsible for all the books between Genesis and 2 Kings, with the majority (from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings) composed by an author called "The Deuteronomist", creating what is called "The Deuteronomistic History". It's not generally believed that any of the authors--the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Priestly Writer (sometimes the Holiness Writer), and the Deuteronomist--necessarily WROTE everything in the parts they put together, and Genesis-Numbers is particularly difficult as arguments rage constantly about the nature of the relationship between J and E (found mostly in Genesis) and P, supposedly responsible for lots of the other works. These days the Documentary Hypothesis is under siege from lots of different corners, particularly with respect to dates. It was once thought that J and E were codifications of very old, pre-10th century sources and that the others were largely finished before the Exile, which occurred in 586 BCE. Now many scholars, particularly Europeans, doubt that J or E existed as they have been understood since the post-War period and an increasing awareness of the role of later periods in every part of the construction of the Bible is appearing everywhere.
Ok, I'm not a professional historian and the source for this is mostly introductory texts on history of the new testament, a topic I'm very passionate about but know only to an introductory level by studying some university level courses by my own. I didn't find this information on other topics, so I'll just put it here. If you guys think it's not an adequate answer, please let me know.
On the New Testament, it seems that the only books to which we can somewhat certainly attach a name of some known historical figure are 7 of Paul's letters, which can be ascribed to Paul himself: First Thessalonians, Philippians, Philemon, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians and Romans. The other epistles are almost certainly not by Paul, though there is some dispute about Second Thessalonians and Colossians.
We also know that Luke's Gospel and Acts were written by the same person, but there's no evidence that it was written by Luke (one of Paul's travel companions) as the tradition says and we don't know the identity of the author.
The Book of Revelations claims to be written by someone named John at the island of Patmos. In principle there seems to be no reason to doubt the author, he probably is some John from Patmos. It is certainly not John the Apostle nor the person who wrote the John's Epistles. John's Epistles themselves seem to all have been written by people from the same community, if not by the same person. None of those are the author of the Gospel of John, but the author of this gospel is probably from the same christian community as the author of John's epistles, since they seem to share some beliefs and traditions that are not found elsewhere in the early christian literature.
None of the gospels names an author and we have no idea about the identity of the authors, except probably around which time they were written and more or less what were the expected audiences. So, Luke-Acts was probably written sometime between 65 and 80 of the first century, with a gentile (not jewish) audience in mind.
The take away point is that, in the new testament, the only traditional authorship attribution that is confirmed by current scholarship are the ones of the 7 pauline letters above.
If you are interested in this there are video lectures of two courses on (historical/critical/secular/literary) biblical scholarship by Yale that are available online at oyc.yale.edu:
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145 - Introduction to the Old Testament by Prof. Christine Hayes, http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152 - Introduction to the New Testament by Prof. Dale Martin
the Syllabus of the new testament course indicate the following book:
Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. (from which almost all of the information above is taken)
In Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus" he talks about many passages added piecemeal (like the entire "let he who is free from guilt bit) throughout the centuries because of politics, hubris, or sometimes just mistranslations/interpretations by scribes.
There is a section of the bible called the apocrypha that was present in may editions. It was Martin Luther (the german monk) in the early 16th centuary that did not include them in his book for the "protestant" church
The KJV had a section containing the following:
1 Esdras (Vulgate 3 Esdras)
2 Esdras (Vulgate 4 Esdras)
Tobit
Judith ("Judeth" in Geneva)
Rest of Esther (Vulgate Esther 10:4-16:24)
Wisdom
Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach)
Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy ("Jeremiah" in Geneva) (all part of Vulgate Baruch)
Song of the Three Children (Vulgate Daniel 3:24-90)
Story of Susanna (Vulgate Daniel 13)
The Idol Bel and the Dragon (Vulgate Daniel 14)
Prayer of Manasses (follows 2 Chronicles in Geneva)
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees