The very rough consensus is that a Greek, Homer, is the author—or transcriber—of the epic saga–poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Much hyper–obsessive academic warfare has always surrounded the identity or non–identity of Homer.
Homer’s Iliad is considered by many to be the earliest extant work of Western literature. But biblical texts—for instance, Joshua, Judges, Kings I & II, and Samuel I & II, epic–saga texts themselves—clearly all precede it.