Iesou Chresto -

[Tonus]

The way some of the stories are clearly cobbled together from divergent accounts implies that they started out as spoken fables and that there was at least some kind of editorial process when they were being recorded. Although I think it's less of a process where various people worked together to hash out a version as much as it was that succeeding writers decided to add their two cents or modify what was already there. Stuff like the creation account and the two versions of the ten commandments makes you wonder just how many versions of those stories made it to 'paper' before being wiped out forever.

[Confused Ape]

There is an assumption there that it started out "written" at all. These were largely pre-literate societies. Only a relative handful could read or write. The most likely genesis is that these began as stories, 'tall tales' if you would which were eventually written down. Who knows what they were originally.

Scholars only have written texts to go by. It's very likely that stories were eventually written down but we have no idea if there were major alterations in the process of writing them down. It would really depend on the agendas of the men who produced the first written versions.