The notion that the Jews from the first wrote their sacred books upon leather rolls is not con- firmed by evidence satisfactory to historical science. As a matter of fact, we know that the use of papyrus reached Phcenicia as early as the 11th cent. B.C., and accordingly the books in roll form referred to in the OT (Jer 36'<''-, Ezk 2" 3"^-, Ps 4U' [cf. He 10'], Zee 5"- : cf. also Is 34^ and the words auaTrTvaauv [2 K 19"J and (i\liT<rei.v [Kev G"]) might quite well have been formed of papyrus ; indeed, the words xa/""'ov and x'lp'"')', the speciKc terms for a papyrus sheet, are quite correctly used in LXX Jer 43 (Heb. 36). Characteristically enough, the earliest record of the Jews having transcribed their sacred writings upon rolls of p.irchment or leather is found in Josephus (Ant. xii. ii. 11 ; the work was finished c. A.D. 93-94), and thus dates from an age when the use of parchment had been fairly well established for some time ; we shall hardly err in supposing that the transition to the use of that more lasting material reached its term among the Jews not earlier than the last pre- Christian centuries. The Jews would naturally desire to have the most durable substances for the preservation of their sacred writings (cf. Mishna, Megilla ii. 2, Shabb. viii. 3), and this, again, would be of importance for the use of parchment in Christian circles. It is of course quite possible that Israelites and Jews had long made use of polished leather for records of a shorter kind.
Which of these two substances, then, may we suppose to have been employed for the NT writ- ings? E. 'H.QMSs (Geschichte clcr heUigen SchriftRn neuen Testament^, Brunswick, 1860) could still write : ' Parchment was certainly not unknown, but too expensive for general use.' The present writer is of opinion, however, that the results of recent research prove the very opisosite : papyrus sheets came in course of time to command so high a price that parchment, at once cheaper, more durable, and better adapted for being written upon on both sides, came to be more generally used in quarters where price was a consideration. Among the Greeks, this transition from papyrus to parchnient was checked by two material con- siderations, viz. the lightness and delicacy of the papyrus fabric, and the relief which, in contrast to the glossy and often dazzling parchment, that fabric afforded to the eye of both writer and reader — though the larger characters generally used for writing on the parchment sheet were relatively more legilile to weak eyes. From the artistic point of view, moreover, the papj'rus roll of the Greeks certainly seemed the most linished and elegant form of book in a reader's hands, and that form was doubtless retained as long as possible. But while the Greeks, from the .^th cent. B.C. to the 4lh cent. A.D., mainly employed papyrus as the material vehicle of their literature, they certainly began, as early as the 1st cent. A.D.,
and, in the first instance, for the use of schools, to transfer the texts written on papyri to the more durable parchment. It is instructive to note that Martial, writing not later than A.D. 84-85, speaks of books in papyrus as being dearer and more valuable than books in parchment ; and Ibis is to be explained by the fact that the manufacture of papyrus was almost wholly confined to the Nile Delta, so that an increased consumption, or a poor crop, would naturally tend to advance the price. The date at which the general use of parchment seems definitely to have superseded that of papyrus falls at the earliest in the 4th or 5th cent. A.D., and the intervening period from the 1st cent, must therefore be regarded as a time of transition. In view of these data it is impossible to main- tain absolutely that the autographs of the Apos- tolic Age — the originals of the primitive Chris- tian writings down to the First Kjiistle of Clement to the Corii\thians — must all have been written upon pajij'rus. That the Christians of that age might use papyrus, that, e.g., St. John, writing per- haps c. 85, wrote his Second Epistle on a papyrus sheet, appears from the words (v.'^) : ttoXXo (x<^^ u,iuv 7pci0etf, ouK Tjf^ovXrjdTjv 5ia x^P^oi' /^ai /xAafos, but this supplies no evidence as to the material gener- ally used in the Apostolic Age. Somewhat earlier, c. A.D..66(?), St. Paul (2 Ti 4'") writes: rdp </>at\6vi,i' 8v dir^XtTTOv iv Tpojdot irapa. Kdpiritj, ^px6fi€i'os fp^pe, Kai rd /iiijSXfa, fiaXLara [5^] tcls ixffi^pdvas. 7) fxe/xfipdva is simply the Lat. membrana, 'skin,' 'parchment.' That St. Paul here uses the word in the sense of codex membranaceus, or ' parchment roll,' cannot be proved ; and we can therefore hardly think that it refers to leather rolls of the OT. The p.fp.jipdi'a. was in fact the single sheet, i.e. the word denoted the material; thus Horace (Sat. ii. 3. 1), writing c. 30 B.C., says : ' You write so seldom that you do not re- quire viembranam four times in a whole year ' ; tlie writing material used by the person whom the satirist here describes amounted in all to four sheets of parchment in a year. In all probability, therefore, St. Paul's membraniB were sheets of parchment, either blank or containing notes and extracts, and thus not included among the (ii^Xla, i.e. his papyrus rolls. According to Quintilian (Inst. Orat. X. iii. 31), it was impossible in his day to write with the desired facility on parchment, which clearly had not as yet been brought to the requisite degree of polish, and it was necessary to make use of large letters ; this circumstance tended to impede the general employment of parchment. If we may infer from Gal 6" (iSne TnjXiAoi! viiiv ypdfi/j.aiTii' lypaypa ttj (fi^ X^vO that St. I'aul wrote the whole impassioned Epistle, or at least its con- clusion, with his own hand, the 'large letters' might no doubt be taken as Ln<iicating a consider- able defect of vision, and it would thus be possible and conceivable that the Apostle had here made use of sheets of parchment. That relatively short letter, even if written in characters more than usually large, would not require manj'such sheets ; and, on the whole, the hypothesis must be regarded as a possible one. But the present writer certainly does not believe that longer works of the Apos- tolic Age were written as yet u]ion parchment. The fastening together of a number of sheets sc as to form a continuous parchment roll, while no doubt it was practisi^d, was certainly attended with dithculties. It would be possible, of course, to employ the form of the codex (i.e. that of the modern book in folded sheets), in which the pre- pared skin was folded upon the flesh-side, thus causing fle.sh-side to face Hesh-side and hair-side to face hair-side throughout, so that the front of the sheet, iherccto, was smooth, and the hack, the verso, rough ; and in ]ioint of fact the codex form seems to liave originated in the 2nd cent. B.C. in