Fri Feb 14 11:10:48 1997

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From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" 
Organization: Divinity Faculty
To: "Ronald L. Minton" 
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 16:09:32 +000
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Subject: Re: Parchment & papyrus
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Ron Minton wrote:

>  My studies indicate that the early Christians 
> invented the codex or at least were the first to widely use it.  It is of 
> course difficult to prove a negative like this.

 See, e.g., C.H. Roberts, _The Birth of the Codex_.

> As I recall, the only NT manuscripts that are not codices are P12, P13, 
> P18, P22, and majuscule 0212; and the oldest NT papyrus is P41, an  
> eighth century Greek and Coptic diglott fragment of Acts 17:22.

"So wholeheartedly did they [Christians] embrace it [the codex] that 
only three or possibly five of the more than 150 surviving biblical 
MSS in Greek of the pre-400 date produced by Christians are not 
codices" [footnote 43 lists Stud. Pal. 15.234 (Psalms) and PAlex. 
inv. 203 (Isaiah), plus P98 and perhaps P93 and P97].  G.H.R. 
Horsley, "Classical Manuscripts in australia & New Zealand, and the 
Early History of the Codex," _Antichthon:  Journal of the Australian 
Society for Classical studies_ 27(1995): 60-85 [quote from p. 78].

You cannot have meant the last part of the final sentence above.  The 
oldest NT papyrus is the well known P52 (Rylands Fragment).

L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: 0131-650-8920
Fax: 0131-650-6579
E-mail:  L.Hurtado@ed.ac.uk

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