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In 1933 Frederic Kenyon was one of the first to note the early Christian addiction to codex books. As later scholars confirmed, Christian communities reproduced their sacred literature in a way that differed from the largely scrolled Greco-Roman bibliographic cultures of the first centuries of the Common Era. Book historians and scholars of biblical literature alike have developed a range of competing theories in order to better understand this peculiarity. By evaluating their claims, a number of clarifications can be made in order to demonstrate the codex’s sensitivity to Jewish scribal practices as well as its capacity to include a cosmopolitan diversity of texts. Through these clarifications the codex book form itself can provide vital interpretative insights into early biblical literature and the longer history of the book today.
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1
Anthony Grafton, “Introduction,” The American Historical Review 107 (2002), pp. 84–86.
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6
Colin H. Roberts and T.C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 24. Cf. David C. Parker, An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 15. Although Martial mentions parchment codices, all of the second-century Christian codices use papyrus. Papyrus could have writing on both sides and was flexible, durable, and long lasting; nonetheless, parchment seems to have won out by the fourth century because it could be produced more widely and, as Roberts and Skeat put it, was probably in aesthetic terms “the finest writing material ever devised by man [sic]” (Roberts and Skeat, The Birth of the Codex, p. 8). Having said that, parchment was also complicated to make, and it took some time before the technology was sufficiently available to the majority of scriptoriums making writing materials, which explains its delayed rise to dominance. For a helpful summary of these issues see Roberts and Skeat, The Birth of the Codex, p. 5.
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8
Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 49–50. Cf. Loveday Alexander, “Ancient Book Production and the Circulation of the Gospels,” in Richard J. Bauckham (ed.), The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audience (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 71–111 (73).
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9
Roger S. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 72–73. Here, Bagnall outlines two tables that demonstrate the figures for the available artifacts.
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12
Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts, p. 47. Some manuscripts are fragments, and Hurtado suggests that some of these could be from either roll or codex form.
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15
Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt, p. 79. Bagnall notes that the Shepherd of Hermas and the Gospel of Thomas appear more often as rolls than as codices in the artifacts, thus indicating that the early Christians treated them as they did their other scrolled literature. The tables from Figure 1 are found in Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt, pp. 72, 78.
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20
T.C. Skeat, “The Length of the Standard Papyrus Roll and the Cost Advantage of the Codex,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 45 (1984), pp. 169–75 (175). This includes the mode of production which would have required greater scribal time and technological know-how.
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21
Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts, p. 65. Again, as Gamble notes, use of codex books would have been perceived as countercultural given that finished literature was reserved for the roll form. (Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 45).
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23
Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Cf. Todd D. Still and David G. Horrell (eds.), After the First Urban Christians: The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later (London: Continuum, 2009); Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (Princeton: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997); and Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt, p. 69.
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26
Alexander, “Ancient Book Production and the Circulation of the Gospels,” p. 80. For the particularly gendered nature of early Christian house communities and women patrons, see Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald, with Janet H. Tulloch, A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 194.
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28
Alexander, “Ancient Book Production and the Circulation of the Gospels,” p. 82. Martin Hengel echoes Alexander’s sentiment that the early Christian codices resembled more the “works for school use, technical and medical works, or trivial literature” (Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Collection and Origin of the Canonical Gospels [Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000], p. 121; cf. pp. 119–20). Hengel cites Martial as the beginning of the ancient codex but fails to account for the actual lack of literary evidence of its adoption in the first and second centuries of the Common Era. He cites the shift of power from Jerusalem to Rome in 70 CE as a shift from Hebrew to Roman scribal practices. This leads him to erroneously conclude that the early choice of Christians was cost and ease of use; this again doesn’t explain the artifacts as we have them, which indicate an early Christian choice against the bibliographic grain of the Roman context. Hengel goes on to cite his main reason for the Christian codex in terms of “the demarcation of the early, enthusiastic and eschatological worship from the traditional synagogue worship and the difficulty of getting a hold of the LXX manuscripts” (The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 121). Although Hengel’s account is riddled with inconsistencies, he nonetheless introduces the crucial Jewish cultural background to the Christian use of the codex. For instance, he cites the apocalyptic character of early Christianity as an example of a lack of concern for literary conventions (The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 119). However, if these early Christians predicted the immanent end of the world, then why were they writing at all? Surely, it was the postponement of the expected eschaton and the death of the disciples that prompted the process of writing in the first place. Second, this same assumption about a lack of social conventions leads Hegel to claim, on the one hand, that Christian scribal practices relied on the Roman context after 70 CE, but, on the other hand, that the Christian scribal practices arose independently of this Roman context. Either they did care about Roman scribal practices or they did not. Some clarity is needed here. Nonetheless, Hegel does cite the Jewish background to early Christian scribal practices which, when properly understood, does provide vital clues to the early Christian adoption of the codex.
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35
Epp, “The Codex and Literacy in Early Christianity and at Oxyrhynchus,” p. 528.
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36
Epp, “The Codex and Literacy in Early Christianity and at Oxyrhynchus,” p. 528. Epp’s point here echoes the earlier argument in Michael McCormick, “The Birth of the Codex and the Apostolic Life-Style,” Scriptorium 39 (1985), pp. 150–58. These issues are summarized in Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 55. Cf. Harris, “Why Did the Codex Supplant the Book-Roll?”
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37
Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts, pp. 67; see also p. 74, where Hurtado more thoroughly challenges Epp’s argument in particular.
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39
T.C. Skeat, “Roll Versus Codex: A New Approach?” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 84 (1990), 297–98.
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40
Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts, p. 77. This is a point Hurtado makes specifically in relation to McCormick’s argument in McCormick’s “The Birth of the Codex and the Apostolic Life-Style,” p. 155.
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41
See Roberts and Skeat, The Birth of the Codex, p. 59; and Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, pp. 57–58, 78. See also Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B.C.E.-IV Century C.E (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), p. 205.
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42
Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 26. Largely this was to explain Christian citations of the Old Testament which matched neither the Masoretic text nor existing copies of the Septuagint, as well as to support theories about a pre-Gospel Quelle.
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43
Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 25. For a brief summary of the development of the early hypothesis, see Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 255 n. 80. Notably, although C.H. Dodd refuted this view in his According to the Scriptures: The Substructure of New Testament Theology (London: Nisbee, 1952), pp. 28–60, Gamble nonetheless argues that this dismissal was premature and that testimonia were a likely part of early Christian life (Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 26.
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45
Robert McQueen Grant, After the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), p. 158.
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46
J.M. Allegro, “Further Messianic References in Qumran Literature,” JBL 75 (1956), pp. 174–87 (182).
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48
Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 65. It might then be assumed that Christians didn’t see their writings as literature as has been suggested in Hall, in “In the Beginning Was the Codex,” pp. 9–10, but this seems unlikely given both their quality and intended audiences.
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51
Resnick, “The Codex in Early Jewish and Christian Communities,” p. 9. Resnick points in particular to the coherence between the Sopherim’s rules and Qumran textual production. For instance, the preparation and cleaning of animal skins with salt and flour conform “in remarkable degree” to later medieval rabbinic prescriptions for sacred parchments. These parchments make up roughly 87% of the 800 manuscripts from Qumran, only 100 of which were papyrus. This is a point confirmed by T.C. Skeat in his essay, “Early Christian Book-Production: Papyri and Manuscripts,” in G.W.H. Lampe (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 64. Hence, the Sopherim’s various distinctions are thought to have plausible relevance to the first- to third-century CE context.
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52
Resnick, “The Codex in Early Jewish and Christian Communities,” p. 10.
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53
Resnick, “The Codex in Early Jewish and Christian Communities,” p. 10. Cf. Manahem Haran, “Book-Scrolls At the Beginning of the Second Temple Period,” Hebrew Union College Annual 54 (1983), pp. 111–22 (114).
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54
Resnick, “The Codex in Early Jewish and Christian Communities,” p. 10.
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55
Resnick, “The Codex in Early Jewish and Christian Communities,” p. 10.
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57
Resnick, “The Codex in Early Jewish and Christian Communities,” p. 11.
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58
Martin Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of Its Canon (trans. Mark E. Biddle; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2004), p. 45.
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59
Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture, p. 45, citing Tosefta Shabbat 13:5.
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66
Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 119.
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70
E. Randolph Richards, “The Codex and the Early Collection of Paul’s Letters,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 8 (1998), 155–66.
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72
Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 61. Our understanding of Marcion’s teachings concerning scripture largely arise from Tertullian’s refutation of them, found in particular in Books IV and V of Tertullian’s “Five Books Against Marcion,” which comment upon Luke’s and Paul’s epistles respectively, thus attempting to refute Marcion with those scriptures which he accepts (in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (eds.), Ante-Nicene Fathers [Buffalo: The Christian Literature Company, 1885], vol. 3, pp. 345, 429). As will be noted below as well, it is important to note that Marcion is thought to arrive in Rome just after the Jewish revolt of 132–35 and the final destruction of the temple. Anti-Jewish sentiment would likely have been high in the Roman Empire at this time.
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73
Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 62. For more on common bookroll length, see William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 143.
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74
Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 47; Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus, p. 145.
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77
David Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994); and David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
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79
T.C. Skeat, “The Origin of the Christian Codex,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 102 (1994), pp. 263–68. Skeat’s account witnesses to the Four-Gospel Book outnumbering “by far the 779 copies of the Letters of Paul, 655 copies of Praxapostolos, and the 287 extant copies of the Book of Revelation” (Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament, p. 26).
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82
Skeat, “The Origin of the Christian Codex,” p. 268, citing Irenaeus of Lyon, “Against Heresies,” in Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (eds.), The Apostolic Fathers With Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, (Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1885), vol. 1, p. 428 (3.11.8).
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85
Skeat, “The Origin of the Christian Codex,” p. 267. Skeat provides a fictional account of likely events in T.C. Skeat, “The Formation of the Four-Gospel Codex: A Dramatized Account of How it May Have Come About,” in T.C. Skeat and J.K. Elliott (eds.), The Collected Biblical Writings of T.C. Skeat (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 269.
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87
Philip R. Davies, Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p. 9.
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93
Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2000), p. 32. See also Z. Zevit, “The Second-Third Century Canonization of the Hebrew Bible and Its Influence on Christian Canonizing,” in Arie van der Kooij, K. van der Toorn, Joannes Augustinus, and Maria Snoek (eds.), Canonization and Decanonization (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p. 139; Arie Van der Kooij, “The Canonization of Ancient Books Kept in the Temple of Jerusalem,” in Van der Kooij et al. (eds.), Canonization and Decanonization (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 17–40; and Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, p. 195.
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95
Sanders, “The Impact of the Judean Desert Scrolls on Issues of Text and Canon of the Hebrew Bible,” p. 34.
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98
Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture, p. 69. Qoheleth is listed among the New Testament in the Muratorian canon.
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99
Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture, p. 60. Tertullian notes that some Christians have stopped using the book of Enoch because it is not in the Jewish list of holy books at the time. Origen responds that the Jewish decision upon Enoch does not reflect its usefulness in the church, because the Jews reject any text that refers to Christ. This third-century reference demonstrates the pervasiveness of questions of holiness and use. See William Adler, “The Pseudepigrapha in the Early Church,” in McDonald and Sanders (eds.), The Canon Debate (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), p. 224.
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101
Sidney Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 29; D.W. Gooding, “Aristeas and Septuagint Origins: A Review of Recent Studies,” in Sidney Jellicoe (ed.), Studies in the Septuagint: Origins, Recensions, and Interpretations: Selected Essays, With a Prolegomenon (New York: Ktav Pub. House, 1974), p. 158. The following explication of the early Christian literature largely relies on Jellicoe as well. See also Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture, p. 25.
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102
The letter is summarized in Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, p. 35.
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107
Grafton and Hale Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, p. 105.
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108
Grafton and Hale Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, pp. 122–23. See also Ruth Clements, “Origen’s Hexapla and Christian-Jewish Encounter in the Second and Third Centuries,” in Terrence Donaldson (ed.), Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Caesarea Maritima (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000), pp. 303–329; and Origen, “A Letter from Origen to Africanus,” p. 387.
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109
Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, p. 124.
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110
Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, pp. 234–35.
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111
Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, p. 234.
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112
Cavallo, “Between Volumen and Codex: Reading in the Roman World,” p. 86.
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113
Cavallo, “Between Volumen and Codex: Reading in the Roman World,” p. 88.
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114
Cavallo, “Between Volumen and Codex: Reading in the Roman World,” pp. 86–87.
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115
Irenaeus writes, “For the Ebionites, who use Matthew’s Gospel only, are confuted out of this very same, making false suppositions with regard to the Lord. But Marcion, mutilating that according to Luke, is proved to be a blasphemer of the only existing God, from those [passages] which he still retains. Those, again, who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible, but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark, if they read it with a love of truth, may have their errors rectified. Those, moreover, who follow Valentinus, making copious use of that according to John, to illustrate their conjunctions, shall be proved to be totally in error by means of this very Gospel, as I have shown in the first book” (“Against Heresies,” p. 428 [3.11.7]).
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116
Again, according to Irenaeus, “He who was manifested to men, has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit” (“Against Heresies,” p. 428 [3.11.7]).
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Search for other papers by Timothy Stanley in
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PubMed
In 1933 Frederic Kenyon was one of the first to note the early Christian addiction to codex books. As later scholars confirmed, Christian communities reproduced their sacred literature in a way that differed from the largely scrolled Greco-Roman bibliographic cultures of the first centuries of the Common Era. Book historians and scholars of biblical literature alike have developed a range of competing theories in order to better understand this peculiarity. By evaluating their claims, a number of clarifications can be made in order to demonstrate the codex’s sensitivity to Jewish scribal practices as well as its capacity to include a cosmopolitan diversity of texts. Through these clarifications the codex book form itself can provide vital interpretative insights into early biblical literature and the longer history of the book today.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 205 | 37 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 39 | 5 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 68 | 10 | 1 |