The first step in finding out more about the “roots” of Mary and Jesus, is to situate the chronology of the events that marked the history of the people of Israel, from whom they descend.
In the Bible, the Old Testament (or books of the First Covenant) tells the history of the Hebrews, later called Israelites when they settled in their Promised Land, a chosen people, led by God himself, who, little by little, through many vicissitudes, matured in the role and spirituality that God had given them, forming a religion that stood completely apart in the history of the ancient world.
The name "chosen people," which first appeared in sixth century B.C. and was applied to the Hebrews, points essentially to two different relationships with God: a tribal relationship (all 12 tribes of Israel, the people of the First Covenant with blood relations), and a loving, obedient relationship with the Lord God.
So what is the Bible, as referred to by the Catholic Church?
The Church Magisterium recognizes the Bible as being divinely inspired. It is composed of 73 books: 46 form the Old Testament, 27 the New Testament. These books are of unequal size, were written by various authors, in a wide spectrum of literary genres, all with a different context and purpose.
Some of these books were written in Hebrew (sometimes in Aramaic), from oral traditions, then translated into Greek and Aramaic. The others were collected at later dates, for the Roman world, usually from Aramaic texts translated into Greek.
The portion of Scripture concerned by the First Covenant (Old Testament) translated from Aramaic to Greek, between the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., is called the “Septuagint.”
Later, in the 4th century A.D., Saint Jerome, a Father of the Church, translated the entire written Bible (both the Old and New Testaments), from Aramaic (and perhaps also from Greek) into Latin. This Latin Bible is referred to as the “Vulgate.”
This “Vulgate” version is what the Roman Catholic Church currently uses for all modern translations of the Bible.
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