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Dive into the mystery of the Bible Codex on The Jimmy Akin Podcast! In this episode, Jimmy unravels why early Christians revolutionized book technology by favoring codices over scrolls. He explores clues from ancient manuscripts, delves into the Synoptic Problem, and investigates which Christian text—perhaps Paul’s letters or a Gospel—sparked this trend. With detective-like precision, Jimmy examines evidence and theories, leaving listeners intrigued by an unsolved puzzle that shaped the Bible as we know it. Tune in for a fascinating journey through history and faith!
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
People are familiar with the Bible—which is actually a collection of ancient books that have been bound together under a single cover.
This form of book is called a codex, but it wasn’t the standard form of book in the ancient world.
So why do we have a Bible codex?
That leads to a mystery from the beginning of Christianity. It’s probably one you’ve never heard of, and it may be something you’ve never thought about.
But when Christianity burst onto the world stage, it brought something new with it.
It brought a revolution . . . in book technology.
And today, I’m going to tell you a detective story that we still haven’t completely solved.
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast
Scrolls vs. Codices
In the ancient world there were two forms of books: the scroll and the codex Scroll vs. Codex.
- As everyone knows, scrolls were long rolls that you had to roll and unroll to read. They had the pages attached side by side to make a long, continuous strip.
- Codices, by contrast, were like modern books. They had the pages attached at a spine, allowing you to quickly flip from one passage to another.
These two types of books amounted to different forms of “book technology.” They worked in different ways, as the ways of accessing the material (rolling vs. flipping) indicates.
Before the rise of Christianity, scrolls were by far the most popular format for books.
We have almost no references to pre-Christian books being sold in codex form, and pagans and Jews used scrolls almost exclusively when they had scribes copy books for them.
There was some use of codices in pre-Christian times, but people tended to use them for minor tasks like taking notes—the way we use spiral notebooks.
But the idea of publishing something as impressive as a finished book—a work of literature—in the form of a notepad, well, that was hard to imagine.
By contrast, Christians were enthusiastic users of codices.
This is clear from the surviving second and third century Christian manuscripts, the large majority of which are in codex form.
In the show notes or video description, I’ll have a link to the American scholar Larry Hurtado’s catalogue of 2nd and 3rd century Christian manuscripts, so you can see for yourself.
Scholars have debated why the codex became so popular among Christians, and they have proposed many possible reasons.
However, we don’t know for sure.
Codices have some advantages, but they aren’t decisive.
If you’d like to read more about that see Larry Hurtado’s book, The Earliest Christian Artifacts and Harry Y. Gamble’s, Books and Readers in the Early Church.
Whatever the case, the Christian use of codices started a trend that led to the codex becoming the modern form of book we use today instead of the scroll.
The primary reason Christian started using codices was likely cultural: Somebody in the Christian community started producing books in codex form and it caught on.
This probably happened at first with a very influential edition of a major Christian text—likely something that’s now part of the Bible—and this became the expected form for books among Christians.
The codex form of books then became a marker or badge of Christian identity.
It was something we did with our holy books—in contrast to what other people did with theirs.
And the trend must have started in the first century, because it was clearly in place by the second century.
We can’t be certain what the first influential Christian codex was, but my guess would be that the influential codex that started the trend was one of four things:
- Paul’s letters (Romans-Galatians): The very first collection of Paul’s letters, which would have been published by Paul himself and that would have included Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Galatians. If you’d like more information on this, see David Trobisch’s book, Paul’s Letter Collection
- The Gospel of Mark: the first Gospel to be written
- The Gospel of Matthew: the most popular of the four Gospels in the early centuries
- Bound Gospels: A bound edition of two, three, or four of the Gospels, which would be something too long to fit in a single scroll
There are other possibilities, too, but these strike me as the most likely candidates.
Is there any way we can shed light on this question?
Book Technology and the Synoptic Problem
British scholar Alan Garrow has done a lot of work on the Synoptic Problem—the question of how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are related to each other.
He advocates what he calls the “Matthew Conflator Hypothesis,” which is his name for what is sometimes called the Wilke Hypothesis. It’s one of the solutions to the Synoptic Problem that I discussed in Episode 57.
Basically, the Wilke or Matthew Conflator hypothesis holds that Mark wrote first, Luke used Mark, and then Matthew conflated Mark and Luke, as well as other sources.
This has been my preferred view for a long time, though I’m open to arguments for other positions.
In the show notes or video description, I’ll have a link to where you can watch Garrow’s videos arguing for this view.
In his third video, Garrow makes an argument that involves the scroll vs. codex issue.
He points out, as have others, that when people were copying material from a scroll, they tended to do so in a different way than if they were using a codex.
This was because of the physical nature of the book, the ease of maintaining eye contact with the text being copied, and the ability to easily move between passages.
Scroll-users have a greater tendency than codex-users to:
- Paraphrase rather than copy word-for-word
- Keep the material they are copying in the Same order, and
- Switch between sources less often
By contrast, codex-users have a greater tendency than scroll-users to:
- Copy word-for-word
- Change the order of the material they are copying, and
- Switch between sources
In light of this, what can we say about the Synoptic Problem?
What If . . . ?
Garrow then uses these observations to play a game of what if and see what can be deduced about the kinds of books that Matthew and Luke were working with.
You can see his third video for the details, but we can say the following:
First, Luke seems to have been using a scroll of Mark.
If you’re watching the video version of the podcast, you can see that here we have a long stretch of Luke from Luke 5 to Luke 9, with the portions where Luke is borrowing from Mark colored in.
As you can see, Luke seldom switches between Mark and other sources, which is a sign that he’s using a scroll of Mark rather than a codex.
Luke also paraphrases Mark more, rather than doing as much word-by-word copying.
And Luke rarely changes the order of the material in Mark.
All of this supports the idea that Luke was working with a scroll of Mark.
Since Mark was the first Gospel to be written, it also raises the possibility that Mark originally came out as a scroll, though we can’t be sure of that.
It’s also possible that—even if Mark originally came out as a codex—this form of book wasn’t yet in common use and someone had Mark copied in scroll format, which Luke then used.
Second, Matthew seems to have been using a codex of Mark.
In the video version of the podcast, here we have a stretch of Matthew from Matthew 8 to Matthew 13, with the portions taken from Mark colored in.
As you can see, Matthew frequently switches between Mark and other sources, which is a sign that he’s using a codex of Mark rather than a scroll.
Matthew also copies from Mark in a more verbatim or word-for-word fashion.
And he rearranges the order of the material he takes from Mark.
All of this supports the idea that Matthew was working with a codex of Mark.
This indicates that the transition from scroll to codex was already beginning at the time Matthew’s Gospel was written, which I estimate to have been around A.D. 63.
So even if Mark was originally a scroll, someone was already copying it as a codex.
Now we come to a fork in the road, because while it’s quite clear that Mark was the first Gospel to be written—a subject I’ll tell you more about in a future episode—there is a debate about whether Matthew or Luke came next.
If you don’t bring in the hypothetical source scholars have called Q, there are two resulting theories.
The Farrer hypothesis holds that after Mark wrote, Matthew came next, and then Luke drew from Mark and Matthew.
While the Wilke hypothesis—which Garrow calls the Matthew Conflator hypothesis—holds that after Mark wrote, Luke came next, and then Matthew drew from Mark and Luke.
Garrow considers both possibilities, and he considers the Farrer hypothesis first, which leads to the third thing we can say.
In the video version of the podcast, I have a diagram of the Sermon on the Mount—which is Matthew 5 to Matthew 7—with the portions Luke used colored in blue.
If you look at the chapter numbers in the lefthand column, Luke takes bits of the sermon on the Mount and uses them at different points in his Gospel.
He would use some of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 6, some in chapter 14, some in chapter 11, some in chapter 16, some in chapter 12, and so forth.
This is not what he would do if he had a scroll of Matthew, so it looks like if the Farrer hypothesis is correct and Luke used Matthew, then he seems to have been using a codex of Matthew.
Garrow then looks at the possibility that the Wilke hypothesis is correct and Matthew used Luke.
Here we can use the same illustration, because Matthew would be pulling from multiple different chapters in Luke— chapters 6, 14, 11, 16, 12, and so on—to compose the Sermon on the Mount.
This would indicate that Matthew was working with a codex of Luke rather than a scroll.
We can thus summarize 4 things from this:
- It looks like Luke was using a scroll of Mark.
- It looks like Matthew was using a codex of Mark.
- If Luke used Matthew, it looks like he was using a codex of Matthew.
- If Matthew used Luke, it looks like he was using a codex of Luke.
Garrow argues that these and other considerations give us reason to prefer the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis because it allows both Matthew and Luke to behave consistently.
Luke would be consistently working with scrolls.
And Matthew would be consistently working with codices.
These facts are certainly consistent with the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis, but I don’t think they provide a particularly strong reason to favor it.
This seems to be the weakest part of Garrow’s case, and the arguments he advances in the other videos are much stronger.
There are also arguments that he doesn’t go into in the videos.
Why Not?
So why don’t these facts give us strong reason to favor the Matthew Conflator or Wilke Hypothesis?
The reason has to do with the availability of books in scroll and codex forms.
Scribes were overwhelmingly used to producing scrolls, and it is unlikely that the codex trend began with the very first Christian books and then instantly dominated the Christian book world.
Indeed, Hurtado’s list shows that Christians were still using scrolls for centuries, even after the codex form became dominant.
It is thus likely that the first Gospel to be written—Mark—was originally published as a scroll, something supported by the fact that Luke seems to have used a scroll of Mark.
Further, books in this period were fantastically expensive due to the costs of materials and the hand copying by scribes that was involved.
This means that, if you were an Evangelist, you would be incentivized to use whatever copy of a prior Evangelist’s Gospel you had—whether it was a scroll or a codex.
You wouldn’t be likely to undertake the expense of having the earlier Evangelists re-copied into your preferred format.
And even if you had a rich patron, he might not be inclined to go along with what he would see as a frivolous expense.
Nor would you be likely to slice up a scroll and convert it into a codex.
That would produce a very damaged copy as you would be slicing through the joins where the individual sheets were attached.
It would be hard to effectively bind them to a single spine.
And the book would be extra thick since scrolls were usually written only on one side of the page.
The probability is that you would use the prior Evangelists in whatever format you had.
If Luke was the last of the Synoptic Evangelists to write, the reason for his inconsistency in how he treated Mark and how he treated Matthew thus might simply be due to the fact that he had a scroll of Mark but a codex of Matthew—and he didn’t bother having Matthew recopied as a scroll before he set to work.
I’m not saying that this possibility deprives Garrow’s argument of all force.
There is still some value in a scenario that allows the final Synoptic Evangelist to use his sources in a consistent manner.
However, I do think this possibility substantially weakens this particular argument for the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis, even though I think that this hypothesis is likely the correct solution.
What Was the Influential Codex?
Can we learn anything from this exercise about what the influential book may have been that kicked off the Christian codex trend?
Earlier I proposed four possibilities for what this book may have been:
- The first collection of Paul’s letters
- The Gospel of Mark
- The Gospel of Matthew, or
- A collection of more than one Gospel
Let’s consider option 2—that Mark was the influential Christian codex—first.
As we saw earlier, we have evidence that Luke used Mark in the form of a scroll and Matthew used Mark in the form of a codex.
So both forms were in circulation early on. But which came first?
Since it would have taken time for the codex trend to become established in Christian circles, it is likely that Mark—the first Gospel written—could have initially appeared as a scroll.
This is supported by the fact—as Garrow points out—that Luke seems to have used a scroll of Mark. So option 2 is less likely than the others.
On the other hand, there is also a theory that I’ll tell you about in a future video that holds that Mark did not intend his Gospel to be a polished, finished literary work.
Instead, he intended it to be a collection of what were known in Greek as Hupomnemata, which were basically a collection of unpolished notes that could serve as the basis for later, more finished books.
Which is exactly how Matthew and Luke then used Mark.
If this theory is true—if Mark was originally understood as an unpolished set of notes—then it could have originally appeared as a codex, since these were used as notebooks at the time.
In that case, option 2 would once more be plausible.
What about Matthew—the most popular Gospel in the early days—having been the influential codex?
If the Farrer hypothesis is correct and Luke used Matthew, then he apparently did so in codex form, indicating that the most popular of the four Gospels was already circulating as a codex.
However, I think the Farrer hypothesis isn’t the most likely solution, so what happens if we assume that the Wilke hypothesis is true, and Matthew wrote last?
We have evidence that—in addition to using a codex of Mark—Matthew also would have used a codex of Luke.
That could mean that the influential Christian codex that kicked off the trend came out before Matthew’s Gospel.
If that’s the case, then option 3 would be less likely.
But it also could just be that Matthew just really liked codices because of how easy they are to work with.
If that’s the case, then Matthew may have had Mark and Luke recopied in codex form so he could use them.
Either that or he may have had scrolls of Mark and Luke sliced up and then re-bound as codices.
In either event, he may have been such a codex superfan that he likely then published his own Gospel as a codex.
This would make the idea of Matthew being the influential codex more likely.
But what about option 4—the idea that the book that kicked off the Christian codex trend was a collection of two or more Gospels?
The reason this is a possibility is that all four of the Gospels are the right length to fit in a standard-sized scroll, so if you wanted to put multiple Gospels together, you’d likely use a codex—since codices can have more pages in them.
What are the options here, in light of what we’ve seen?
Well, we have good evidence that I can go into another time that John’s Gospel was written after Mark and Luke—and plausibly after Matthew as well.
In this episode, we’ve seen evidence that on the Wilke hypothesis, Matthew had codex copies of Mark and Luke at the time he wrote, so unless Matthew was the kind of codex superfan we’ve just described, copies of Mark and Luke in codex form were already in circulation.
It’s more likely that Matthew was not a codex superfan than that he was, so codices of Mark and Luke probably already existed.
In that case, they could have been bound together in a single codex and been the influential volume that kicked off the codex craze.
However, if the theory is correct that Mark was originally meant as a set of unpolished notes, then why would you bind Mark together with Luke—the more polished work based on those notes?
That wouldn’t make much sense.
It would make more sense for them to be bound together later on, once Mark was recognized as a full-fledged holy Gospel and not simply a set of notes.
So I think it’s more likely that Mark and Luke were probably separate—that is, not bound together as a single volume. This would remove a degree of probability from option 4.
I thus presently think that option 4 is the least likely of the possibilities I’ve named.
And we’ve just seen arguments both for and against options 2 and 3 being the influential codex.
However, the one option we haven’t considered is that it was Paul’s initial letter collection that was the influential codex.
We have evidence I can tell you about in the future that this collection included, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Galatians.
Thus far, I haven’t found any arguments against Paul’s initial letter collection being the influential Christian codex that kicked off the trend, whereas I have found at least arguments against the others.
I thus consider Paul’s initial letter collection to be a strong possibility.
On the other hand, there are other options. We are not locked into these four.
The influential codex work even could have been an influential work from the Old Testament—for example, a copy of the Pentateuch or the book of Isaiah—or even an unknown work, though these possibilities are less likely.
But one way or another, there was an early Christian book that came out as a codex, and this kicked off a trend that led to the entire Bible being bound as a codex—something that would never have been possible as a scroll.
Nobody would want to wind through hundreds of side-by-side pages of a Bible scroll, and the scroll’s ends would be so heavy that the book would tear in the middle.
Eventually all of the different books of the Old Testament and the New Testament would be bound together in that new-fangled Christian book technology, the codex—giving us the Bible codex we have today.
But what exactly the early Christian book that started the trend was will remain, until new evidence emerges, a mystery.
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God bless you always!
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