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Carpus at Troas, also the books (ta biblia) and above all the parchments (tas membranas).” On this Gamble wrote, “The Greek term membranai, translated by the R[evised] S[tandard] V[ersion] as ‘parchments,’ is the Latin word membranae transliterated into Greek. There was no Greek name for the in- tended object. If parchment rolls had been meant, the standard Greek desig- nation, diphtherai, would surely have been used. The Latinism, membranai, has the specific sense of ‘parchment codex’ and its use in this Greek-Christian document indicates that the object, like the word, had a Roman origin.”74
Momentum for the very gradual transition from the roll to the codex was traditionally credited to early Christians, who to a great extent, wrote the books of the New Testament in codex form on papyrus and on parchment. This was in distinct contrast to the practices of the Jews who adopted the codex form much later, circa 900 CE.75
Assuming that Christianity was initially a religion of the common man and the poor, it has been suggested that the codex form became standard- ized with the early Christians as the form of notebook used by the com- mon man—traders, small businessmen, freedmen or slaves—who lived and worked outside the world of professional scribes (who were sometimes also slaves) and the roll-form that scribes traditionally used. However, Gamble disputed this viewpoint:
74 Gamble, op. cit., pp. 50-52.
75 “To sum up: existing Hebrew manuscripts in the form of a codex which contain an explicit
indication of their time of production date from circa 900 and later. Some codex manuscripts, mostly fragmentary, can be dated up to about a century or, at most, two centuries earlier. Indeed, literary evi- dence reflects the later adaptation of the codex, which had been introduced as a book form for Greek and Latin texts as early as the second century, and became the usual book form in the fifth century. However, the virtual lack of surviving Hebrew books in any form from late antiquity to the High Mid- dle Ages cannot be attributed to their destruction by wear and tear or to conquerors and persecutors. One should also consider the possibility that the talmudic and midrashic literature, the so-called Oral Law, was indeed mainly transmitted orally until the Islamic period, as is indicated explicitly in a few tal- mudic sources, and attested by literary patterns and reciting devices contained in these texts” (Malachie Beit-Arié, “How Hebrew Manuscripts Are Made,” in A Sign and a Witness: 2000 Years of Hebrew Books and Illuminated Manuscripts [1988], pp. 36-37.
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