Introductions to the Ancient History of the New Testament Literature
Codex Technology - Historical Resource Collation
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia

Codex Technology - Historical Resource Collation

The Codex and Canon Consciousness - by Robert A. Kraft

In the article he mentions that "Athanasius was well aware of the single codex bible, having been involved in the production of such for the emperor Constans around the year 338". Other interesting points include that "Origen's Hexaplaric tool presumably had to be in codex format in order to be effective" and that "Eusebius mentioning various disputed works, copying mega-codices for Constantine, was probably writing in scroll format himself". The author's conclusion is that the "The canon" is the product of 4th century technological developments.
But once it was possible to produce and view (or visualize) "the Bible" under one set of physical covers, the concept of "canon" became concretized in a new way that shapes our thinking to the present day and makes it very difficult for us to recapture the perspectives of earlier times. "The canon" in this sense is the product of 4th century technological developments. Before that, it seems to me, things were less "fixed," and perceptions, accordingly, less concrete.

The Meta-data of Early Christian Manuscripts - Larry Hurtado (Blogsite)

The author has been Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology (University of Edinburgh) since 1996, and prior to that in the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg). Some salient points in the article include the following. It is presented that "Christians prefered the codex over the roll", and yet that "Christians certainly did not invent the codex". Analysis of the Leuven Database of Ancient Books is interesting. The author writes - that "It is easier, however, to demonstrate that early Christians preferred the codex-format than it is to provide a convincing explanation for how and why they came to do so.". Notably, the precisely when the early christians used the codex is being at present controlled by palaeographical assessment. The author summarises this state of affairs .... "all our early Christian copies of literary texts are undated. So, the dating of all our putatively earliest Christian manuscripts is entirely a palaeographical judgment. Following the contemporary mainstream reliance upon the paleaographic dating the author suggests that "the preference for the codex may exhibit part of what we may think of as an emergent Christian “material culture” in the second century CE.". However this statement is immediately qualified by the author's recognition "that this goes against some current views that it is inappropriate to distinguish “Christianity” in that early period,"
The Codex Format

The first matter to note is the Christian preference for the codex over the roll, a phenomenon evident already in our earliest identifiably Christian manuscripts.[3] This preference is all the more striking in comparison to the wider general preference for the roll-format in the second and third centuries CE, particularly for “literary” texts, that is, writings of literary, philosophical, or religious significance. Outside of Christian circles, this wider preference for the roll only began to shift to a preponderance of codex manuscripts in the fourth century CE and later.[4]

We may use some data helpfully compiled in the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB) to illustrate this.5 Taking into account the catalogued “literary” manuscripts dated from the third century BCE through the eighth century CE, identifiably Christian rolls amount to 2.7% of the total number of rolls (3,033), whereas Christian codices amount to 73% of all the total number of codices (3,188). Codices (of all provenances) amount to about 5% of second-century manuscripts and about 15% of third-century manuscripts.

But when we turn to manuscripts of Christian provenance, the codex is clearly the favourite book-form. For example, in the Leuven database overall, at least 91.6% of copies of New Testament writings are identified as codex form, and only 1.1% are rolls (and of the latter, it seems likely that all, or nearly all, are actually opisthographs, re-used rolls, the copies likely prepared for personal study).6 Among all second and third-century NT manuscripts (our earliest), the percentage of codices is at least as high.

By contrast, of all manuscripts of Homer (third century BCE through seventh century CE), 62.8% are rolls, and only 18.5% identified as codices. For manuscripts of Euripides (third century BCE through eighth century CE), 65.9% are rolls and 17.9% are codices.7 If we were to confine our attention to copies of these texts dated no later than the third century CD, the preponderance of rolls over codices would be even greater.

All the data support the commonly-accepted conclusion held among scholars acquainted with ancient book-production that the roll was overwhelmingly the preferred format for any text considered of literary, philosophical, or religious significance, the codex generally reserved for “documentary” texts (e.g., account-books, notebooks).

.... Christian Bible as codex

WIKI - Codex History (Aug 2010)

History

Reproduced Roman-style wax tablet, from which the codex evolvedThe Romans used precursors made of reusable wax-covered tablets of wood for taking notes and other informal writings; while codices of parchment or papyrus appear to have been widely used as personal notebooks, for instance in recording copies of letters sent (Cicero Fam. 9.26.1). The pages of such notebooks were commonly washed or scraped for re-use; and consequently writings on codex were considered informal and impermanent.

The first recorded Roman use of the codex for publishing and distributing literary works dates from the late first century AD, when Martial experimented with the format. At that time the scroll was the dominant medium for literary works and would remain dominant for secular works until the fourth century. Julius Caesar, travelling in Gaul, found it useful to fold his scrolls concertina-style for quicker reference[citation needed], as the Chinese also later did.

Early-Christian Gnostic text from a codex discovered in Nag Hammadi (Egypt) in 1945As far back as the early 2nd century, there is evidence that the codex—usually of papyrus—was the preferred format among Christians: in the library of the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum (buried in AD 79), all the texts (Greek literature) are scrolls; in the Nag Hammadi "library", secreted about AD 390, all the texts (Gnostic Christian) are codices. The earliest surviving fragments from codices come from Egypt and are variously dated (always tentatively) towards the end of the 1st century or in the first half of the 2nd. This group includes the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, containing part of St John's Gospel, and perhaps dating from between 125 and 160.[6]

Early medieval bookcase containing about ten codices depicted in the Codex Amiatinus (ca. 700)In Western culture the codex gradually replaced the scroll. From the fourth century, when the codex gained wide acceptance, to the Carolingian Renaissance in the eighth century, many works that were not converted from scroll to codex were lost to posterity. The codex was an improvement over the scroll in several ways. It could be opened flat at any page, allowing easier reading; the pages could be written on both recto and verso; and the codex, protected within its durable covers, was more compact and easier to transport.

On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity
By Michele Renee Salzman, University of California Press
If calendars in rolls followed the patterns of other secular books, it would seem likely that the papyrus roll remained the norm for calendars until the third century A.D. While no such calendars survive, we do have ferialia in this form, one of which dates from the third century A.D. (though no papyrus-roll feriale exists from the fourth century).30 Based on surviving examples and textual references, we cannot be certain if these papyrus-roll ferialia were illustrated; in any case, their restricted purposes may explain the lack of illustration.

Codex-Calendars

The codex became popular for illustrated secular texts only in the late third or early fourth century. Previously, the papyrus roll was most often used.31 We can thus date the production of codex-calendars, like the illustrated Codex-Calendar of 354, to, at the earliest, the late third century. Consequently, the designer of the Codex-Calendar of 354 may well have had to work out certain problems of design without the aid of codex prototypes. Nor can we assume that there were illustrated calendars in papyrus rolls to serve as a guide; none are extant, and their importance, if any, has yet to be shown.32 The likelihood that a codex-calendar was a fourth-century innovation receives further support from the illustrations found in the Codex-Calendar of 354. Not only are these the earliest known full-page illustrations for a codex in Western art, but the extensive number of motifs pictorializing each month also coincides with fourth-century artistic trends in other media.

The novelty of an illustrated codex-calendar in the fourth century must remain a hypothesis, but analysis of the formal aspects of the Codex-Calendar of 354 does indicate the transference of certain characteristics of inscribed Roman wall calendars to the codex medium. The 1966 discovery of the wall calendar from S. Maria Maggiore in Rome is significant in this regard. This calendar, dated to the late second or early third century, indicates the vitality of inscribed Roman wall calendar traditions well past the Julio-Claudian period, when (or so scholars believed) they were last attested.33 The traditions for inscribing Roman calendars on walls provide a fruitful and underappreciated source of inspiration for the design and illustration of the Calendar of 354.

Although the Codex-Calendar of 354 is the only fourth-century calendar we have, its unique survival and the silence in our sources concerning codex-calendars in general are surely accidental. Four illustrated consular annals dated to the late fourth and early fifth centuries are relevant as comparanda; so too are the illustrated World Chronicles, one of which even contains a calendar, or at least illustrations of the months of the year.34 Such illustrated chronographic works and calendars in codices were no doubt numerous; unfortunately, we do not know how numerous or when they became so.

INDEX | Exceptions Index | Apollonius of Tyana | Mountain Man Graphics