The procedure of St. Paul in his missionary work enables us to see the transition from the Jewish usage to the Christian. In Thessalonica he went into the synagogue, as was his custom, and ' reasoned with them from the scriptures, opening and alleging that it behoved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead' (Ac IT'-''). In Beroea the Jews ' examined the scriptures daily, whether these things were so' (v."). The Corin- thian believers are reminded by St. Paul of his preaching, wherein he had proved that Christ died tor our sins and was raised 'according to the scriptures' (1 Co 15''-). This question as to the Messiahship of Jesus makes it practically certain that the early Christians read the Scriptures in their meetings. To ]irove that the events in the life of Jesus, His death, and resurrection were in harmony with the OT jirophecies, involved frequent
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reading of the passages concerned (Ac 2^"- 4^'- 15""-, Ro 15'-'). St. Paul's injunction to Timothy to 'give heed to reading' (tj; diiayfticret, 1 Ti 4'") almo.st certainly refers to the puljlic reading of Scripture, as it is connected in the immediate context with ' exhortation ' and ' teaching.' Weiz- sacker makes an ingenious suggestion that the part of the heavenly rites described in the Apoca- lypse in which a book was opened and read (Rev o'"-) was typical of what took place ordinarily in the Divine service on earth (The Apostolic Age, Eng. tr., London, 1894-95, ii. 277). That the Scriptures were read in the Christian assemblies from the earliest times is evident from the testi- mony of Clement of Rome : ' Ye know the Holy Scriptures, .and know them well, and ye have deep insight into the oracles of God' (Ep. to the Corin- thians, ch. 53), and the statement of Justin Martyr that in his day this was so (Apol. i. 67).
2. Tlie question as to the private reading of Scripture in the early Church is of special import- ance because of the attitude of the Itoman Catholic Church in the matter. No prohibition against Bible reading can be found in the NT ; nor, on the contrary, is it urged as a duty. But that the Scriptures were actually read in private by tlie Christians of the 1st cent, cannot be doubted. The Jews did so before the time of Christ (1 Mac j56ff.)_ "pijg (Jentile proselytes had their own copies of portions, at least, of the OT, which they read diligently. This gave the Christian mission- ary an opportunity for delivering his message. For example, Philip found the Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah, and ' beginning from this scripture he preached unto him Jesus' (Ac 8^^). Among Jewish Christians the practice would not be dis- continued, as they had special reason, in wishing to prove the Messiahship of Jesus, for making a careful study of the Prophets. Harnack, who has investigated the subject in his Bible Reading in the Early Church (Eng. tr., London, 1912), says the Jewish usage of reading the OT ' simply and easily passed over from the Jewish to the Gentile Christians, for the Holy Scriptures in the Greek translation were fully accessible to, and were read by, the Jews of the Dispersion. Moreover, we know that among the Gentile Christians the order of public worship and private and family discipline in matters of religion and morality took form in accordance with the Jewish (Jewish Christian) models' (p. 32).
The only restriction experienced was that im- posed by the bulky /on>i of Scripture. It existed in separate rolls of parchment or papyrus (see F. G. Kenyon, Textual Criticism of the NT', London, 1912, ch. ii. ), and a complete copy of the OT would be possessed by but few [)eople. Still, the exist- ence of collections of extracts, the widespre.ad use of papyrus, and the diffusion of a popular litera- ture like the apocalyptic, make it a probable con- jecture that the sacred writings in part, if not in whole, were possessed and studied by many private persons. Harnack argues that, as the knowledge of Scripture brought to light by the apologists of the 2nd cent, and the controversies of the great Gnostic movement could not have been deriveil solely from what was heard in public worship, we may conclude that the sacred writings were in private hands also in the period before Irenaeus, and that from the first the Christians were in the habit of reading the OT.
3. The reading of Christian writings. — It is obvious that the apostolic Epistles were read in the meetings of the church to which they were addressed. St. Paul either directs explicitly that this be done (1 Th 5", Col 4'°), or presupposes it (1 Co 5i>, 2 Co 1" lO^f-). Other writings were thus read to assemblies of Christians. Of the Book of
Revelation, for example, the wiiter says, ' Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep tlie things which are written therein' (1'; cf. 22'"-'*). Letters were exchanged between churches (Col 4'^) or one con- gregation addressed another, e.g. the Church in Rome sent an epistle to Corinth (Clement, Epistle to the Corinthians, 47). In the 2nd cent, and later the Shepherd of Hernias and Epistles like those of Barnabas, Ignatius, and Polycarp were read in churches.