As I mentioned in a prior post, I am starting a new 5-part series exploring what the phenomenon of miniature codices teaches us about the early Christian movement. This series is designed to draw out some practical implications (for a lay audience) from my new book with Oxford University Press, Miniature Codices in Early Christianity.
By way of review (especially if you are just joining the series), 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.
So, what’s the first thing that miniature codices tell us about the early Christian movement? These tiny books demonstrate that early Christianity had a robust and sophisticated textual culture. Let me explain.
Just an Oral Culture?
Over the last century, New Testament scholarship has been dominated by a particular model designed to explain how early Christians transmitted their stories about Jesus. That model is known as Form Criticism.
While Form Criticism is certainly correct that stories of Jesus, at least the earliest stages, were transmitted orally, the model has been used to say more than that. In its more strident forms, the model has been used to argue that early Christianity was a predominantly, if not exclusively, oral religion that would have been hesitant to place value on written documents.
As a result of this conviction, some scholars have offered a rather negative portrayal of writing within the history of early Christianity. The act of writing is now receiving the blame for many of early Christianity’s social ills. Not only are we told that it is responsible for making Christianity a “centralized” and “hierarchical” religion, but it is also characterized as a weapon of oppression used for the “marginalization” of minority groups. Writing caused the suppression of women, discrimination against the poor, and the exclusion of the uneducated.
In sum, the act of writing, is portrayed as something that corrupted the Christian religion.
The Turning of the Tide
Despite the dominance and influence of Form Criticism, the tide has turned in recent years. There has been a renewed interest in manuscripts as textual objects, and scholars have begun to recognize (afresh) the “bookish” nature of early Christianity.
Yes, Christians typically engaged their texts through public reading—largely due to low literacy rates—but scholars have argued that they could still be regarded as having a textual culture. A lack of literacy does not mean a lack of textuality.
The extent of this textual culture is apparent in the rather developed scribal infrastructure—marked by the early use of both the nomina sacra and the codex. As Loveday Alexander observes, “It is clear that we are dealing with a group [early Christians] that used books intensively and professionally from early on in its existence. The evidence of the papyri from the second century onwards suggests . . . the early development of a technically sophisticated and distinctive book technology” (“Ancient Christian Book Production,” 85).
But our evidence for a sophisticated “bookish” culture goes beyond this. It is particularly evident in the phenomenon of the miniature codex.
It’s All About the Books
Although miniature codices were tiny—I define them as less than 12 cm in breadth—they could be remarkably sophisticated and elegant literary productions. They could hold an impressive number of pages (upwards of 500 in some cases), used a wide range of scribal conventions, often exhibited professional scribal hands, employed the use of color, and sometimes even had two columns!
To compress such features into tiny formats would be challenging to do even with access to modern tools and techniques, but they did so long before such technology was available.
But it is more than this. The mere existence of such tiny books is a reminder that (some) Christians—perhaps more than we thought—expressed their textual culture, and particularly their commitment to the Christian scriptures, in private/personal ways. Rather than simply observing large, public codices from a distance, Christians could now hold their sacred books in one hand, carry them in a small pouch, hang them from their neck, and take them on a journey. They might even sleep with them, or hang them by the bed at night.
Like never before, individual Christians could be united to, and connected to, their books.
Dying with the Scriptures
The way the miniature codex illumines our understanding of early Christian textual culture can be summarized by the story of Euplus. Euplus was an early Christian deacon who was martyred in Catania in 304 CE by Governor Calvisianus.
While this might seem like just another martyrdom, we are told that he went to his death with a Gospel book hung around his neck—clearly a miniature codex.
For Euplus, the miniature codex was proof that he was a Christian. It was a symbol of his identity. He stated before his death, “I am Christian and I read the divine Scriptures.”
The miniature codex was yet another way, maybe even the best way, that early Christians could be, at all times, connected to their scriptural books.
It doesn’t get any more “bookish” than that.