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Studies of the social community of the early church have shown that, especially in its urban settings, Christianity attracted a so- cially diverse membership, representing a cross section of Roman society. Although it certainly included many from the lower so- cioeconomic levels, it was by no means a proletarian movement. Both the highest and the lowest strata of society were absent. The most typical members of the Christian groups were free craftspeople, artisans, and small traders, some of whom had at- tained a measure of affluence, owned houses and slaves, had the resources to travel, and were socially mobile. In terms of social status, Christian communities had a pyramidal shape rather like that of society at large. But since members of the upper class- es were less numerous, high levels of literacy—as a function of social status or education, or both—would have been unusual. Still, moderate levels, such as were common among craftspeople and small business persons, may have been proportionately bet- ter represented within the early church than outside it. Yet these insights offer no reason to think that the extent of literacy of any kind among Christians was greater than in society at large. If anything, it was more limited. This means that not only the writ- ing of Christian literature, but also the ability to read, criticize, and interpret it belonged to a small number of Christians in the first several centuries, ordinarily not more than about 10 percent in any given setting, and perhaps fewer in the many small and provincial congregations that were characteristic of early Chris- tianity.76
Christians may have also preferred the codex format for the Scriptures used in liturgy since a codex is easier to handle than a roll, and one can write on both sides of the leaves of a codex, allowing more information to be recorded in less space. Perhaps an extreme example of the portability of the codex is a remarkable survival: the smallest codex known from antiquity,
76 Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (1995), p. 5. 143