Euplus was an early Christian deacon who was martyred in Catania in 304 CE by Governor Calvisianus. While this might seem like just another martyrdom, we are told that he went to his death with a Gospel book hung around his neck—clearly a miniature codex. For Euplus, the miniature codex was proof that he was a Christian. It was a symbol of his identity. He stated before his death, “I am Christian and I read the divine Scriptures.”

As I mentioned in a prior post, I am starting a new 5-part series exploring what the phenomenon of miniature codices teaches us about the early Christian movement. This series is designed to draw out some practical implications (for a lay audience) from my new book with Oxford University Press, Miniature Codices in Early Christianity.

By way of review (especially if you are just joining the series), miniature codices are basically tiny little books, “pocket Bibles” so to speak. As early as the second century, and especially in the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began to create these little manuscripts that contained portions of Scripture (and also non-canonical writings) and sometimes even held multiple books.

So, what’s the first thing that miniature codices tell us about the early Christian movement? These tiny books demonstrate that early Christianity had a robust and sophisticated textual culture. Let me explain.

Just an Oral Culture?

Over the last century, New Testament scholarship has been dominated by a particular model designed to explain how early Christians transmitted their stories about Jesus. That model is known as Form Criticism.

While Form Criticism is certainly correct that stories of Jesus, at least the earliest stages, were transmitted orally, the model has been used to say more than that. In its more strident forms, the model has been used to argue that early Christianity was a predominantly, if not exclusively, oral religion that would have been hesitant to place value on written documents.

As a result of this conviction, some scholars have offered a rather negative portrayal of writing within the history of early Christianity.  The act of writing is now receiving the blame for many of early Christianity’s social ills. Not only are we told that it is responsible for making Christianity a “centralized” and “hierarchical” religion, but it is also characterized as a weapon of oppression used for the “marginalization” of minority groups. Writing caused the suppression of women, discrimination against the poor, and the exclusion of the uneducated.

In sum, the act of writing, is portrayed as something that corrupted the Christian religion.

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