@raymond franz: nearly ALL the Bible writers are actually much closer to us than they are to the events that they reported happened, especially when it comes to the Old Testament.
The oldest books we know off were written ~500BC, with likely ancestor books and oral stories going back thousands of years which in itself were already talking about events before their time. So a book that's 2500 years old, is talking about events that supposedly happened 5000-10000 years before it.
The Prophets are the first real 'historical' writings, which although still largely allegorical started being written ~300 years after the Babylonian siege of Jersualem. Only the New Testament was written ~70-200 years after the purported events happened (post Jerusalem's destruction), a lot closer but still 1-2 generations of "telephone".
Beyond that, we then have over 1500 years worth of copies and translations with various details added or removed and a lot of stories are actually taken from other cultures, eg. the figure of Jesus in Summarian mythology predates "Jesus H. Christ" about 6500 years.