Special Collections

The last time I attended the special collections seminar thing was about a year ago, so it's a little bit foggy now... However, I think I still remember most of what he talked about, since I've attended it two or three times. The thing that I remember best is the silly video clip that he showed us of the monk help desk for their "new technology"—the book. This is a very interesting (and humorous) reminder of the transition from using scrolls to using books. We can apply this knowledge to the books which Luke authored, namely The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Since a scroll was only so big, he had to split his works into these two separate parts. This isn't as obvious to us today, seeing as we can fit the entirety of the Old and New Testaments into one (albeit massive) volume, but in antiquity they didn't have the same technology we have today, and that includes books.
Even after books started to come into more widespread use, it was still nothing like we have today. Books were written on pages made of animal skin. It wasn't until much later that the process for manufacturing paper was invented. Books weren't printed either. They had to be painstakingly hand-written. The work of book writing was truly an art. The books they wrote were written in beautiful print, which looked virtually perfect to my eye. We were shown a copy of a page from a Bible that was hand-written by monks, and another that was printed, and I really couldn't tell the difference. The work that went into beautifying the books was amazing too. Even after the printing press came into use, so much effort went into hand decorating the books—it's truly amazing!
Seeing how difficult it was to produce writings in antiquity, it's of small wonder to me now that the Old Testament existed so long as simply an oral tradition before it was actually written down. Even much of Christ's earthly ministry wasn't written down until the Apostles and other eye-witnesses started to die off. It was truly a different world then than it is now. I can type this up and print if off in a couple minutes if I want to, and relatively cheaply too. I can also post it to this blog, and people from all over the entire globe have access to it instantly. It's really amazing how readily information is available to us, and how easy it is to share and spread it.