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An International Journal for Pastors and Students of Theological and Religious Studies

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The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. 248 pp. £11.99/$22.00.

Larry W. Hurtado.

Rohintan Mody
University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

This is a highly significant book by Professor Larry Hurtado on a topic that is becoming an important scholarly issue: how the actual physical texts of the NT in the early centuries reveal the centrality of the NT and its interpretation by early readers.

Hurtado argues that Christian texts, including those that eventually became the NT, were an important feature in Christian communities across the Roman world in the early centuries. He believes that the evidence of the artifacts themselves show that Christians preferred the "codex"book form over the roll, the more traditional form in the early Roman period. It appears that Christians strongly preferred the codex for those writings they regarded as scripture, and that an early edition of Paul's epistles in codex form could have provided an influential precedent.

Hurtado has an intriguing suggestion regarding the ending of Mark. Broadly, it is easy in codex form to envisage that the initial and final leaves are more subject to damage or loss. This implies that any proposal about the putative loss of some portion of a text, like Mark 16, should include an indication of a particular book form and show its specific potential for the kind of damage/loss proposed. Hurtado's argument has substantial implications for the debate about the ending of Mark. It not enough to argue merely from the internal evidence that Mark ends at 16:8 or that a resurrection account has been lost. Either theory needs to account for the actual phenomenon of the codex itself, and how leaves were lost. It would be interesting to see other scholars to put forward proposals concerning the ending of Mark, based upon Hurtado's arguments.

Hurtado then considers the use of the nomina sacra in early Christian artifacts (abbreviations of key words for God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, etc.). He shows that while the nomina sacra were adapted from pre-Christian techniques of abbreviations, we are dealing with a Christian scribal innovation. They manifest one noteworthy expression of what Hurtado calls "the binitarian shape"of the earliest Christian piety. The other intriguing scribal phenomenon Hurtado deals with is the staurogram, which is a monogram formed by superimposing the Greek letter rho upon the Greek letter tau. The staurogram is, for Hurtado, a visual reference to Jesus' crucifixion. It is a visual expression of early Christian piety and reflects the importance given to Christ's death in Christian faith from at least as early as the second century. Hurtado then focuses upon other features such as codex size, columns, margins, lines per page/column, and other reader aids. He believes that many Christian codices show concern for ease of reading to facilitate the public/liturgical usage of texts, especially those texts treated as scripture. This thesis has considerable implications for the idea of a canon and the doctrine of scripture. The widespread public reading of a text is probably the best indication that the text was functioning as scripture. If Hurtado is right, then contra some theories, the NT was being treated as Scripture in the second and third centuries.

While Hurtado's fine and well written study is in a specialized area of Christian origins, its significance for our broader understanding of such important topics as the nature of early Christian piety, the centrality of Christ and his death for early Christians, and the place of canon and scripture, is profound. It is difficult for the non-specialist to evaluate Hurtado's proposals in this book. Yet, students of Christian origins are in Hurtado's debt for making his findings on early Christian artifacts accessible to all students in readily understandable format.