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Codex was by far the most widely attested book form among early Christian literary papyri. Nevertheless, the papyrological record does include several notable exceptions, two of which contain parts of the book of Revelation (18 and 98). Recently, the former's status as a roll has been disputed by Brent Nongbri, who suggested that, instead, 18 is more likely to be a miscellaneous codex. This article provides a fresh look at the extant evidence and critically reviews Nongbri's case. In closing, brief reflections on the manuscript's social setting are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pauline theology is a well-established undertaking in modern New Testament studies, and yet it is almost entirely without precedent prior to the nineteenth century. This article explores the enterprise of Pauline theology by considering an important and overlooked exception to its otherwise exclusively modern provenance: Priscillian of Avila's fourth-century Canons on the Letters of the Apostle Paul. The key to Priscillian's dogmatic synthesis of Paul's thought was his innovative ‘versification’ of Paul's letters, which facilitated efficient citation and cross-referencing of epistolary data. This article uses Priscillian's literary creation to examine the intriguing correlation of technologies for ordering textual knowledge with the systematic abstraction of Pauline theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, emphasising the ‘orality/aurality’ of the Roman world, some scholars have asserted that in early Christian circles texts were ‘performed’, not ‘read’ (and could not have been read), likening this action to descriptions of oratorical delivery of speeches (from memory) or theatrical performance. It has even been suggested that some texts, particularly the Gospel of Mark, were composed in ‘performance’, and not through an author working up a text in written form. These claims seem to be based on numerous oversimplifications (and so distortions) of relevant historical matters, however, and also involve a failure to take account of the full range of relevant data about the use of texts in early Christianity and the wider Roman-era setting. So, at least some of the crucial claims and inferences made are highly dubious. In this essay, I offer corrections to some crucial oversimplifications, and I point to the sorts of data that must be taken into account in drawing a more reliable picture of the place of texts and how they functioned in early Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the recent emphasis on studying early Christian manuscripts as historical artefacts, whose text and meta-textual aspects comprise important embodiments of reception and interpretation, this article re-examines the early Titus fragment 픓32 (P.Ryl. Gr. 1.5) with respect to its physical situation within the manuscript. I expand the scope of current reconstructions to consider in detail the lost beginning of the epistle, and argue that Titus was not the first document in the codex: at least one other preceded. Although the identity of the accompanying material cannot be deduced codicologically, patristic evidence suggests that Titus was normally transmitted in a collection of thirteen or fourteen Pauline epistles when the 픓32 codex was produced, rendering these the prime candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]