Crosstalk: The hidden world of early Christian writings
Christians, of whatever brand, talk about the Bible, and do so as if it were a given fact and assume everyone means the same thing, and are talking about, more or less, the same thing. However, until the invention of printing in the 15th century and the printing of Bibles, very few would have encountered one even if they could read, writes Father Stephen of Shrewsbury Orthodox Church.
The first collection of biblical books gathered into one volume didn't occur until the Roman Emperor Constantine the first ordered 50 copies, one to be placed in each of the 50 new churches he'd had built in Constantinople. We do not know if the order was ever completed, nor do we know which Biblical books were included. It is possible that the Codex Vaticanus, in The Vatican, is one of them.
Certainly, in the first millennium Christians would have encountered the scriptures in parts - the Gospels, the Epistles. The Psalms, and what in Greek was called the "Prophetologion". This was a collection of Old Testament readings that were read out at church services.
In cities, there would have been all the books collected, available for clergy and scholars. If written on papyrus they would have taken up eight volumes, but if written on large sheets of parchment they could all be bound together into one enormous volume. Most of these would have been written in Greek or Latin, but also Syrian, Coptic in Africa, and Ge'ez in Ethiopia.
To be continued...
Fr Stephen Maxfield, Community of the Holy Fathers and St Juliana, Shrewsbury
