The Birth of the Codex

by Colin Henderson Roberts, Theodore Cressy Skeat

First published in 1954, this book examines the process by which the Codex--the traditional form of the western book--replaced the scroll as the primary vehicle for literature. Drawing upon evidence accumulated in the last thirty years, this revised edition gives fresh insight into the
remarkable role the early Christian church played in the transformation of the printed word.

Genres: Nonfiction

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[beesp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un testo di estrema chiarezza ed efficacia. Letto con piacere e velocità. Mi ha reso molto chiare -- più di quanto abbia fatto lo stesso autore -- le tesi di Cavallo e perché non potessero funzionare, soprattutto in merito al loro essere estremamente avvolte da motivazioni ideologiche, più che da effettive prove fisiche.

[Evan Þ. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roberts & Skeat, in this disappointingly short work, dig into what little we know of the move from scrolls to codices (that is, essentially, bound books like today). It took place in the Roman world, gradually during the first four centuries AD. We don't know why or how it progressed; Roberts and Skeat evaluate and dismiss several claimed advantages of early codices. They also dismiss some other authors' postulated early culture of less-literary works on codices, pointing out we don't have any evidence of that - though the fact that such posulates can be seriously entertained shows how scanty our evidence is.

What we do know is that the Christian Church was the first main user of codices (at least in Egypt where most of our evidence is from), for Biblical texts. Roberts and Skeat surmise that they adopted the codex to emphasize their dissimilarity from other religions. Though - in the state of our evidence - that must remain only a guess.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating, but also incredibly academic book: it regularly quoted whole passages in Latin and didn't provide translations directly, though it discussed them in detail in English. (The lack of translations makes some sense since, in many cases, the point of the discussion was disagreement about what the correct translation was.)

[Margaret Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sick of reading about the etymology of the word codex. at this point don't we all know it comes from a tree trunk

[Briana Grenert]

Blessedly concise if antiquated