Janet,
I am no biltong expert, but my wife is from Cape Town and I've had my fair share. Biltong is cured beef. It is soaked in a vinegar and spice solution and then left to hang and air dry over a series of days.
Jerky (or at least mine) is made using a brine (salt) solution like soy (soya) sauce base marinade and in my case left in a smoker for a few hours where gentle heat 150 degrees F is applied to dry out the meat and add a smoky flavor.
In both cases, the liquid is used to eliminate bacteria from the meat while it dries (and add flavor), but goes about it differently between the acidity of vinegar and the salty brine.
There are lots of jerky recipes, and it depends on your preference from spicy to sweet to really smokey to none at all. For this, I refer you to Google to find one that matches your preferences, or allrecipes.com or any jerky website.
Mine is a homemade mix of soy sauce, worcestshire sauce in even proportions (say a cup of each) and then a handful of different meat spices like onion powder, chili powder, red pepper flakes, ground black pepper and something to add a little sweetness to it like honey. You need to experiment with the concentrations of the spices to get it to how you like it, but start light on the really spicy stuff (1/4 or 1/2 easpoon) and heavier on the flavorings (1 tablespoon). Most recipes on web call to put in a
dehydrator, so in that case there is no smoke flavor. You need to use a liquid smoke, which I have never done. Alternatively, smoking the meat in a BBQ is my preferred method of getting the final product and takes me around 4 hours, but only half of that is with smoke and heat, the other half just heat.