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governors did) to the subject, in how he or she made his or her
documents conform to Roman expectations (Meyer, pp. 5-6).
Based on these interpretations, the transition from the papyrus roll to the codex would appear to have three main causes: (1) An evolution and expan- sion of the tabula or codex form, traditionally used for shorter documents, to write, preserve, and distribute longer documents including books. This required the expansion of the codex form from leaves of wood or metal tied together to folded leaves of papyrus and parchment sewn in gatherings. The transition may well have started, as Meyer suggests, by the process of “writing on and folding . . . papyrus differently” so as to imitate the wooden codex form. (2) The distinct preference for the codex form by early Christians, who would have been influential in promoting the form as Christianity spread. (3) Preference for the codex form over the bookroll for technological and economic reasons, which may have influenced both educated Roman society as well as early Christians in their adoption of the codex and the phase-out of the bookroll. These three explanations inter- acting together, rather than any one of them by itself, may provide a more balanced explanation of this significant early transition in the history of the form and function of the book.82
D: An Achievement in Book Production in the 4th Century CE that Some Have Compared to the Gutenberg Bible
Even though the transition from the roll to the codex in the format of book production overall was not yet complete, and papyrus rolls were still in wide use, by about 350 CE the codex form of the book had advanced to the point where the entire Old and New Testaments could be incorporated into single codices that were monumental in size and scope. Two surviving codices from Late Antiquity accomplished this feat: the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus. Of these, the Codex Sinaiticus remains the most
82 Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt (2009) Tables 1.2., 1.3, 4.1, 4., and 4.5. See Bagnall’s chapter 4, “The Spread of the Codex.,” and Chapter 3, “The Economics of Book Production.”
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