Religion of the Paperback

That’s how Stroumsa describes early Christianity, because of its preference for the small, portable codex over the traditional, sacred but quite cumbersome scroll. The codex had practical advantages, but Stroumsa thinks that something else was at work: “In going against all religious and cultural norms, the Christians manifestly knew that they were launching a genuine religious revolution: the truth, inscribed in the Book, had to reverberate as quickly and as simply as possible, by all means, in all languages.”