Parchment (in green) is the dominant manuscript material for Abrahamic religions, namely Christianity, Judaism and Islam, whereas papyrus (in blue) is the dominant material for pagan religions (Figure 1).
Of all Greco-Roman manuscripts in roll form, only five are on parchment, compared to over three thousand on papyrus. The roll is the predominant book form for their literary texts, so the predominant material for Greco-Roman manuscripts is papyrus. This is surprising to me. Given that parchment is more durable and expensive, I thought that elite pagans would have chosen parchment for their valued manuscripts.
As shown in my previous post, around the 4th century, the roll ceased to be the dominant bookfom in the ancient world. Although there was an increase of pagan manuscripts in codex form, and on parchment, around that period, they didn’t reach the same scale as Christian manuscripts. All these factors may have contributed to the significant decrease of classical pagan manuscripts.
The use of parchment (in codex form) appears to be the main contributing factor in the significant increase of Christian manuscripts dated to between the 4th and 8th century (Figure 2), for the number of papyrus manuscripts in that same period remains on the same level. As the social and economic status of Christians improve overall, they would likely choose parchment for their manuscripts.
It is worth noting that there is no demonstrable pattern of a Christian preference for parchment over papyrus for their Scriptures, by contrast, there is a demonstrable Christian preference for the codex over roll for their Scriptures.
References:
- Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB). Accessed September 26, 2018. https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/.
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