THE BIBLE IN THE SYRIAC TRADITION
THE BIBLE IN THE SYRIAC TRADITION

Summary/Abstract: Manuscript Bibles in all languages except Hebrew were in book, or “codex,” form. For purposes of study the Jews would also write out the Hebrew Bible in codex form, but for liturgical use in Synagogue they always wrote out the text on scrolls (a practice which still exists today). The scroll is in fact a much older invention than the codex. The codex only came to be widely used for literary texts in the early centuries of the Christian era, and it seems that Christians helped to popularize the new format by first employing it for writing out biblical texts in Greek. As we shall see, manuscripts of the standard Syriac Bible are remarkably uniform in character; in this respect they are comparable to Hebrew biblical manuscripts, and unlike Greek ones.

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