THE PERIOD OF RELATIVE FREEDOM (to AD 313)

The history of the text during this period is as important as it is difficult to reconstruct. The ecclesiastical writers give very few clues. The historian finds himself like someone trying to do a jigsaw puzzle which has most of the pieces missing and some of the rest damaged. He has to settle for a rough outline, much of it guesswork. With admirable good sense, most authors skim lightly over this period of the text, but, as long as the use of hypothesis is acknowledged as legitimate, there is no need to follow their example. Bearing that in mind, the reader is asked to forgive the numerous question marks in the pages which follow; there could doubtless be many more still.

COMPOSING A TEXT AND COMMITTING IT TO WRITING

When a piece of prose is produced today, its composition and its setting down in written form tend to be one and the same act. It starts off as a rough draft; then it becomes an autograph manuscript, that is, one written by the author himself; this, in turn, is used to produce the proofs of a book which is finally published in a (first) edition.