Early Christian Books in Egypt (review)

This is a gem of a book. Rarely have I been so delighted by an economical amalgam of humane skepticism, meticulously detailed argument, and exciting conjecture. It is vital to know that the book is not only authoritative (who could think of Bagnall as anything else?) but also positive in the arresting alternatives it puts forward as a substitute for opinions either carelessly or irresponsibly received.

The author's first task is to take a hard look at dating. His early declaration echoes throughout the book: dating has been governed by agenda, especially religious agenda, that fail to place the surviving manuscripts in any wider context that might reasonably affect our view of their age. This is not, on Bagnall's part, an essay in antagonism, but rather acceptance of "the natural sense of palaeographical comparisons" (24). The conclusions he does eventually admit as feasible, even if not proven, enhance our understanding precisely of the religious and specifically the Christian implications. But social provenance, social usage, the material setting of both production and distribution, in relation to any surviving manuscript, all invite us to reassessment.

The central judgment here is that, prior to the episcopate of Demetrius of Alexandria in the third century, there is a paucity of securely dated Christian survivals, and that this paucity, given other documented factors, is nothing other than what we should expect. The argument is partly palaeographical and partly statistical; but it focuses on the task of finding earlier evidence of Christian scribal activity in the second century. There is precious little; and even more insistent is the honest need to ask why Christians of that earlier period should have found a need to create books anyway. The question is faced up to further in the final chapter.

Bagnall then produces what he calls "two case studies." The first is a devastating and extremely useful account of Carsten Thiede's theories on early gospel texts: "As far as I know," the author writes, "no full analysis of Thiede's claims has ever been presented, certainly not in any form that would reach a broad scholarly public" (26). This tale of circular arguments and inappropriate criteria is depressing but instructive, and I am afraid to admit that I found it a joy to read. The second concerns Nikolaos Gonis' recent handling of the Shepherd; and the issue of dating is here connected with the unity of the work itself, doubts in one respect immediately demanding reappraisal in another.

The author then turns to "the economics of book production." Here we have collected together in twenty pages a range of relevant considerations. I think Bagnall may attend too little to a Christian community's desire to become, even if it did not start out as, an educational system (among other things), and may therefore underestimate the ready infiltration of pedagogical principles (at the material level) into local Christian practice; but I agree that this could only have been a factor in major centers of already existing cultural activity (somewhere like Smyrna, for example, as well as Alexandria or Rome). The overwhelming point, however, is that books (especially of parchment sheets) were enormously expensive, and the point is illustrated in clearly tabulated detail. One's attention is immediately drawn to the question of a church's wealth; but equally one is led to reflect on what one might call the sociology of reading, which will become the dominant theme of Bagnall's fourth and final chapter. Christianity's third-century "bookishness" cannot be thought of convincingly as a sign of increasing access to the élite; and therefore we have to consider some other form of social or cultural change as an explanation for the development.

Bagnall turns, therefore, in his last twenty pages to the question of "the spread of the codex." He starts with the familiar notion that the codex was a specifically Christian invention; and he concludes that the proposal is not only simplistic but also laid open to immediate...