Greg Matthews said
Larry Hurtado has an interesting blog post today about the use of the codex by early Christians:** you do not have permission to see this link **
Had a chance to read that. It is interesting. Could the difference be something as simple as any other social trend. Everybody in the group has to have it, wear it or what not. Were codices the Uggs of the second and third century? Perhaps Christians simply wanted a way to set their scriptures apart.
Seems doubtful when considering how few people could read. I’ve read a theory that the codex was first used by ship captains for their logs. Christians, being missionaries and traveling around the Mediterranean a lot and seeing ship captains using a codex, saw the utility of the codex and picked it up from there.
Greg Matthews said
I just posted to Larry’s blog asking what he thinks of the idea.
OK, that would be worthwhile. Thee idea of missionaries being early adopters or Uggs? 😉
I have a little trouble seeing how Missionaries on a ship would manage to see the Captains logs, but the question seems to be
more about the likelihood of Missionary exposure than what the given source of it might be. Missionaries moving along various trade routes would certainly have more opportunities to see new things. To be sure, non Christian societies practiced trade and may have had the same opportunities for exposure. Does the desire to set themselves off from other religions etc explain why “Christians overwhelmingly preferred the codex, with particular fervency”…?
Edit: I’ve gotten my butt kicked by Bart a couple of times. I guess something that sounds reasonable to an amateur sounds bizarre to an expert. This may be an entirely accidental thing. It might be as simple as some one adopting a codex(for whatever reason) and congregants seeing it as the proper form. The right way to present sacred scripture
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