Thankful Thursday

I’m thankful for Tuesday’s thunderstorm. I love them, and we don’t get many of them—one or two a year, and some years none. So when we have one, I’m thankful for it.

I’m also thankful for this first week of leaves on the trees, for greening grass and a few blooming wildflowers. I’m thankful that my garden is tilled and ready to plant. I’m thankful, too, for my oldest granddaughter, who loves to help with yardwork. 

My son has returned from his trip to Spain. I’m thankful that he enjoyed himself and came home fit and tanned. 

I’m thankful for the kitchen project progress. One set of bottom cupboards are installed, the sink is in, and the dishwasher, too. Starting today, I can do dishes in the kitchen instead of the bathroom. That is something to be thankful for.

I’m thankful that God gives me strength for every busy day. I’m thankful for a comfy bed, an open window, and the summer breeze.

Codex and Canon

We all know from Sunday School about the scrolls used for Old Testament texts, but if you’ve been imagining rolled up New Testament books, your imagination got it mostly wrong. Early Christian manuscripts were almost always in codex form. This is noteworthy because the rest of the world still prefered the roll. We might say the early Christians were codex trailblazers; everyone else waited a few centuries before they began to prefer codices to rolls. It’s an historical anomaly that begs for an explanation.

Quoting Michael Kruger (Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books) on the reason Christians prefered the codex and what this tells us about the development of the New Testament canon:

The most plausible suggestions link the codex with the early development of the New Testament canon. Is is evident that the Christians began to prefer the codex about the same time that the New Testament canon was beginning to take shape. [It has been] suggested that the codex was chosen because it was able to do something a roll could never do: hold all four Gospels in one volume. In a similar vein [it has been suggested] that the codex was chosen because it could hold all of Paul’s epistles in one volume and allow easy access to individual letters. Regardless of which of these theories proves to be more plausible — and each has strengths and weaknesses — they agree that the significance of the codex lies in its role in the development of the corpus of New Testament books. In this regard, the codex performed two critical functions: (1) positively, it allowed certain books to be physically grouped together by placing them in the same volume; and (2) negatively, it provided a natural way to limit the number of books to those contained within the codex; that is, it functioned as a safeguard… .

… [I]t seems that the dramatic adoption of the codex by early Christians could rightly be regarded as a symptom of the canon’s development. It is a sign that Christians were already linking some books together and excluding others. Thus, the widespread Christian use of the codex proves to be a substantial piece of historical evidence that the establishment of the New testament canon was well under way by the turn of the century… 

Who knew that codices could help give us confidence in our canon?

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Other quotations from this book:

• A Canon Based on Probability
• Canonical Bookends
• Like a Thermometer, Not a Thermostat
• Getting Our Expectations Straight
• Evidence of an Emerging Canon in the New Testament

Theological Term of the Week

codex
An ancient book “created by taking a stack of papyrus or parchment leaves, folding them in half, and binding them at the spine.”1 (Plural: codices)

• From scripture:

When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. (2 Timothy 4:13 ESV)

• From Canon Revisited by Michael J. Kruger:

Understanding the early Christian preference for the codex may … provide some illumination about an interesting passage from 2 Timothy where Paul says to Timothy “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments.” Paul makes a curious distinction here between “the books” [ta biblia] and “the parchments” [tas membranas], suggesting they are two different kinds of writings.  Scholars widely regard [ta biblia] as a reference to books of the Old Testament, most likely on scrolls. We do not know how many of these Old Testament books Paul had in mind, but it must have been limited to a reasonable number that Timothy could have borne during his travels.

But what is Paul referring to when he mentions “the parchments”? The term membranas is significant because it is not a Greek word, but a loan word transliterated from the Latin membrana. The history of this term in the first century makes it clear that it is a reference to a parchment codex… .

As for the content of the codices which Paul mentions in 2 Tim 4:13, a number of suggestions have been made over the years.  Given that Paul distinguishes these codices from the Old Testament writings, many scholars have rightly argued that they likely contained some sort of Christian writings. This may have included a variety of things such as excerpts of Jesus’ teachings or early Christian testimonia (Old Testament proof texts supporting Messianic claims about Jesus)… . However, one of the most compelling possibilities is that these notebooks contained (among other things) copies of Paul’s own letters. 

If these “parchments” in 2 Tim 4:13 contained copies of Paul’s letters in a codex, then this opens up fresh insights the development of the New Testament canon.  … [T]his scenario provides a compelling explanation for why some letters of Paul were preserved for the church and some letters were ultimately lost (1 Cor 5:9). The answer appears to be that some letters were lost because Paul, for whatever reasons, did not make a personal copy of them before sending them out. Thus, they were not available when Paul’s completed letter collection was circulating more broadly to the churches.

Learn more:

1. Reading the Papyri: What is a codex?
2. Reading the Papyri: The Contents of P46

Related terms:

• autographa
• canon of scripture
• manuscripts

Filed under Scripture

1From Canon Revisited by Michael J. Kruger

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