It’s more:

1. a man sees something he doesn’t understand. He makes up a story to explain it.
2. The story is shared among a tribe for generations, occasionally a skilled storyteller improves it
3. Eventually writing is invented, the story at some point is written down, maybe improved one more time as it’s put to paper
4. It’s copied over generations, occasionally improved by good writer, it is adjusted and added to a collection of stories about God and his prophets and miracles

Even had the writers wanted to fact check the stories, they couldn’t, they had spent too long in oral transmission.

Even the new testament wasn’t written by the people who were there at the time, it was more like telling the stories that your grandfather heard from his grandfather

People are pretty prone to improving stories they tell, they make them flow better, they make people’s motives clear when really they were hidden

To put a finer point on it, your understanding of the author’s understanding of the thing in this instance is a third Venn circle without much overlap to those first two. 🤌🏾

I’ve also read The book of the damned by Charles Fort.