Johnson and Hurtado on the Codex and Papyrus Roll

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:53 pm by Ben Witherington

Johnson and Hurtado on the Codex and Papyrus Roll 2015-03-13T22:53:24-04:00 Ben Witherington

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

by larryhurtado

In preparation for an invitational conference on early papyri coming up late next week in the USA, I read William Johnson’s excellent contribution, “The Ancient Book,” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (ed. R. S. Bagnall). I first “encountered” Johnson in reading his PhD thesis, “The Literary Papyrus Roll” (Yale, 1992), and later his essential book, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). I regard anything by him as worth my time, to say the least, and this contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Papyrology fulfils expectations.

It’s a model of concise, fully informed, soundly-based description and analysis. He first discusses the “Bookroll” (or “scroll”), noting its supremacy as the form of the ancient book until the “codex” (leaf-book) became dominant (after the 4th century CE, and even then only progressively). Johnson is the guy on bookrolls, believe me, his 2004 book mentioned above the place to go on the subject.

Then follows a section on “The Codex” (the early form of the leaf-book as we know it). I’ve studied and written about these matters myself, and am encouraged to find that my own views largely tally with his. He notes, for example, “Coincident to the changeover from roll to codex is a shift in book content from classical literature to Christian texts” (266), and offers the “historical supposition” that “Christians appear to be instrumental in the [wholesale] adoption of the codex” (267). Against some other proposals, he judges (rightly, I think) that “early Christians deliberately adopted the different codex format for their scriptures” (267).

In the next section of his essay, “Books and their Content,” drawing on the important Leuven Database of Ancient Books, LDAB), he notes the (pagan/classical) authors and texts that seem to have been copied and circulated most frequently, somewhat similarly to my tabulation of relative numbers of extant copies of Christian texts (in Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts, 15-41). Homer (Iliad) wins by a country mile, Demosthenes a distant second, followed by the Odessy, Euripides, Hesiod, Plato, 22 authors listed in all. Interestingly, Aristotle comes last/least frequent.

Finally, in a section I found particularly informative, “Books and Society: The ‘Scholars’ of Oxyrhynchus,” he analyses the various annotations found in copies of various pagan literary texts. These include things as simple as a chi (X) in the margin, likely to mark portions regarded as particularly interesting (likely, the X from the Greek word “chrestos” = “useful”). But it is the more substantial annotations that really draw interest.

These give hints of how books circulated, how copies were made, how readers exchanged texts, likely in informal networks of like-minded individuals. But we also see hints that some readers exhibited a scholarly-type interest in noting variants in their texts, and in seeking to judge the more original readings. I found particularly informative Johnson’s discussion of how this latter work was done. From the notations, it appears that two or more copies of a given work (on rolls) were likely compared in social settings where two or more interested individuals collaborated in the comparison. We’ve often wondered how ancients made such text-critical comparison, how they coped physically with bulky rolls. Johnson seems to me to have provided the answer: It wasn’t likely done by an individual trying to consult multiple copies on rolls, but by a small circle of people, each consulting a copy and the group making comparisons and judgements collectively.

My only quibble is in Johnson’s discussion of the Christian preference for the codex, especially for texts that functioned as scriptures. Johnson there states “Only five of one hundred New Testament papyrus fragments listed in the LDAB are written on bookrolls” (266), but, to my knowledge, all of these are actually re-used rolls, none of them NT texts on fresh/unused rolls. That’s important, as we know that re-used rolls were typically copies of texts for personal/private reading, not for public/liturgical usage. So, these few copies of NT texts on re-used rolls are valuable artefacts of the personal/private reading of Christian texts, along with other copies in codex-format likely intended for reading in churches.

Johnson’s essay and the others in this volume are highly recommended.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

June 3, 2014

A Scholar with a Passion for the Truth

Next Post

June 5, 2014 How Jewish Was Paul?-- Hurtado's Answer

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz