"The Gestation of the Codex" or, "From Scroll and Tablets to Codex and Beyond"

Mostly a report, with some emphasis on the speculative nature of the relationship to early Christianity.

Problem of Pauline authorship of Pastorals; early use of Mark; connection of (Greek) Roman Christianity with Latin Roman evidence; simplistic argument for nomina sacra unity; place of the epistles in canon formation. Kilpatrick himself is inclined to emphasize Christian desire to differentiate from Judaism in both codex and nomina sacra choices.

Review by Rosamond McKitterick [Oxford Journals page] Library (1985) 360-363

The codex, however, antedates the formation of the Gospel canon and is very difficult to link with it. This part of the discussion would have been enriched had the possible ownership of the surviving books, the market for the new format and the question of who would have been reading these books been considered, for the manuscripts and their proposed context seem to have significant implications for levels and use of literacy among the Christian communities of the ancient world. (363)

Offers several queries and corrections, noted above in the appropriate places in the text. Also check:  "P. 13 The reference, Asc., In Mil. 29, has dropped out" [presumably was present in the earlier CHR version?].

Note by J. David Thomas in his obituary for T.C.Skeat:

Skeat's other major contirbution to palaeographical and codicological studies was the book he produced with Colin Roberts, The Birth of the Codex ( based in part on a previous article by Roberts in the Proceedings of the British Academy). Although in some respects controversial and by no means the last word on the subject, this book is fundamental for any examination of this extremely complicated problem, and has been reprinted more than once. Also of enormous value is the chapter on Early Christian Book-Production [[1969, reprinted in Elliott]], which he contributed to the Cambridge History of the Bible (an Italian translation appeared as a separate volume in 1976).

Additional Bibliography and Information [see email file "codex" -- main items copied below]

Elliott obituary for Skeat

Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 10:31:43 -0400
Subject: The Codex
From: joseph pope [JoePope@compuserve.com]

Further to to the discussion regarding the supplanting of the scroll by the codex it has been believed generally that the codex developed over time from the wooden tablets used by Roman schoolchildren for writng. Two or three of these tablets would be held together by a leather thong at top left corner of tablets.   Startling confirmation for this hypothesis was found about a dozen years ago at excavations at Dakleh Oasis 400 miles south of Alexandria and 240 miles west of Luxor.  There was found at the bottom of steps leading to a domestic kitchen the earliest extant codex in the form of nine boards measuring 14 by 5 inches bound together with four thongs.  This primitive codex is dated to c. 295 AD.  The surface is gesso. On it is written in Greek three works by Isocrates.  Thus the earliest extant copy of anything by him.  I have used photos of this discovery in my lectures on the history of the book to great effect for the past five years.

[and later, from Heaps, on possible Jewish codices]

[Jim O'Donnell] It is remarkable that the selection of the codex and the formation of the canon are both utterly fundamental decisions we know early Christians made and there is no evidence for who made them or how they made them.

"Kevin P. Keane"
Why, finally, does Cicero speak of inchoare librum rather than volumen if the codex as a common format was so far in the future?

Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family, Librarian,

[Sigrid] Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma

[11 July 1990 Humanist, from Marc Bregman]

[Lupia]
Papyri codices of the New Testament

[Eugene Vance] In many 4th c. Christian sarcophagi, one sees the transmission of the Law from Christ to Peter as the bestowal of a scroll. However in a few sarcophagi one sees St. Paul, usually to the right of Christ, receiving a codex, and receiving it directly from heaven and not from Christ. While I have my own hunches about the significance of this detail, I wonder if there is some obvious primary iconographical reference here that eludes me. Any leads?

[Dirk Jongkind] I am trying to find the earliest examples of codices consisting of more than one quire. This can mean either the survival of two or more quires or the mere presence of a quire-number somewhere in the margin. So far the following MSS head the list for papyrus and parchment respectively:

I remember an article by T. C. Skeat in which he suggests that P4 (Luke 1-6) may be from the same MS as P64/67 (Matt 3-26). If his thesis is correct, then this would have been a sizable MS (four gospels?). P46 could get away with one quire, but must have been pushing the boundary of a practical codex (i.e. one that folds flattish and in which the central leaves don't have to be trimmed too much.) If P4 is from the same codex as P64/67, then this would be a candidate for an early multiple quire codex as well. [Tim Finney]

Wieland Willker
Well, if that is allowed, then of course also P66 is allowed, which (acc. to Aland) consisted of several quires, too. There are also quite substantial LXX codices from the 2nd CE, but I don't know of quire numbers.

--
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 12:08 GMT

Subject: RE: 4.0213 History of the Codex? (1/26)

The standard work on the introduction of the codex is C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat The Birth of the Codex london 1983, though many areas remain controversial. But one should be very careful about excessive technological determinism. There is a lot of re-evaluation going on of the notion of orality and its effects in Greco-roman culture, and a growing scepticism about the sort of stuff Havelock and others pushed out. The development of literary scholarship as we know it - a concern for exact wording, even down to questions of punctuation and accentuation - took place in the Greco-roman world in the 3rd C B.C.E. when scrolls were the norm. That was also the period when the order of works was fixed for many authors. But try asking a Sanskritist about the way Panini and the other grammars were (indeed are) discussed orally and you will see that the question of respect for the word and literacy are much more complicated than fanatics like Ong make out. There's a huge bibliography.

Don Fowler.
---

Eric G. Turner entitled The Typology of the Early Codex (U. Penn. Press, 1977): In his preface Turner

apologizes for his use of the term "Christian" to mean "biblical" as follows:

I have used "Christian" as a blanket term to describe theological, religious, polemical or scriptural works that are obviously not "Greek literature" [sic! from a classicist's perspective]. I wish I had used a more neutral terminology. Dr. K. Treu has recently pointed out ... that a number of anomalies make it less certain than has been generally supposed that the use of the codex form and certain standardized _nomina sacra_ are firm evidence that the text concerned is of Christian ambiance. [Preface, xxii]

//to be continued//

 

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