As I mentioned in a prior post, my new book with Oxford University Press is now out in both the UK and US: Miniature Codices in Early Christianity. It’s part of Oxford’s long-standing Early Christian Studies series.
I have been working on the subject of miniature codices for more than twenty years now, ever since doing my thesis a while ago under Larry Hurtado on the apocryphal gospel fragment, P.Oxy. 840. I have also written on the miniature codex P.Ant. 12 (0232) which contains 2 John (see here), and a recent overview article on miniature codices in Paratextual Features in Early New Testament Papyri and Manuscripts, eds. Stanley E. Porter, Chris S. Stevens, and David I. Yoon (TENT 16; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2023), 310-329.
Miniature codices are basically tiny little books, “pocket Bibles” so to speak. As early as the second century, and especially in the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began to create these little manuscripts that contained portions of Scripture (and also non-canonical writings) and sometimes even held multiple books.
The early Christians probably used the miniature codex format for a number of reasons including private reading, portability for long journeys, and sometimes even in a “magical” sense (thinking it provided protection for the one who possessed it).
My volume with OUP rehearses prior research on miniature codices, the definition/characteristics of miniature codices, and the way they functioned in the early Christian movement. And, most importantly, the volume includes an updated catalog of all known Greek Christian miniature codices—I work through 62 individual codices—including discussions of their palaeographical features and a brief bibliography for each.
The above description shows that the volume is quite technical and mainly designed for other scholars already in the guild (especially with the $110 price tag!). However, does the phenomenon of the miniature codices have anything to teach the average Christian? What can the miniature codex teach us about the early Christian movement?
In order to answer those questions—and to make the contents of the book a bit more applicable to the average layperson—I am starting a new 5-part series designed to lay out the practical implications of the miniature codex on how we understand early Christianity.
So, stay tuned! First installment in the series will drop next week!