Origin of Hypertext

Since hypertextual works build off one another, a large question which came to mind while reading Landlow's paper is where did hypertexts originate from. Landlow touches on the fact that "It blurs the distinction between author and reader." I found this topic to be fascinating because it further throws into chaos any ideas we have constructed about the roles of authors and reader. Ong explicates in his paper The author's audience is always a fiction that the author must cast a reader into a role in which they can either accept or reject it. I found this fascinating because it made me wonder what the first written word's audience roles were. Since hypertextuality is NOT dependent on the internet, it made me wonder when hypertextuality came into being. The bible is a good example of a hypertext since it calls upon other works, but after how many works were books able to correctly and effectively call upon each other to build their arguments. Where did the network begin?