NT - Special Collections Seminar

Our class attended the Special Collections Seminar this week to learn more about ancient writings and how the Bible was transcribed. What peaked my interest was the evolution of writing materials used. Man first wrote on rock (cave drawings and such), but in order to have a portable form of their writings, they figured out how to make clay tablets. I was expecting these tablets to be something like what Moses brought down from the Mount; the big, almost tombstone-like, clay slabs. What we were shown, however, was much smaller. The tablet was just bigger than the palm of my hand with characters inscribed about one centimeter tall, filling up the tablet on both sides.

Next, the Egyptians figured out a way to use papyrus - a reed-like, water dwelling plant - to write on. The material was thin and could be fairly easily produced, but was not flexible and had to be carefully taken care of. Since the papyrus could not be folded, the Egyptians instead rolled it into scrolls - hence the Papyri Scrolls and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Later, in the Medieval period, animal hides were used. These hides were thin and flexible. They could be written on as well as erased and re-written. Monks often created books, written on animal hides, with wood covers to protect them. Hides were expensive, and difficult to come by at times, and were considered very valuable. The best hides to produce vellum from were the hides of newborn animals, or even better, those animals who were still developing prenatally. Apparently, one baby calf would produce enough hide for two pages. So in order to produce one copy of the Bible, containing somewhere around 1200 pages, 600 calves would have to be killed to provide the vellum. That's just one bible! What happens when they get groups of monks together, all working on transcribing the Bible? No wonder this vellum was such a pricey commodity. So pricey, in fact, that when supply ran out in the middle of a religious transcribing project, monks took books of pagan writings, erased them, and wrote over the old writings.

Paper wasn't discovered until about 100 years AD, now it's something we take for granted often. It is so easy for us to write now, to print books. What took dozens of years to produce in ancient times, we can now print in a few minutes. Makes me wonder though, is what we write or print what's important? In the ancient times, people had to know that what they were inscribing was important and worth the effort. Do we even think about what we write sometimes? Do we write the unimportant, meaningless wanderings of our lives and "forget" to write down what's truly important?

I know I don't even try to remember to do that sometimes. Maybe our writings should have more thought put into them.