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In the Beginning was the Codex: the Early Church and its Revolutionary Books

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Stuart G. Hall
Stuart G. Hall*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
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Extract

A revolution in book-production marked the beginning of the Church. Almost all literary works were written on scrolls (or roll-books), and were read by unrolling from one hand to the other. It was and remains the obligatory form of the Jewish Torah-scroll. The revolution replaced the roll with the codex or leaf-book of papyrus or parchment: ‘the most momentous development in the history of the book until the invention of printing’. A quire or quires of papyrus or parchment, folded and bound at the back, produced the kind of book with pages familiar to us.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 38: The Church and the Book , 2004 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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References

1 This paper is heavily and gratefully dependent upon Colin H. Roberts and Skeat, T.C., The Birth of the Codex (2nd edn, 1987 Google Scholar) [hereafter Roberts/Skeat], and Gamble, Harry Y., Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven, CT, and London, 1995 Google Scholar) [hereafter Gamble], csp. ch. 2. Roberts/Skeat (updating Roberts, C.H., ‘The codex’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 40 (1954 Google Scholar), 170–204) and Gamble give details of earlier research, and both use extensively material from Turner, E.G., The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia, PA, 1977 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Blanck, H., Dos Buch in der Antikc (Munich, 1992 Google Scholar) is an excellent, amply illustrated, account of its subject; ch. 5 is directly relevant (75-101), and offers an alternative perspective. Since this paper was given, two further publications have come to my attention: Stanton, Graham N., ‘The fourfold Gospel’, New Testament Studies, 43 (1997 Google Scholar), 317–46; Bagnall, Roger S., ‘Jesus reads a book’, JThS, ns 51 (2000 Google Scholar), 577–88. Neither affects the basic argument here presented, but both add significant insights.

2 Roberts/Skeat, 1.

3 See full statistical table, ibid., 37.

4 Ibid., 38–42.

5 Ibid., 45–51; cf. Gamble, 54–6.

6 Blanck, Dos Buch, 100–1.

7 Roberts/Skeat, 50–3.

8 Gamble, 56, citing Roberts, ‘The codex’, 187.

9 Roberts/Skeat, 54–5, following Roberts, ‘The codex’, 187–9

10 Roberts/Skeat, 55–7, cf. Gamble, 56–7.

11 Roberts/Skeat, 57–60.

12 Gamble, 57–8.

13 Skeat, T.C., ‘The origin of the Christian codex’, Zeilschrift für Papyrologie una Epigraphik, 102 (1994 Google Scholar), 263–70.

14 Details in Skeat, T.C., ‘A codicological analysis of the Chester Beatty papyrus codex of Gospels and Acts’, Hermathena, 155 (1993 Google Scholar), 27–43.

15 Skeat, ‘Origin’, 264.

16 Roberts, C.H., An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library (Manchester, 1935 Google Scholar).

17 Gamble, H.Y., The New Testament Canon: its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia, PA, 1985 Google Scholar), 24–35; cf. Hall, S.G., ‘Aloger’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 2 (Berlin, 1978 Google Scholar), 290–5, and generally Metzger, Bruce M., The Canon of the New Testament. Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford, 1987 Google Scholar). T.C. Skeat’s insights into Ircnaeus are valuable, but he fails to appreciate the polemical context implied by what Ircnaeus says: see his ‘Ircnaeus and the four-gospel canon’, Novum Testamentum, 34 (1992), 194–9.

18 A commonplace of New Testament scholarship; see for instance Koester, Hcimut, Ancient Christian Gospels. Their History and Development (London and Philadelphia, PA, 1990 Google Scholar), and documentation there.

19 Described by Skeat himself, ‘Ircnaeus’, 196–8.

20 Gamble, 58. He wrote before the publication of Skeat, ‘Origin’, but has privately informed me that his own position is unchanged. Professor Gamble’s kindness in giving bibliographical advice is warmly appreciated.

21 Gamble, 58–62. He first stated the theory in ‘The Pauline corpus and the early Christian book’, in Babcock, William S., ed., Paul and the Legacies of Paul (Dallas, TX, 1990 Google Scholar), 265–80. The letters contained in P46 (Gamble, 59) also include Hebrews, following Romans, but Gamble regards this as irrelevant (The Pauline corpus’, 395 n.26).

22 See for example McNeile, A.H., An Introduction to the Study of the New Testament, 2nd edn, rev. Williams, C.S.C. (Oxford, 1953 Google Scholar), 138–42, 179–80. More recent views and controversies are documents in Schenk, Wolfgang, ‘Korinthcrbriefe’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 19 (Berlin, 1996 Google Scholar), 620–40, csp. 628–32, and Horst Balz, ‘Philipperbrief, ibid., 504–13, csp. 507.

23 See the conclusions of Sangrador, J.J.F., Los origenes de la comunidad cristiana de Alejandria, Plenitudo Tcmporis, 1 (Salamanca, 1994 Google Scholar).

24 This formerly prevailing view was challenged, with thorough documentation, in Lindemann, Andreas, Paulus im ältesten Christentum: das Bild des Aposteis und die Rezeption der paulinischen Theologie in der frühchristlichen Literatur his Marcion, Beitragc zur historischen Theologie, 58 (Tubingen, 1979 Google Scholar). An American discussion is accessible in Andreas Lindcmann, ‘Paul in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers’ and Martinus G de Boer, ‘Comment: which Paul?’, both in Babcock, Paul and the Legacies of Paul, 25–45, 45–54. Lindemann holds that there was a considerable continuation of a Pauline school editing and enlarging his literary work.

25 Roberts/Skeat, 22; Gamble, 64–5.

26 Roberts/Skeat, csp. 15–23.

27 Ibid., 67–8, describing the views of G. Cavallo, Libri, editori e pubblico nel mondo antico: guida storica e critica (Rome, 1975), xix-xxii, 83–6.1 have not seen Cavallo’s book; but see also Blanck, Dos Buch, 100, and Cavallo’s review of Roberts/Skeat: G. Cavallo, ‘La nascita del codice’, Studi italiani di filologia classica, 28/3rd ser., 3 (1985), 118–21.

28 Roberts/Skeat, 71–3. The 17 examples balance against 857 non-Christian rolls from the same period, and 13 Christian texts, all of them codices.

29 See his review, cited in n.27.

30 Bowman, A.K. and Thomas, J.D., Vindolanda: the Latin Writing-Tablets, Britannia Monographs Series, 4 (1983 Google Scholar), csp. 32–45; Blanck, Dos Buch, 48–50. For the excavations, Robin Birley, Vindoianda: a Roman Frontier Post on Hadrian’s Wall (1977); further detail on the texts, with photographs, Bowman, A.K. and Thomas, J.D., The Vindoianda Writing-Tablets (Tabulae vindolandenses, II) (1994) Google Scholar.

31 This applied even to eucharistie wine: McGowan, Andrew, Ascetic Eucharists. Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 1999 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

32 Gamble, 65–8, has useful comments on this, and the illustrations on p. 68 are particularly relevant to what follows here.

33 Mark 1.16-20; 2.13-15; 6.3; Acts 9.36-9, 42; 10.1-48; 16.14-15, 25–34; 18.1-3; Colossians 4.14.

34 Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos, 8–11 : Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos and Fragments, ed. and tr. Molly Whittaker, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford, 1982), 14–23; Athenagoras, Legatio, 18–122: Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, ed. Miroslav Marcovich, Patristischc Texte und Studien, 31 (Berlin, 1990), 55–74.