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Codex and Roll in the New Testament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

C. C. McCown
C. C. McCown
Affiliation:
Pacific School of Religion
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Extract

During the last twenty or thirty years evidence has been rapidly accumulating to prove that the codex was in general use for books at a much earlier time than was formerly supposed. The definite testimony of Martial and others on the subject could be misinterpreted, discounted, or overlooked so long as there was no clear corroborating archaeological evidence. Papyrus and the roll had taken firm hold upon the classicistic imaginations of modern students of ancient literatures, especially after the nineteenth-century discoveries of papyri in Egypt, and no one dreamed that the New Testament documents could have been written originally on anything but papyrus sheets and papyrus rolls.

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Type
Research Article
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , October 1941, pp. 219 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1941

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References

1 See Birt, Theodor, Die Buchrolle in der Kunst (Leipzig, 1907).Google Scholar

2 Canon and Text of the New Testament (New York: Scribner, 1907), 322 f.Google Scholar

3 Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), 28 ff., 51 ff.Google Scholar

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5 ‘Beginnings of the Modern Book,’ Michigan Alumnus Quarterly Review, 44 (February, 1938), 95–111.Google Scholar

6 Birt, , Das Antike Buchwesen in seinem Verhältnis zur Litteratur (Berlin, 1882), 46–126Google Scholar, esp. 105–26; ‘Abriss des antiken Buchwesens,’ in Müller's Handbuch der klass. Altertumswiss., I, 3, 3d ed. (1913), 245–376Google Scholar; Dziatzko, , Untersuchungen über ausgewählte Kapitel des antiken Buchwesens (Leipzig, 1900)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and in Pauly-Wissowa, art. ‘Buchhandel,’ 3 (1899), 983 f.; Schubart, Das Buch bei den Griechen und Römern, 2d ed. (Berlin and Leipzig, 1921).Google Scholar See the important refs. in von Dobschütz-Nestle, Einführung in das griechische Neue Testament, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 1923), 32 f.Google Scholar

7 Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1932), esp. 86–119,Google Scholar with useful collection of source materials, 120–33; Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1939), 12 f.Google Scholar; The Text of the Greek Bible (London: Duckworth, 1937), 9–23.Google Scholar See now his The Bible and Archaeology (New York and London: Harper, 1940).Google Scholar

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10 (New York: Macmillan, 1940), 67–78. His theories will be discussed later. For visual orientation see Hatch, W. H. P., The Principal Uncial Manuscripts of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), 7 f.Google Scholar, 12; and its plates.

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15 All this is fully discussed in the books mentioned in notes 5–9, and 14.

16 Birt, Abriss, 344 ff.; Kenyon, Books and Readers, 90 ff.

17 Cf. Roberts, JTS, 40 (1939), 256 f., and note 4.

18 Books and Readers, 95 f. Egyptian preference for papyrus instead of parchment is emphasized by a discovery made about 1933 of fourteen well-preserved Aramaic documents on leather, written by Arsâma, the Persian viceroy in Egypt who appears in the Elephantine papyri, and by other Persian officials. See Rosenthal, Franz, Die aramaitische Forschung seit Theodor Nöldeke's Veröffentlichung (Leiden, 1939), pp. 37 f.Google Scholar I owe this reference to the kindness of Dr. Rosenthal through the intermediation of Dr. W. F. Albright.

19 University of Wisconsin Studies, 9 (Madison, 1923)Google Scholar; cited by Kenyon, op. cit., 111.

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26 Letter of April 25, 1940.

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34 University of Michigan Studies, Humanistic Series, 22, Ann Arbor, 1934.

35 Buch und Schrift 10 (1937), 11 f.

36 For an exception see the Michigan Shepherd of Hermas (above, note 34), pp. 8, 12.

37 Op. cit., 12. See also Schubart, W., Das Buch bei den Griechen und Römern, 126–29; Einführung in die Papyruskunde (Berlin, 1918), 55 f.Google Scholar

38 See refs. in Campbell Bonner, op. cit. (above, note 34), p. 11, note 2.

39 Op. cit. (above, note 35), 13. He does not give the nature of his evidence nor name the codex.

40 Op. cit., 10 f.

41 Ibscher, op. cit., 13 ff.; Polotsky, H. J., art., ‘Manichäismus,’ Pauly-Wissowa, Suppl. 6 (1934), 240–71Google Scholar, esp. 241: 61–65; Carl Schmidt and H. J. Polotsky, Ein Manifund in Ägypten, Sitzungberichte preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse (1933), I.

42 2 Tim. 4.13.

43 B. L. Ullman in the Classical Journal 29, pp. 57–60, reviewing Kenyon's Books and Readers, does not agree that parchment was regarded as inferior in the early Empire.

44 They seem to be constantly in Sir Frederic Kenyon's mind in his allusions to the subject.

45 Books and Readers, 68.

46 Ibid., 61, 69.

47 Epist. 22. 30 Vall.

48 The triple variants of the story of Paul's conversion in Acts are suggestive of the freedom possible even to the same writer in different contexts.

49 JTS, 40 (1939), 56 f.

50 Op. cit., 253–57. In note 4, p. 256, Mr. Roberts presents well founded criticisms of certain conclusions of Birt and Sanders.

51 See Kenyon, Books and Readers, 62. Whether originally so divided or not, they now illustrate current practice.

52 Loc. cit., note.

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57 Harnack's argument, Die Briefsammlung des Apostels Paulus (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1926), 13Google Scholar, that only the circulation of the Pauline corpus in several rolls explains the variation in their order in our later codices seems to me to mean nothing. In the beginning no copyist was bound to copy all of them or to preserve any fixed order. Nothing was “canonized” at first.

58 Christianity Goes to Press, 55.

59 Polycarp, Ad Phil. 13. 2.

60 Op. cit., 49–78, ch. III, ‘The Climax of Christian Publication.’

61 Die Briefsammlung des Apostels Paulus (Leipzig, 1926), p. 2.Google Scholar

62 Op. cit., 70, notes 1, 2.