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leading pnuiuolly to a marked change of hand. Of literary iMipyh, few can be quite certainly attributed to this century, Iiut there are strong grounds for placing' tite llerculaiieuni rofld here, with a few othera from Eg^•pt. Tlie lleruulaiieum papyri ahow a number of rather small, business-like hands, without much ornament, written iu narrow columns on papyrus of moderate hei;^ht, and from these a good idea may l)e formed of the appearance of a MS of the LX\ lu the generation preced- ing the birth of our Lord.
For the 1st cent, of the Christian era, and especially for the second half of it, durinj; wliidi the books of the NT were written, we have f.airly good evidence a.s to the current literary hand, and ample for the non • literary hand. The literary hand is rather larger than was usual in the I'tole- luaic period, with well-rounded curves and not infrequent ligatures ; a graceful style of writing, and, at its best (as in a papyrus of the 0</i/sscy in the British Museum), very handsome. It is not likely, however, that the authors and early copyists of the books of the NT often had writing of this excellence at their disposal. A better example of the style in which the autographs of the NT may
forthcoming. Under these circumstances, the NT Scriptures must have circulated much in privately written copies. A good example of such a copy of a literary work in a non - literary hand is provided by the papyrus of Aristotle's ' ABrjuaiwv lloXireia, written at the end of the 1st cent, on the back of used papyrus, in four diflerent hands, of which three are cursive and one a rou"h uncial. The cursive hands use abbre\ iations treely for common words and terminations {e.g. j = iart, y' = y<ip, K' = KaL, K'^Kard, t =Ti]v, t' = 7-^s, t' = tCiv), and the possibility must be reckoned with that similarly wTitten JISS enter, to some extent, into the textual history of the NT. The common hands of the Koman period are small and very cursive, and errors in transcription would consecjuently be easy ; to say nothing of the probable want of liabita of literary exactiiess among many of the copyists. No doubt, many well-written copies were also jjro- duccd, especially in tlie great towns where Christian communities were strong ; ami these would have a good chance of preserving a pure tradition, since
:VTVtC2aTXKCTn C
r ^ f ON rtZOYCl N >^';
r I 1 i — »_- — -■ ' -- •• '
FTO. 3.— ORERK PAPTRrS ROLL, T. A ' r.
(Brit. Mufl. Pap. ILI, Hyperides, jrro Euxenippo)
have been written is provided by a MS of Hyperides in the HritiMh .Museum, written in the latter part of the 1st cent, in a hand akin to the best con- tem|>orary non-literary MSS (Fig. 3). Even, how- ever, when the author's autograph or the first transcripts were produced by competent scribes, the conditions of circulation among the Christian community make it practically certain that the Scriptures must often have been copied by private persons, unHkillcd in the art of writing, and think- ing, not of producing a volume fit for the book market, but of reading for themselves, or trans- mitting to their friends, the all-important narrative of the Ma^iter's life. Throughout the first three centuries of the Christian era the books of the NT must have circulateil mainly in channels out- side the ordinary book trade. Public libraries did Dot require them; churches must often have lost their copies in times of |)ersecution ; proffssional scribes, unless they happened to bo Christians, would not be em])loyed to transcribe them ; and in nountry places skilled calligraphy would not be
the literary hand of the 1st and 2nd cents, is clear and good, increasing in size, and perhaps in showi- ness, as time goes on. The most calligrnphically elal)orate l)ariyri extant (two copies of the Hind, bk. ii., at Oxford and in the British Museum) probably belong to the 2nd centurj'.
In the 3rd cent, a new element enters into con- sideration, namely the adopti<m of the codex form, the roll form continuing alongside of it for a period which cannot be exactly defined. At first the codex form was inferior, as a style of book pro- duction, to the roll form, being an adaptation to literary purposes of a form which had hitherto been adopted mainly for memoranda and rough drafts. There are signs, however, that it was early taken into use among the Christians for their private copies of the Scriptures. The evidence at present available is too scanty to justify dogmatism, but it certainly is the case tliat several of the earliest examples of the codex form contain Chris- tian writings, and that the majority of papyri of the 3rd cent, containing Christian writings axe in
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the codex form. Of the NT, two fraj,'iiients are extant which are assigned to the 3rd cent., and three of tlie 4th ; all these are in codex form. Of the OT there are three fragments of the 3rd cent., of which one is certainly from a codex, and one is uncertain. In addition, the Oxyrhynchus frag^ment containing alleged sayings of our Lord is a leaf from a codex of the 3rd century. It appears, therefore, that the codex form was generally used among Christians at an earlier date than among people in general; for of 21 non - Christian papyri assigned to the 3rd cent, only two are written in this form. These early Christian codices are not showy specimens of the calligrapher's art; on the con- trary, they are somewhat roughly written, unoriia- mental productions, generally of small size, suitable, it may be thought, for easy conveyance and easy concealment. This fits in with what has been said above as to the character of the MSS in which the books of the NT circulated before the recogni- tion of Christianity by the Stale. I'rof. Hort has observed (liitrud. to Ai', § 352) that the Codex