Generating
Bible: Many Scriptures into One Canon, One Codex from Many
Scrolls
for Wistar Institute meetings in Berkeley
CA, Nov 2011, by Robert A Kraft
Presentation:
Currently, the oldest complete Bibles
that have survived come from the 4th century of
the common era – from the time of the Roman emperor Constantine (died 337), the church
historian Eusebius (died about 339), and the
Alexandrian bishop Athanasius (died 373). The best known
of these are two damaged Greek books called “Codex
Vaticanus” (also here) and “Codex Sinaiticus” in which the various
sections of handwriting by the various copyists have been
dated to the mid 300s by paleographers and attributed to
Egyptian origin – unfortunately, such manuscripts do not
bear composition or “copyright” dates. Here is a page of Vaticanus; and here a page of Sinaiticus.
These codices once included, with some
loose ends (and damaged portions), both the collection of
Greek Jewish scriptures known now as “the Septuagint” or
“the Greek Old Testament,” and the collection called “the
New Testament,” although the exact contents and order of
books differ
in interesting ways between the manuscripts and with
the "canon" list produced by Athanasius in the year 367. Unfortunately,
no table of contents has survived from either codex. Vaticanus does not include the books of the Maccabees, and the last
part of the codex is missing where we
might expect the Pauline Pastorals
and/or Revelation,
and any additional works. Sinaiticus
is lost for most of the first half, but does include 1 and 4
Maccabees, and
contains the Epistle of
Barnabas and Shepherd
of Hermas at the end of the "New Testament"
collection. Athanasius
explicitly rejects Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of
Sirach, Esther, Judith, and Tobit, and does
not mention any books of the Maccabees, or Barnabas (but
knows of Hermas and the Didache as useful but not top
level), and in general follows the Vaticanus order for the
rest, with some interesting differences. It is clear that
despite significant progress in formation of "the Bible,"
such matters as order and extent were not universally
"fixed" in Christian usage by that time, even in
Egypt.
The
fourth century represents the climax of a major
technological shift in Christian bookmaking, from the
earlier period of horizontally oriented scrolls containing individual works
(or small collections such as the “Minor Prophets” or the
letters of Paul) through the transition to small codex books
of about the same length as a single scroll (e.g. Genesis, Matthew), or as a few
scrolls together (e.g. the four gospels), to the “mega
codices” capable of holding large numbers of works. This
sort of shift was in some ways analogous to what happened
with the invention of the printing press in the 15th
century, or to
what is still happening with digitization of texts and
expansion of data storage in our own day. More people had
easier and quicker access to larger amounts of material.
With the development of mega codices, an entire library of
scriptural writings could be consulted in a short amount of
time and with manageable effort. Accessories such as
indexing and cross-referencing
(e.g. the "Eusebian Canons" to locate parallel materials in
the gospels) were also developed, along with other such
special “apps.” Conceptually, it then became possible
to point to a single codex book as the locus of scriptural
authority, and to speak of “the Bible” as a tangible
physical object
that could be viewed and moved from place to place with
relative ease.
Prior to this technological marvel
of the biblical mega codex, Christians – and Jews as well –
were not without the ability to construct and discuss
authoritative collections of “scriptures” (almost always in
the plural). Indeed, the Greek and Roman scroll worlds were
full of authored writings comprised of collections of
multiple scrolls [#25], such as Homer’s Iliad
(24 volumes/scrolls) and Odyssey (24
volumes/scrolls), as well as other collections of various
sorts (e.g. treatises, letters). This situation even caused
some concern in legal discussions [#30]. In Jewish circles, the
“Pentateuch” ("five books of Moses”) is an obvious example of
several scrolls under one title, as are the four books of
Samuel-Kings, and the five “books” that make up the Psalms.
That it was difficult to preserve textual integrity in such
conditions is clear from the results of textcritical study of
the extant manuscripts, where “text types” often switch
between related books, or even within them (Samuel-Kings is a
notorious example). Not that it was impossible to maintain
physical unity of a sort, on library shelves,
for example, as imagined
at Alexandria . But the challenge of maintaining such unity
over time, and space, was complicated, as the extant
manuscripts attest. What Christians now call "the Bible" would
have required at least 46 such individual
scrolls.
The mega codex solution was also of
limited applicability, given the costs involved in producing
and preparing such a volume. Papyri was too brittle and
bulky to be practical for such extended service, while
parchment was suitable but also quite expensive – how many
animal skins and how many copyists over how much time would
be needed to produce something like those famous 4th
century codices? Originally Vaticanus probably contained almost 800 double sided folia
with three columns on each side (1588 pages, probably
requiring more than 350 animals for the skins), and Sinaiticus about the
same, mostly in 4 columns per page (400 folia of which are
extant). It is no wonder that even in subsequent centuries,
such copies of the entire Bible (called “pandects”) were rare, and Jewish and Christian scriptural
materials tended to circulate in more limited forms such as
the Pentateuch, the Psalter, the Prophets, the Gospels, and
the like. Book shelves continued to function
and maintain some sort of organization, as we can see from
various representations that have survived -- e.g. in 5th
century Ravenna, or in this 8th century Latin pandect. Just who would have
owned mega codices, or even extensive book cabinets, is no
longer clear. Did every church or synagogue possess its
authoritative literature in one of these forms? We do not
know, but I suspect not. Indeed, as we will see, it may have
been due to the government sponsorship of Constantine that
massive biblical anthologies in codex format came into
existence.
Still, a concept of authoritative
scriptural literature was already present and continued to
function even without the physical realities of a biblical
codex or a cabinet full of scriptural works. The
determinative device used was the list.
We know of
formal lists, such as reportedly used by Melito of Sardis around the end of the second century, or by Origen
of Alexandria and Caesarea a generation or two later. Even earlier, at
the end of the first century, the Jewish historian Josephus
knows of a concrete number of books and various categories
into which they fit,
although he does not give exact individual titles for everything. This
resembles ways of cataloguing known from other Greek
examples, by type of literature, as seems to have
been done with the great Alexandrian library (e.g. Callimacus). Whether
Josephus, with his priestly connections in Jerusalem, is
telling us how things were actually organized and stored in
an official Jewish library associated with the Jerusalem
Temple cannot be determined. Similar categories to those he
used are also found in the prologue to the translation of
Sirach, from around the end of the 2nd century
before the common era,
in some of the Dead Sea Scroll texts, as also in some early Christian
works. The list, like the book cabinet (scrinium) could
function independently of any specific book format (scroll,
codex) for the relevant materials. And the list doubtless
sometimes functioned in connection with tags or labels placed
on the individual scrolls or codices as in
this reconstruction.
So, while the concept of
“the Bible” as a single physical book depended on the
technological development of the mega codex (which brought
with it specificity of content, with reference both to
titles and to order, and also the possibility of identifying
and labeling the development of “text types”), the idea of
an authoritative canon of scriptural writings
could develop as well through lists and/or through physical storage options such as the
cabinet (scrinium, also here) or even the earlier and more
portable scroll box (capsa), which is widely attested [#15.2], even when codices are also in
use [#16] [#17] -- all of these formats survived
for a long time alongside
each other. While the idea of canon
(rule, measurer) implies some sort of authority behind the
standard, it is seldom clear how such authority was
determined and exercised. Lists and collections could be
constructed by anyone, and while mega codices required
special economic circumstances combined with appropriate
writing skills, it is not usually clear whose authority they
represent.
In the early 4th century the emperor
Constantine requested of Eusebius 50 copies of the “divine” writings
(θείων ... γραφῶν) for use in churches of his realm (often built with
encouragement from his mother Helena), although the
exact contents of such codices is as unclear as the actual
authority structure involved – who determined the details,
Constantine or Eusebius, or someone else? We have already
noticed that significant differences in content and order
existed between the two surviving mega codices of that
period, which suggests that considerable latitude was
present in their construction. Later in the 4th
century, we also saw that there was a list attributed to Athanasius, off and on bishop of Alexandria, instructing
those in his charge what scriptural books to read as
authoritative, and which not – which suggests
that even then, there were reading practices that needed
correction. We also noted that Melito, bishop of Sardis in
Asia Minor (west Turkey) around 180, writing as a person of
authority in a world still dominated by scrolls and small
scale codices, has not only left us a list of Jewish
scriptures but had investigated in what order those
books should appear. Apparently these matters of scope and
order were problematic in the churches of his jurisdiction.
In the early 3rd century, Origen with his list has a different
claim to authority, as a teacher and scholar more than as an
ecclesiastical cleric. It is even less clear for whom Josephus
speaks as he lists
the special writings in his defense of Judaism to attacks from
outside. Discussions of the rise of the Rabbinic movement(s)
in Judaism tend to ascribe to "the rabbis" an authority that
may not have been present in the earlier period, of which we
can speak only tentatively due to the nature of the sources.
The situation is extremely complex. The evidence from the
fragmentary Dead Sea Scroll materials for the question of
Jewish scriptural “canon(s)” probably will never be
established with any clear consensus, so we muddle along,
struggling for clearer definitions and usually concluding with
whatever suits, or at least does not overturn, our often
unexplored assumptions.
What do we know for sure about the steps
along the way from early hints at scriptural authority to
the full blown collecting of scriptures into mega codices
with canonical implications? Within Jewish and Christian
scriptural writings themselves, there are sometimes references
to earlier works that presumably lend authority to
what is being presented [also here
and here].
There are also claims that divine
authority lies behind certain words or activities. Of
course, anyone can say – and many do say – that they
represent the voice or will of deity. It is when such claims
get preserved and embedded in an ongoing influential context
(such as a socio-religious community) that they can become
authoritative for those in that context who submit to the
authority. And there can be many such contexts, both
simultaneously and sequentially. The models of Jewish or
Christian “orthodoxy” that emerge from the middle ages and
then splinter in various directions developed their own
institutional lines of authority “in the day,” that permit
us, with appropriate caution, to speak in deceptive
generalities of “the classical Jewish” or “the classical
Christian” view or position on this or that. But there is no
reason to believe that such observations applied to earlier
times or to everyone we might want to include under the
label “Jew” or “Christian.”
What sort of “Jews” produced and left us
those “Dead Sea Scrolls”? Clearly there were rules and
structures of authority as reflected in the “sectarian”
writings such as the "Manual of Discipline" and the
"Community Rule," but do we learn
anything from them to help us with constructing pictures of
the Judaism (or Judaisms) from which Christianity (or
Christianities) developed? Making scriptural excerpts
was practiced, as later with Melito and others.
Psalms of various sorts were a big
item. Obviously the Enoch
cycle and the book of Jubilees were popular in that Dead Sea
Scroll setting and elsewhere. Does that
mean they were considered authoritative (i. e. “scriptural”)
at that time? If so, does that suggest that a Philo or a
Josephus necessarily would have known such works? Or a Jesus
or a Paul? This sort of approach, straining to fill in gaps,
interesting though it may be, is full of historical dead
ends and non sequiturs. A basic question that always needs
careful consideration is “why do I (or why should I) care?”
as well as "what did I learn?"
Similarly with the development of early
Christianity – or perhaps, Christianities: Looking back from
the classical constructions of the middle ages, we are faced
with claims
and questions that are quite anachronistic and misleading.
“What was Jesus’ Bible?” or “Paul’s?” In the fourth century, as we
have seen, Athanasius of Alexandria (and Egypt) had a Bible
(at least conceptually) as did the constructors of the great
Bible codices, but in the first century, neither Jesus nor
Paul could have had a Bible in the same sense: nor Philo
(despite his many quotations and essays), nor Josephus
(despite his list and narrations), nor the earlier
translator of the Sirach preface (despite his categories),
nor the DSS depositors (with their plethora of known and
previously unknown writings). We learn [#20.2] of a wide
variety of writings, both Jewish and Christian, from the
references in the preserved literatures of the pre-4th
century Christians (e.g. Justin, the two Clements, “gnostic”
texts, Origen), and even of some efforts to preserve or
restore textual
integrity (e.g. Justin on Aquila, Origen's Hexapla), as had been
true in Alexandrian study of Homer for generations past. We
even have various fragments of known and hitherto unknown
Jewish and Christian writings preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the papyri.
But connecting those dots does not produce a coherent
picture, largely because we usually are not dealing with the
sorts of institutional authority that came later on, with
its attempts to control such flights of variety (see, e.g.
the Priscillian
controversy in the 4th/5th century).
From scroll to codex: Among the
factors that set the stage for the concretization of “holy
scriptures” as “the Bible” in the 4th century
churches of Constantine and his Roman successors are two
that I would single out for closer attention: the
development of the codex, and the formalization of the
scriptural canon, in addition to the development of
effective authority structures.
With regard to the formation of literary
works in the Greco-Roman worlds, it could be said that “in
the beginning was the scroll.” That may be too simple a
statement, insofar as writing and record keeping also took
place in other formats [#28], such as on wood
and stones and other hard surfaces as well as in “notebook” form with pages of wax
covered wood (for easy correcting and/or
reuse) or more flexible materials (papyrus, leather, cloth).
But for “published” as well as less formal records and
private writings, the roll format seems to dominate in the
hellenistic period, from the time of Alexander the Great in
late 4th century before the common era through to
the turn of the eras. We first learn of the use of the codex
format from a Roman satirical poet, Martial, in the last quarter of the first century of the
common era, and a few fragments from codices have survived
from that period or slightly
later. For whatever reasons – convenience, cost,
marketing, novelty, etc. – the codex format caught on in the
Greek and Latin worlds over the next four centuries, finally
replacing the scroll except for
special purposes in the civil and religious worlds, and even
then, in a different format called the "rotulus," which the
medieval artists knew and thus depicted anachronistically for the
earlier periods.
We do not know how the codex came to be
introduced into the world of Christian literature, but it
happened fairly quickly. I suspect that it may have been
another adopted child from Greek Judaism, but at this point
the evidence is entirely circumstantial. Other early uses of
the codex in the Greco-Roman world at large include
especially the fields of astrology and law, although scroll use also survives alongside.
Christians also continued the use of scrolls, even while the
codex grew in popularity especially for “scriptural” texts.
Even in the 4th century, literary works such as
Eusebius’ Church History were probably published on scrolls (that work was made up of 10
“books” of similar size) while at the same time, virtually
all surviving scriptural texts were in codices. We lack sufficient evidence to determine how this
process occurred in Greek (or Latin) Judaism, although there
is some early evidence for Jewish scriptural codices,
along with scriptural scrolls. The
situation in Syriac and other eastern forms of Judaism and
Christianity remains to be researched with more precision.
By the last part of the 3rd
century of the common era, the contents of surviving codices
had increased from the earlier practice of pretty much
replicating what a scroll could hold to a more intermediate
size, equal to several scrolls. In terms of technology, this
set the stage for the development of the mega codex, with
hundreds of pages and multiple columns per page. Even so, as already noted, the mega codex was the
exception rather than the rule from that time onward until
the invention of the printing press. Intermediate sized
codices containing sections of scriptural writings
predominated for centuries, sometimes as sections of a
multi-volumed edition. Constantine's contribution to the
process is noteworthy -- he commissioned multiple well written
copies on parchment for use in the churches of his realm.
This may have served like a government grant to develop a
new industry that was otherwise unaffordable. Some scholars
think that the mega-codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were
results of the actions of Constantine and Eusebius, although
there are serious problems with this view.
From scriptures to a canon: The
development of the mega codex set the stage for firming up
the contents and textual homogeneity of subsequent scripture
copies. Earlier lists set the stage for determining
contents, while physical collections of scriptural units
(e.g. in cabinets) could attempt to control textual
integrity. Still, even in the early 4th century,
Eusebius was aware of “disputed” works on the
edge of his listings, and even the mega codices did not
agree completely on what to contain or in what order. Even
with the growth in power and authority of the “great
church,” whether focused on Latin Rome or on Greek
Constantinople, official decrees concerning the contents and
limits of the scriptural canon were rare – it seems to have
been more a matter of church usage (depending, perhaps, on
“official codices” used in the various churches) than of
general legislation. For Jewish scriptures, the materials
adopted from Greek synagogues seem to have won the day,
although exactly under what conditions is not clear. As we
have noted, Melito, in Asia Minor at the end of
the 2nd century, seeks information from eastern
(Jewish?) sources when questions about scripture arise. A
few decades later, Origen’s sources may have been similar
when he attempts to create a tool for assessing the extent
of textual variation in available manuscripts. Exactly what
formats of manuscripts were used by Origen (scrolls?
intermediate sized codices?) and what format he used to
construct his famous six columned Hexapla (presumably in dozens of separate
volumes) or how he determined the order of the works
represented (probably at least with lists) remain mysteries.
But he, and the libraries
with which he came in contact in Alexandria, Jerusalem,
Caesarea, and perhaps elsewhere, doubtless could provide
important evidence relative to the situations under
discussion.
From texts to the (or at least, a) text: Origen is
also a key player in the process of attempting to create and
preserve
textual
integrity of the sort sought in Alexandrian scholarly
circles for the Homeric corpus and other revered works. But
Origen’s efforts proved to complicate matters more than to
solve problems. His system of notation
was too
complex for those unfamiliar with such tools, and his full
text of all the Jewish scriptural corpus too large
and disjointed to copy as a convenient unit, so his work was
sometimes corrupted in transmission, sometimes transmitted
only in part, and, in short, his original goals of textual
reform went unrealized. After him, Jerome
attempts to apply Origen’s work to textual problems in which
he and presumably also his Latin audience were interested,
with some success, although Jerome is also quite aware of
the existing textual diversity in his
own day. And although Origen was perhaps the most ambitious
repairer of Greek Jewish scriptural texts of whom we know,
he was not the first. Justin the martyr in the mid 2nd
century comments on what
he perceives to be mistranslations and textual corruptions
in the scriptural sources available to him, and Josephus a
century earlier is aware of
problems of textual transmission and of differences between
texts available to him. With the development of the mega
codex, it would have been possible to solve the problem of
textual diversity as well as canonical extent and order if
there had been a desire to do so from a sufficiently
authoritative Christian voice, such as the Council of Trent for
Latin orthodoxy a millennium or so later. The Greek
and eastern churches never did standardize canon in such a
formal manner. But these factors involving canon, text, and
format did not come together at that earlier time, leaving
us with many complex and hopefully interesting issues to
contemplate.The path from ancient scrolls to mega codices to
fixed canons is not well mapped and is replete with dead end
side paths, detours, as well as stumbling blocks of various
sorts. Let the traveler beware. /end/