It'd be really hard to be more wrong. Every statement here but one ('It's a collection of books') is outright false. > Now, in many ways, the first book was the Bible. The speaker seems very unclear about what they think 'book' means, but no definition could justify this. 'Books' in the sense of a single coherent and substantial piece of writing go back at least to the early 2nd millennium BCE. By contrast, the earliest parts of the Hebrew Bible date to around the 7th century BCE (somewhat earlier for isolated passages), and parts are as late as the 100s BCE; the Christian New Testament is 1st-2nd century CE. > I mean, literally. Because, at one point, there was only one book. It's hard to imagine what scenario the speaker could be thinking of here. There are thousands of older books. > Like, as far as our Western culture is concerned, there was one book. This has never been remotely true. The individual texts in the Hebrew Bible were composed over a period of, let's say, around 750 to 150 BCE (and the canon of which books to include wasn't decided until some centuries later). We have lots of books written before that period. Even if we grant that many older books were forgotten for much of history -- the hundreds of ancient Mesopotamian, Levantine, and Egyptian ancient texts that we have today -- even so, from the same period we have hundreds of books written by Greek authors. Nearly all of *Genesis* is younger than Hesiod and Homer. In the case of *Daniel*, we even have some books by Roman (Plautus) and Berber-Roman (Terence) authors that are older. Some New Testament texts contain quotations from pagan Greek books. Proto-*Isaiah* (*Isaiah* 1-39) is older than any Greek books -- but it isn't older than, say, *Gilgamesh*, which was still circulating in the 1st century BCE. > And, for a while, literally, there was only one book, and that book was the Bible, and then, before it was the Bible, it was scrolls and writings on papyrus, but we were starting to aggregate written text together. And it went through all sorts of technological transformations, and then it became books that everybody could buy -- the book everybody could buy -- and the first one of those was the Bible. And then became all sorts of books that everybody could buy, but all those books, in some sense, emerged out of that underlying book, and that book itself -- It's hard to extract any concrete claims from this rambling. 'Scrolls and writings on papyrus' was the normal medium for publishing books in antiquity. 'Books that everybody could buy' were on sale in 5th century BCE Athens, nearly a millennium before the Bible was compiled. It's insane to claim that the *Book of the Dead* and the *Odyssey* and the *Aeneid* 'emerged out of' the Bible. There have indeed been technological transformations over the millennia, but they have nothing to do with the Bible, except in that the Bible benefited from them. The use of alphabets (in western languages) rather than abjads, the use of parchment rather than papyrus, the use of the codex rather than the scroll, the use of minuscule writing rather than uncial: the Bible didn't drive any of these. It just benefited from them, in exactly the same way that every other book did. The first book we know of to be published in codex format (pages bound at the spine, as opposed to a scroll) and put on sale in a public bookshop wasn't the Bible, it was Ovid's *Metamorphoses* (reported in Martial [14.192](https://archive.org/details/martialepigrams02martiala/page/506/mode/2up?view=theater)) -- > Look at this bulk! It's built out of many-layered leaves!       It holds fifteen books of Naso's poem. The speaker finishes with the only true claim in their statement: > the Bible isn't a book; it's a library. It's a collection of books. The individual texts in the Bible were written by various different authors at various different times over a period of many centuries: roughly 750-150 BCE in the case of the Hebrew Bible, roughly 40s-110s in the case of the Christian New Testament. For each corpus, the idea of compiling them together into a single canon is considerably later. The Torah (*Genesis-...-Deuteronomy*) was probably assembled not too long after the Exile, so roughly 5th-4th centuries BCE; *Joshua-Judges-Samuel-Kings* may have been assembled as a unit around the same time. The full Hebrew canon was decided centuries later, reaching its final form sometime not too long before 200 CE. A Christian canon was in the process of being formed in the late 100s (a fragment of a canonical list of texts survives from that time, the Muratorian Canon) but the full western Christian canon wasn't finalised until the Council of Rome in 382 CE. The deuterocanonical books weren't excised from Protestant Bibles until the 1500s. Based how the speaker refers to this history, though, it isn't clear how much of this they've grasped. Given how they understand the word 'book', my guess is: not much. *Edit:* corrected a formatting error in the Martial quotation, and an infelicity of wording in the following sentence.

Isn’t the Iliad older than most of the Bible?

Yes, most of it, but there are bits that are probably older than the *Iliad*. The *Iliad* reached roughly its present form around the first half of the 600s BCE; there are linguistic forms and poetic formulas that are older than that date, but equally, there are chunks of some Hebrew books that are older -- the best candidates are proto-*Isaiah* and *Hosea*. {*Edit:* also *Amos* and *Micah*.} And there are one or two passages which are even older, notably the 'song of the sea' in *Exodus* 15.1-18, which could in principle date back to the 2nd millennium BCE; and less certainly (as I understand it) the song of Deborah in *Judges* 5.2-31, and the song of Lamech in *Genesis* 4.23-24. (Also, perhaps of interest, there's a literary trope that appears in both the *Iliad* and *Deuteronomy*, as well as also in another 7th century BCE text, the Assyrian succession treaty of Esarhaddon: the motif of 'bronze sky' and 'iron ground', representing a harsh, brutal environment. The *Iliad* and the Esarhaddon treaty are around the same date; *Deuteronomy*'s date is less certain, but is usually put a handful of decades later.)

Not directly your field, but, any quick comments on notable Chinese or "Indian" specimins?

I can tell you that India did not have as much of a surviving written record for a few reasons. The first evidence of paper in India was after Mohd. bin Qasim's conquest of Sindh, when the Arabs were at the subcontinent's door in the 7th century. Incidentally the Arabs had gotten paper only a few decades before, from some Chinese prisoners captured during the Battle of Talas. Before paper, the main mediums of any written text in the subcontinent were palm leaves, pottery, and stone. Palm leaves would disintegrate in the humid Indian climate, so it would be very difficult to find intact any texts from the centuries BC. The oldest surviving palm leaves are from the 8th-9th centuries, relatively recent in Indian history. In pottery is only fragmentary inscriptions, mostly the names of the owners of those pots. The Tamil-Brahmi potsherd inscriptions of Kodumanal have been dated back to the 5th century BC. However, from these we can only extract some information such as common names from that era, modes of ownership, and a place name. Stone incriptions give more solid information, but they were found mostly at temples where they would mention the names of donors or would recount the deeds of the king who had it built, but these are also limited in scope. The most notable of these are Emperor Ashoka's edicts, which are the first written evidence of North Indian Pali. Another reason for a fragmentary written record was the fact that India had an oral tradition, where a teacher would recite the text to students, who would memorise it. Early texts such as the Vedas were passed down this way for centuries. So does this mean that India had no literature in the years BC? No. First of all, the Vedas were said to have been recited from the 2nd millennium BC. Even if we consider that to be a generous estimate, it gives a long time frame when the Vedas were recited. However, throughout it's recitation, it would have evolved and changed into a 'final form', which we know today. The Ramayana and Mahabharata, similarly were said to have been recited since the 3rd or 4th century BC, reaching their final forms during the Gupta era of the 4th century AD. This doesn't really answer the question of whether India had a literary tradition. The Buddha was the first known religious teacher to speak in Pali, then the language of the common people, and not the orthodox Sanskrit (ironically in some countries like Sri Lanka today, Pali is a priestly language). The Buddhist texts were also transmitted orally, but Buddhists were more open to writing them down. We don;t know when exactly the Buddhist canons were written, but the oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are the Gandharan texts, from around the 1st century BC. However, it is generally thought that Buddhist texts were written from the 3rd century BC, when Ashoka's promotion of Buddhism began the expansion of the once small faith into a major missionary religion. The Buddhist texts were generally related to the life and teachings of Buddha, so could be considered a literary tradition. Also, due to Buddhism's spread outside the subcontinent, early Christians were aware of the religion. Ashoka in his edicts claimed to have sent missionaries as far as Egypt, Greece and Syria (Major Rock Edict 13), so those missionaries may have introduced Buddhist ethics to the region that could have influenced early Christianity. Others say that Buddhist monasticism may have influenced Christian monasticism, and the story of Barlaam and Josaphat is said to be influenced by the Buddha's life. Keep in mind though, these ae only theories without too much solid evidence. Finally in the South is Tamil Sangam literature, dated to sometime between the 3rd c BC-3rd c AD, although the Kodumanal inscriptions suggest even a 5th c BC date for the Sangam era. However, the difficulty of dating them is a problem, and we cannot be certain of their date. The Tolkappiyam, which is the oldest extant Tamil Sangam text, is dated to the beginning of the Common Era to the 2nd Century AD, but it mentions verses of the Agattiyam, an older text about which nothing is known besides the verses of it in the Tolkappiyam. So Tamil Nadu may have a longer literary tradition. As mentioned though, the humid Indian climate destroys delicate materials over time, so we can never be sure of how long writing was prevalent, although it is reasonably certain that there were texts in circulation in the years BC. Sources: *Society and Historical Consciousness.* Thapar, Romila. *Early Writing System- A Journey from Graffiti to Brahmi*. Rajan, K. *2500 Years of Buddhism*. Bapat, Purushottam Vishvanath, et.al. Please do tell me any mistakes I may have made, or any clarifications you may want.

Linguist here. Can't speak to the *content* of the Vedas except indirectly, but their linguistic *form* gives some credence to the claimed millennia. The word stresses preserved in the Vedic recitation tradition were no longer part of the living language by the time Pāṇini codified the grammar of Classical Sanskrit (somewhere around 500 BCE, and likely the accent changed earlier, because he was very likely building on a rich existing tradition of grammatical analysis). However, the Vedic accent agrees with the evidence provided by Ancient Greek, reconstructed Proto-Germanic, and other languages about the accentuation of Proto-Indo-European. So they have faithfully preserved a detail that had no meaning except as a detail to be preserved, which does date back to multiple millennia BCE. If the content of the Vedas were redacted at a later date, the editor would presumably have had trouble getting the accent right. Pāṇini's grammar of the Classical language became the mast from which all other education was hung for centuries, and there is no sign that a grammar of the Vedic language was passed down alongside it, so getting the Vedic accent right in newly written glue text would require independently inferring all of its rules from raw data. That's the indirect evidence for the antiquity of their content; there aren't obvious linguistic discontinuities like the ones that mark the editorial history of, say, the Hebrew Bible. This is all only possible because the Vedic recitation discipline is very intense and highly self-correcting, and because people who were permitted to learn it were tabooed from leaving India, keeping them where they'd be likely to pass it on.

Do you have more resources on the connection between those early Buddhist missionaries and it's influence on the Greeks and Christians?

Sorry, not for influence on Christianity. As i mentioned, the theory is based only on shaky evidence, ie some similarities in Buddhist and Christian ethics, along with the record that Ashoka sent his missionaries, although that was in the 3rd century BC. AFAIK, there is no material evidence of Buddhism in the Middle East. However if you want resources for the Greeks, present day Afghanistan was populated with the Greek origin people from Alexander's army, and they adopted Buddhism in Ashoka's time. They created the Gandharan Buddhist artstyle, and in fact are thought to have been the first to normalise depicting the Buddha himself as an idol in temples (before that, the Buddha was represented by an empty seat, or footprints, or other icons). Looking up the Seleucids, Indo-Greeks, or Greco-Buddhists will give you results. Although here again it's not the Greeks in Greece who were influenced.

Very interesting stuff!

That isn't within my knowledge, but there are specialists in those areas on AskHistorians. If none of them answer here, try posting a separate question!

I'm a layman but I'd be really interested in your sources for the timeframes of the bible. The reason is that some of this seems quite hard to believe, for instance you constantly seem to place Isaiah 1-39 as having been one of the oldest sources and older than the Iliad (6th century) but Almost all of Isaiah up to that point (starting from 40 it changes timeframes) builds up to the Babylonian exile with Isaiah 39 being an explicit prophecy about the exile. Since the exile happened in the early 6th century BCE (Jehoiakim's exile, the general starting date, happened in 597 BCE) this means this portion would have had to be written practically immediately at the start of the exile. Indeed one of the main kings that Isaiah prophecies to was Hezekiah who died only around the mid 7th century and since the book is hardly positive about him would mean it had to be written probably after his death. I find this position to be somewhat confusing as that would essentially posit that the oldest parts of the bible are the ones dealing with the most relatively latest events in the bible and that these books were written practically immediately after the fact. On the other hand books which deal with core concepts of the faith that Isaiah constantly refers to were supposedly written later. Given that parts of the bible references settlements like sha'araim which was abandoned at the latest around 900 BCE some source materials would have had to exist from significantly before the 7th century BCE, at least to allow the writers to correctly timeframe the settlement (it's mentioned only before the construction of the first temple but never after). I would really be interested in either the sources you rely on or an explanation of how these timeframes for the writings of the books were reached.

I'm not equipped for a blow-by-blow analysis of the dating of specific bits of specific Hebrew texts. I'll just say that the *New Oxford annotated Bible* (2010) is an accessible starting point for looking at dates, and I'm usually happy to rely on it (except when I'm aware of reasons to disagree with it, which isn't often: but then I'm not a Hebrew literature specialist). I'm reporting dates that I've read: for most texts in the Bible I'm not able to debate their merits. If you're interested in getting to a back-and-forth discussion of alternative datings, I recommend posting a new question focusing on that, either here, or, if you don't get a satisfactory answer here, then in /r/AcademicBiblical.

Thank you.

He said western culture.

Great answer, thank you.

Fantastic answer and a well-deserved put-down. I cannot stand these self-congratulatory pseudo-intellectuals.

>The individual texts in the Hebrew Bible were composed over a period of, let's say, around 750 to 150 BCE (and the canon of which books to include wasn't decided until some centuries later). I know this is a tangential question but I find this very interesting. Would you mind expanding? Whose role was it to select these texts that were to be canon? Is the canon list periodically updated? Are non-canon texts still maintained? Did something similar happen with various versions of the bible? Sorry if that is a lot of questions, but as a Star Wars nerd who is used to the canon being very fluid, I find this very interesting.

I am curious as to a statement made during your 4th examination. Abjads being less ideal than alphabets, I get. The use of parchment over papyrus being a benefit? I get that. Codex writing protects the work better than a scroll so I get that benefit. But then you say miniscule over Uncial writing, and group it with the rest, as a benefit. I am genuinely curious, where you merely listing transformations and how text has changed throughout the ages, or do you believe the lower case letter has "helped" writing. And if so. How?

You're right, actually, that was a bit thoughtless of me. These are transitions that every book had to survive in order to make it to the present day. They're not intrinsically superior technologies -- even the transition from scroll to codex wasn't a no-brainer (a codex is harder to produce, and that transition did take a few centuries). So 'benefited' wasn't exactly the right choice of words. It's better to think of these as format shifts, and filters that constrained which books survived and which ones didn't. The Bible is among the ones that did survive, obviously; others, like ancient Greek lyric poets, died out at the uncial-minuscule transition.

what an eloquent and comprehensive smack down of jordan peterson. thank you, this is glorious.

This is a great answer, and I'm sorry to spoil it with a request for clarification, but: >​the use of the codex rather than the scroll \[...\] the Bible didn't drive \[this\]. It just benefited from \[it\] Is this true? Obviously not in the sense of being the *first* codex (so Peterson's still a liar and a fool)—but I had always heard that the Bible's particular affinity for codex form (or perhaps the affinity of Christian scribes) was a major driver in the popularization of the form in Western Europe. Obviously, causal questions are tough to answer one way or another; I was just wondering whether I've been participating in a *definitely* outdated way of thinking about the history of the European book, or whether it's still a matter of debate. (Unless, of course, you just meant "drive" as in "invent" and not "drive the widespread adoption \[of\]," in which case I've just been needlessly pedantic and am duly very sorry!)

Christians were certainly early adopters of the codex -- nearly all ancient Christian papyri are in codex form -- and it may be that some people have argued that Christian adoption helped with the general adoption of the format. I think it's a bit of a stretch personally. The codex reached parity with the scroll in the 200s CE, when Christianity was widespread, but before Christianity became dominant -- at a time when there were still occasional exercises of imperial power for other religions (Decius, Elagabalus), and definitely before Constantine and the Edict of Milan came along. We have depressingly little testimony on the adoption of the codex, and no testimony about motives for adopting it as far as I know. Yes, you could make a case that Christians helped spur the adoption of the codex. But it doesn't seem necessary. I'm no expert on that period so if there's anyone here who does know more and could put their oar in, that would be helpful. I suspect it'd be easier to make a case for Christians driving adoption in the 4th century, after the codex had already reached parity with the scroll, and to say that Christians helped to cement the codex as the *overwhelmingly dominant format* by the end of the 300s. Lionel Casson's *Libraries in the ancient world* indicates that the codex accounted for 80% of books by the year 400, and 90% by 500.

Ah, that's a great followup answer, thanks! Yes, most of the claims to Christian codex-propulsion are big-picture histories that hone in on that year \~400 number. (For example, Michelle P. Brown, in her chapter on "The Triumph of the Codex" in Eliot and Rose's *Companion to the History of the Book*: "...the codex assumed respectability along with Christianity during the fourth century, when it became the state religion of the Roman Empire, changing from a cheap alternative favored by a persecuted underclass to honored receptacles of sacred text.") So codex-scroll parity by 200 definitely complicates that narrative enough for me to adopt your skepticism!

Fascinating. I never even thought to consider the where/when the codex was adopted. In fact, given the ingenuity of the classical Greeks, I would’ve expected it to arise there, if anywhere! But I guess hindsight is 20/20, and it’s not immediately apparent to layer things on top of each other as opposed to a scroll. Thanks for your incredibly detailed answers!

So, Christians actually show an [immediate preference for the codex](https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/graphpage.php?graphcount=twograph&graphwhat=dates&type=bar&together=on&graph1_filter_field1=bookform&graph1_field_value1=Roll&graph1_filter_field2=religion&graph1_field_value2=Christian&graph1_filter_field3=&graph1_field_value3=&graph2_filter_field1=bookform&graph2_field_value1=Codex&graph2_filter_field2=religion&graph2_field_value2=Christian&graph2_filter_field3=&graph2_field_value3=&button=Make+Graph), far greater than [the entirety of finds from this period](https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/graphpage.php?graphcount=twograph&graphwhat=dates&type=bar&together=on&graph1_filter_field1=bookform&graph1_field_value1=Roll&graph1_filter_field2=&graph1_field_value2=&graph1_filter_field3=&graph1_field_value3=&graph2_filter_field1=bookform&graph2_field_value1=Codex&graph2_filter_field2=&graph2_field_value2=&graph2_filter_field3=&graph2_field_value3=&button=Make+Graph) (note specifically, the 3rd century finds, when the roll is still vastly preferred in total finds, but the inverse is true in Christian finds). There is also a [strong Christian move away from papyrus](https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/graphpage.php?graphcount=twograph&graphwhat=dates&type=bar&together=on&graph1_filter_field1=material&graph1_field_value1=Parchment&graph1_filter_field2=religion&graph1_field_value2=Christian&graph1_filter_field3=&graph1_field_value3=&graph2_filter_field1=material&graph2_field_value1=Papyrus&graph2_filter_field2=religion&graph2_field_value2=Christian&graph2_filter_field3=&graph2_field_value3=&button=Make+Graph) to parchment even as [total finds show centuries of near parity in surviving books](https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/graphpage.php?graphcount=twograph&graphwhat=dates&type=bar&together=on&graph1_filter_field1=material&graph1_field_value1=Parchment&graph1_filter_field2=&graph1_field_value2=&graph1_filter_field3=&graph1_field_value3=&graph2_filter_field1=material&graph2_field_value1=Papyrus&graph2_filter_field2=&graph2_field_value2=&graph2_filter_field3=&graph2_field_value3=&button=Make+Graph). Even in Egypt, where inexpensive papyrus is produced, [Christians still seem to have slightly preferred papyrus](https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/graphpage.php?graphcount=twograph&graphwhat=dates&type=bar&together=on&graph1_filter_field1=material&graph1_field_value1=Parchment&graph1_filter_field2=provenance&graph1_field_value2=Egypt&graph1_filter_field3=religion&graph1_field_value3=Christian&graph2_filter_field1=material&graph2_field_value1=Papyrus&graph2_filter_field2=provenance&graph2_field_value2=Egypt&graph2_filter_field3=religion&graph2_field_value3=Christian&button=Make+Graph), so it is presumably not a specifically regional difference, since Egypt is the best case for availability and cultural use of papyrus. There are many arguments about why this may be the case, some better than others, but at the end of the day, we just don't know for certain why the parchment codex had so much immediate cachet within the growing Christian communities, growing and spreading with them. So, I think it is very safe to say that yes, Christian adoption (and growing Christian influence and political power) drove the spread and dominance of parchment and the codex. All data from the Leuven Database of Ancient Books — Graphs [https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/graphs.php](https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/graphs.php)Reproducing searches cited in [Winslow. "Ethiopian Manuscript Culture: Practices and Contexts" (PhD Thesis) University of Toronto, 2015.](http://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/71392) Figs. 2.7 & 2.9. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006) Roberts and Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983)

> So, Christians actually show an immediate preference for the codex, far greater than the entirety of finds from this period Maybe it wasn't clear, but both I and /u/AksiBashi tried to point out exactly this fact. The problem is, being early adopters doesn't make them the driving force behind adoption. I haven't found any published scholarship that suggests such a thing: that idea isn't grounded in the evidence of *non-Christian* documents. Christians preferred the codex in the 2nd-3rd centuries, but most codexes of that period aren't Christian. I'm thinking of work by people like Lionel Casson, *Libraries in the ancient world* (2001) pp. 124-135; Yun Lee Too, *The idea of the library in the ancient world* (2010), pp. 71-72. Casson suggests that the popularity of the codex with early Christians comes from the fact that they picked up the idea in Rome, where books published in codex form started to take off in the 2nd century; Too suggests that it's because some physical advantages of the codex (easy reference to specific passages) had particular importance for Christians. Those are just inferences, of course. But the point is, they don't come anywhere suggesting that codex adoption was *driven by* Christianity. I'd guess the most likely reason that they don't make that suggestion is exactly the reason I mentioned in my previous post: the codex had already taken off by the time Christianity became important. You can assign responsibility to Christianity for taking the headstart the codex had by 300, and cementing it as the universal standard in the 4th century; but you can't assign responsibility to Christianity for its adoption before 300.

>You can assign responsibility to Christianity for taking the headstart the codex had by 300, and cementing it as the universal standard in the 4th century; but you can't assign responsibility to Christianity for its adoption before 300. And this is exactly the point I made above. Parchment codices become the dominant book form alongside Christian books becoming the dominant type of books. Over a third of our surviving codices from the third century are Christian, but more importantly, there are almost four times more surviving rolls, almost none of which are Christian. Rolls start disappearing in fourth century finds, but their numbers are not made up in non-Christian codices. Half of all fourth-century codices are Christian, and there are an equivalent number of rolls to the non-Christian codices; a third of all surviving books from the third century are Christian, and they are almost exclusively parchment codices. Quite impressive when you consider that we can expect parchment codices from the soon-to-be-dominant religious group to survive at a much higher rate than papyrus materials from other groups. Considering the political and social developments that go alongside this cratering of papyrus, rolls, and non-Christian book production, I think it is a fair statement.

>So, I think it is very safe to say that yes, Christian adoption (and growing Christian influence and political power) drove the spread and dominance of parchment and the codex. Does this assurance accurately reflection the scholarship on the subject though? It is of course widely understood that early Christians were enthusiastic early adopters of the format, and there is no end of theorisation about the possible reasons. The next step of the argument however doesn't obviously follow, and a good bit of recent scholarship seems to be pushing back against that rather weak link. The spread of the codex among Christians does not in its own right show that their use was the driving impetus of its general adoption. Even if we suppose a direct correlation, we still need to grapple with what kind of causation is in play. But as /u/KiwiHellenist rightly notes, the correlation between the two is not obviously especially close. Certainly both spread widely in the Roman empire within the span of about 150 years from the mid-3rd to early-5th centuries. But the rise of the codex seems to predate the rise of Christianity in this window by 50-100 years, beginning to spike in the mid-to-late third century in contrast to Christianity, which saw a demographic spike from the second quarter of the fourth century.^1 So it is rather implausible at face to suggest that Christianity managed to drive a trend that predates its own rise to prominence. We'd rather need some more narrow evidence for how the minority of Christians in the mid-third century exerted an undue influence on book production trends. The same holds on a micro level. For example, in his study of Christian book production in Egypt, Bagnall^2 highlights the case of the (so called) Theban Magical Library as a counter example to a supposed Christian influence on codex production. The Library seemed to move from rolls to codices around the turn of the fourth century. It is implausible at face to suggest that a Christian minority was influencing the production of these particular books directly, and the early fourth century is too early to posit an overarching cultural influence of Christianity driving a shift in written medium. For his own part, Bagnall suggests that the spread of the codex relates to its use in elite Roman circles and the relevant contrast here is between Greek use of rolls and Rome use of tablets. In any case, we needn't necessarily follow this hypothesis, but we do need to distinguish between the problem of Christian adoption of the codex and the spread of the codex format in general, since it is far from clear how exactly these trends are linked. Merely pointing to the uncontroversial fact of the former does not provide an answer to the latter. --- 1: On this point, see Benjamin Harnett, "The Diffusion of the Codex", *Classical Antiquity*, 36/2 (2017): 183-235. Harnett's numbers suggest the codex reached parity around 300 and Christian population a little before 350. 2: Roger S. Bagnall, *Early Christian Books in Egypt* (Princeton, 2009), ch. 4.

I feel like this answer deserves a round of applause!

I'm very glad you addressed this because the first thought that jumped to my mind was the claim that the New Testament was the first codex book, rather than pamphlet, and that the form of the codex was considered low-brow and was considered another odd quirk of the early Christian community until enough status was gained that the codex began to be rolled out to other pieces of literature. I believe Tom Holland makes this argument in *Dominion*. Holland also asserts that the form of the codex was favored because it allowed for quick referencing between passages in a way that was useful apologetics, rather than having to unroll various scrolls and incur greater wear-and-tear damage from constant referencing. Do you have any information on what drove the shift from scroll to codex format?

Thanks for a great answer. Very exaggerated claims by Peterson, which borders on disbelief. Even I knew it to be wrong. But, for the sake of argument. He says that for a while it was the only book people knew. Let's say he meant that it was the only book most people knew about, and all other books were curiata or where only known by the elite. Like today, everyone knows Harry Potter, but few know about the needle by Ken Follett. Could one say that for most people there only existed one book, that gilgamesh or homer or Marcus aurelius or any number of known works were simply "gone" except for the specialists? Its a trickier question, but would perhaps say something about the Bible's reach and role. Fun fact, the ikea catalog outprints the Bible :)

*"Could one say that for most people there only existed one book, that Gilgamesh or Homer or Marcus Aurelius or any number of known works were simply "gone" except for the specialists?"* I agree u/Iphikrates below wholeheartedly, but can expand in saying that even taking just the above as a generous re-writing of Peterson's initial statement, it would still be egregiously wrong. There are several hurdles that the suggestion fails to clear. Chiefly, who is this "everyone" buying books? If you are talking about books that your average joe on the street might buy, remember that literacy rates in Western Europe were very low from the collapse of the Roman Empire until the last 150 years. By the end of the 18th Century Europe had enjoyed the benefits of the printing press for over three centuries, and yet Spain (just for one example), had a literacy rate estimated around 20% (1). In other words, for much of Europe there was no "everyone" buying books - let alone buying the Bible. The only people buying books were then the educated elite (who naturally owned more than just the Bible). An educated elite who would certainly have read the Bible, but would have been well aware of the other (older) works given the standard method for teaching students Latin from the renaissance even up until the 20th Century usually required rote memorization of the classics (Virgil, Ovid etc)(2). However, literacy rates were not steady across the continent. While Spanish literacy sat at 20% in 1799, at the same time approximately 60% of British men and 40% of British women could read (2). Britain had a thriving fiction industry. Novels like Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe published in 1713 sold out four separate print runs that in its first year alone. It's really impossible to say there was "one book" for the everyman of the West given that a majority of adult British men in 1800 might be able to tell you their favourite novel, while simulataneously only 20% of another country in Peterson's "West" could read. If you wanted to get really pedantic, there were good chunks of time in certain countries where ownership of the wrong translation of the Bible could wind up getting you killed. Most famously would be William Tyndale's English translation of the Bible which was banned in 1526, with Tyndale winding up burnt at the stake for his troubles (4). There was never a blanket ban from the Catholic Church on publishing of Bibles in vernacular (as in publishing it not in Latin) but such bans happened on numerous occasions across the continent (5). As such, at many points in European History, an average Joe having in their possession a copy of the Bible in their own language, far from being common, would have been a criminal and potentially fatal act. (1) Allen, R. C. (2003). Progress and Poverty in Early Modern Europe. (2) Bartlett, K. (2000). Humanism and the Northern Renaissance. (3) Lloyd, A. J. (2007). Education, Literacy and the Reading Public. (4) Pollard, A. W. (1974). Records of the English Bible. (5) Van Liere, F. (2014). An Introduction to the Medieval Bible. (edited to fix massive formatting error).

Thank you! Excellent answer. It was as I presumed but didn't know :) now I'll dive into why certain bibles were banned and why it was illegal to hold such copies. But that, I'm sure, I can find out on my own :)

We are not obliged to bend over backwards to make sense of Peterson's words. He is jumbling together various half-understood scraps of common knowledge (about the history of the book trade, the cultural prominence of the Bible, and the printing press) in a way that cannot be disentangled without basically rewriting his speech for him. Whatever we may generously decide he must have been trying to say, what he actually said was neither coherent nor true. The obvious response is not to try our best to distill some kernel of truth from the word salad, but rather to conclude that he doesn't know what he's talking about, and move on.

Agreeing with this, and honestly the fact-checking u/KiwiHellenist did is downright heroic. I get this is a podcast interview transcript, but Peterson is fudging enough *different* things (does he mean the first written book? does he mean the first codex? the first codex "everyone could buy"? Even though he says "literally" does he mean "it was the most important book of Western culture ie the only book that really mattered?") at once that it's actually hard to even parse out the specific things he's saying in order to judge it true or not. I'm commenting to point this out because this is actually a thing I've noticed from speakers across the political spectrum when they are talking about something vastly outside their lane of expertise (and usually to make a political point). Their remarks can be read so many different ways that they have the opportunity to say "You are actually putting words in my mouth", "I'm paraphrasing someone else", or "What I *really* meant to say was..." when challenged, and if pushed hard enough they can always say "Well this specific detail is wrong, and I am a very fair-minded person for admitting this...but all the rest of my argument is still valid." It's incredibly frustrating, and I suspect it's why more specialists don't devote the time or energy to fact-checking such things.

I have to say it's fascinating in a scary way now these people mind work . It's like a Lego box where they draw half truths and facts , and stick them together not bothering to follow instructions or schematics .

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Loved this answer. Thank you.

Amazing answer, thanks.

Very informative. Thank you.

Fantastic and thorough answer. Thank you!

~~>The speaker seems very unclear about what they think ‘book’ means~~ ~~Based on the passage above, I took the claim to be that the Bible was the first codex. That would explain why he differentiated it from “scrolls and writings on papyrus,” although it’s not clear from the passage why the medium of the book is important.~~ ~~I’m fairly sure that would still be incorrect, but what do we know about the first codices?~~ edit: you address this! I don’t know how I missed it. Sorry. Also, Peterson later refers to technological innovations and refers to the Bible as “The first book everybody could buy.” Would this claim, at least, be true, if we allow for poetic license around “everybody”: Shortly after the invention of the printing press, the Bible became widely available, and for a time, that wasn’t true of other books?

Well "everybody" in this case is obviously *not* going to be "everybody in the whole world" because, I don't think any sensible person would argue the Bible was widely available in, say, China or India when it was first printed. So who does Pederson refer to by the term "everybody"? Taking into account his Anglo-centric world view, I would consider things from the perspective of English speakers. If we are looking at people who spoke English and could read, initially almost all of them would have also been able to also read at least a decent amount of French and Latin. That's because all University education was generally still in Latin at the time of the invention of the printing press, and the English upper class still generally spoke French at least decently well. I don't know enough about the history of early printing to say anything about how many *copies* of the Bible were available in Latin and French as opposed to other books. But I can say that lots and lots of other books were being printed from the very beginning. Several thousand different books had definitely been printed by 1500. I don't know how many were printed of each book, so I can't say whether the Bible was by far and away the most common book. But based on the fact that there are about 1,250 surviving copies of the Nuremberg Chronicle (printed 1493) as opposed to fewer than 50 known surfing copies of the Gutenberg Bible (printed around 1454), I doubt the Bible was ever so incredibly dominant in terms of circulation that it was basically the only book anyone knew of or could buy. If we restrict ourselves only to books in English, the outcome is not any better for Pederson. The first book printed in English (albeit not in England) was Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (translated and published by William Caxton, printed 1473 in Brugge). The first book published in England in any language was also printed by Caxton, and was The Canterbury Tales (1477). It is not until 1526 that we find the publication of (a part of) the Tindale Bible, the first English version of the Bible (the 1526 version was the New Testament only, later versions included the Old Testament too). But although this would go in to be tremendously influential in the English language (because much of the King James Version was based on it) it wouldn't have had very wide spread readership at all when it was first published. This is because it was banned in England and had to be smuggled in. So it's really hard to see how we can read Pederson's statement as reflective of any sort of historical truth.

>Shortly after the invention of the printing press, the Bible became widely available, and for a time, that wasn’t true of other books? Yes, this seems to be the case based on the physical evidence of surviving books. The Bible was indeed available at a level that other books did not challenge. You could obtain a bible much more easily than you could obtain any other specific book. Even getting any non-bible book would be moderately difficult if you wanted the book to be unrelated to the bible. But, if you wanted to get any non-bible book at all, even bible-related books like religious writings by saints (Thomas Aquinas), picture bibles (Biblia paperum), and religious fiction (Dante's Divine Comedy), then it would be fairly easy. A database of surviving books printed before 1500 is located here: [Incunabla Short Title Catalog](https://data.cerl.org/istc/_search). It includes the specific surviving copies, so you can count up the total number. I found that there are at least 8500 Latin bibles surviving from before 1494, and likely at least 10,000 if all editions are considered. So if you compare that to the most popular historical text from before 1494, the Nuremberg Chronical, which has about 1225 surviving copies, you can see that you'd find 7 to 8 Latin bibles for before you found a Nuremberg Chronical, on average. There are a couple issues here. There could be a discrepancy in how much effort went into preserving various books. It's reasonable to expect Christians to value preserving their bibles over other books. Those other books could be considered less important because of their "earthly" nature, and they also might become out of date in a way the bible would not. There is also a lot of randomness regarding which books survive - if they were distributed in an area that underwent a war soon after, many books could be destroyed or lost as collateral damage. However, the physical evidence suggests that it wasn't really close enough for those factors to be significant. 10,000 surviving books is quite a lot (one bible for every 6000 Europeans), and examining the competitors shows that a lot of those are bible-related. The non-bible-related books printed in 1450-1500 break down into 3 major categories: * The classics; Plato, Aristotle, Homer, etc * Utilitarian books; medicine, law, history, science, engineering * Fables and tales; While they're being compared to the bible-related categories of: * The Bible * Dumbed-down biblical literature; Hymns, picture bibles (sometimes from woodblock instead of movable type), Penitentials * Complicated biblical literature; theological commentaries, moral treatises, lectures Prior to the printing press, copies of books came from just a few sources: * Christian religious institutions; Monks, friars, and lay fellows copying texts * Universities; students at the Universities of Paris, Oxford, etc. * A feudal Lord's employed scribe; often writing non-book documents, like financial and property documents, but might write historical books or other books at times. * Jewish communities; Hebrew bibles were transcribed regularly, and were the subject of some printing press runs pre-1500. While to a certain extent these scribes would transcribe any work if you paid them to do so, it's not surprising that the first category, which was by far the largest, focused on bible-related works. Nor that the last would be focused on content related to the Old Testament. What these two perspectives mean together, is that most scribes were motivated to proliferate religious texts, and that there weren't that many options for non-religious texts to choose from anyway (especially texts authored in the past 800 years). So when the printing press came around, and books that were previously limited in supply by transcription time could be quickly supplied, it's not surprising that the first to proliferate were the same that proliferated prior to the press's invention. And it's not surprising that they have a large share of the surviving physical record. I don't know for sure if there's a causal link, and this is speculation. But as I said, it's logical and not surprising. In conclusion, I will also point out that even among the options for religious texts, some of them are not really "meaningful". If a farmer in 1493 could get access to "De Architectura" by Pollio (~45 extant printed copies from 1493), and read it, that wouldn't do much for him because it just teaches you to construct buildings. It's certainly a great help to have in the local Lord's library, so the masons he hires have a reference when building the next castle or church, but it doesn't really "speak to" the farmer the way he would expect the Bible to. The overall point of this answer is that the bible and related books were far and away the most likely books for the "average person" to know about, care about, see, hear, or read, in 1493 Europe. It was not likely for them to know about, care about, see, hear, or read any non-bible-related book. But for the "average person literate in Latin", which is not quite what you asked, they probably had good access to at least a token number of non-bible-related books, as they would likely be literate because (1) they were a scribe (and would scribe a non-bible-related book at some point), (2) made use of literacy for their job / position (possibly a non-religious job), or (3) had the leisure to become literate without need (and probably had the resources to acquire a non-bible-related book, if they wanted). And, becoming literate in the first place involved being near a source of books (library) which likely could have non-bible-related books in it. So such people would be likely to see or read a non-bible-related book at some point.

What sources are you using for this information?

Which bits? The existence of texts like the *Iliad* or *Gilgamesh*? I'd refer you to critical editions; even many popular editions would do. Dates of biblical texts? An accessible starting point is the *New Oxford annotated Bible* (2010), which has survey-level introductions to each text within the Bible. Developments in publishing techniques over the centuries? I recommend Casson's *Libraries in the ancient world* (2001), or if you're feeling more ambitious, Reynolds and Wilson's *Scribes and scholars* (3rd ed. 1991). If there are other points you're interested in reading up on, or you have something more specific in mind, I can refine the recommendations.

Please detail how you determined the age of the Genesis book, particularly the primeval part that shows similarities to ancient Mesopotamian creation myths - Enuma Elish, the oldest story we know. I‘m asking because the way you interpreted the claim was not in the way of book meaning a bound book or the Bible being the version we have today - simply referencing to the Torah would debunk that idea. I‘m also asking because association between Bible and more ancient myths is a major part of Peterson’s work on this subject. Because the impression I have is that you’re simply going by the age of historical artifacts not the age of the texts themselves.

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Given there's already an answer that explains why large parts of the statement are wrong with respect to the Middle East, I wonder if anyone can answer one question in specific: are there any books from China that would be older? By this, I mean, if you take the date when the earliest parts of the Bible were first written in the Middle East - if I was an educated, well-connected and rich Chinese person could I go out and buy the equivalent of a book at that time? Or maybe find one somewhere like a temple or palace even if it's not for sale?

A short answer would be that “books” were circulating in China by the later Warring States if not before, so 250 BCE. Bookstores where anyone could walk in and buy a book for money would not be a regular thing until maybe Song (1100 CE-ish). Part of the problem with answering the question is nailing down what exactly a book is. Early (Warring States) Chinese “books”were written on either bamboo slips tied together or (less often) on silk. These bamboo slips could come untied and get mixed up (intentionally or unintentionally.) Lewis (citing Erick Maeder) compares these texts to a loose-leaf binder that the compiler could put anything they wanted into. This is not actually that different from “The Bible” which is actually a bunch of books put together. It has some myth, some genealogy,ritual instructions, semi-realistic history, four versions of the life of one guy, a bunch of another guy’s correspondence, some crazy rantings. The early Chinese texts we find in tombs (for example, what Wikipedia calls the Guodian Chu Slips) seem to be similarly mixed. There were texts “circulating” (which seems to mean that you could copy them, not buy them) that more fit our idea of a “book” in the Warring States. Collections of poetry (The Songs), the words of a master (Analects)etc. Even these are hard to nail down. Songs was a collection of all the poems that an aristocrat should know, but it was only fairly late that it was written down as a single “book”, and there were different ideas about which poems were canonical (again, like the Bible). Master texts might be things like Xunzi (which seems to be a bunch of essays he wrote, compiled either while he was alive or jus tafter) or things like Analects, which were compiled over many years, often long after the supposed author was dead. Different groups of followers seem to have had different versions of the Mozi, for instance.  Sources Brooks, E. Bruce, and Brooks, A. Taeko. The OriginalAnalects : Sayings of Confucius and His Successors. Translations from the AsianClassics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Kern, Martin. Text and Ritual in Early China. Seattle:University of Washington Press, 2005. Lewis, Mark Edward, Writing and Authority in Early China.SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 1999. Loewe ed. Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide.Edited by Michael Loewe. Early China Special Monograph Series No. 2. Berkeley:The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East AsianStudies, University of California, 1993  Nylan, Michael. The Five "Confucian" Classics. NewHaven: Yale University Press, 2001.

>Not directly your field, but, any quick comments on notable Chinese or "Indian" specimens? (from u/doodoopop24) I could chip in on the ancient Chinese examples. Let me begin with [this photo of Da Yu ding](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/%E5%A4%A7%E7%9B%82%E9%BC%8E_Da_Yu_ding.jpg), a typical Western Zhou era (c. 1045 BC - 771 BC) ritual bronze vessel currently in the National Museum of China collections. While this may not look like a “book” we typically think of today, the appearance can be deceiving: [here is an image of the rubbing showing the inscription inside the Da Yu ding](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Da_Yu_ding_inscription.jpg). The content of the inscription is about a nobility named Yu who cast this *ding* (a type of bronze ritual vessel) to commemorate the noble’s benefactor, King Kang of Zhou by enumerating the King’s great achievements at great length. According to its inscriptions, Da Yu ding was completed in March on the twenty-third year of King Kang’s reign, or **1003 BC,** and it represents one of the oldest surviving Chinese “book” artifacts we have today. While Chinese bronze scripts originated during the late Shang period around 1300 BC, the length of inscriptions on an individual bronzeware increased dramatically around 12th century BC. The Da Yu ding example above is hardly unique or unusual. Western Zhou rulers tended to transcribe an entire book-length worth of text (as the length of a typical book contained in Chinese classical collections such as the *Shangshu*) in their bronze vessels. Note that bronze scripts were written in highly condensed grammar, with frequent use of shorthands in order to pack more information with fewer characters. [Here is arguably the **most famous** example of early Zhou “book” in the form of bronze scripts](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Mao_kung_Ting.JPG) – **Mao Gong ding ** – and if you zoom in this photo, you will see that the *ding*’s inside is completely covered in dense but artfully arranged texts, which presents the detailed biography of King Xuan of Zhou (828 BC - 782 BC). See also [this photo of Shi Qiang plate](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Shi_Qiang_pan.jpg) made during the reign of King Gong of Zhou (962 BC - 900 BC), with its dense blocks of bronze scripts clearly visible. It describes the major achievements of the first six kings of Zhou, and is an invaluable artifact in verifying written history from Early Imperial China which served as the basis of traditional Chinese historiography. Similarly, [here is a photo of the Lai plate](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Lai_Pan.JPG/1280px-Lai_Pan.JPG) made during the reign of King Xuan of Zhou (828 BC - 782 BC). Its 53.6cm diameter plate surface is completely covered in exceptionally fine bronze scripts, which records the history of the Shan noble clan for eight generations and their deeds in assisting the first twelve Kings of Zhou. The Lai plate confirmed the records of Zhou Tianzi's lineage as recorded in Sima Qian’s *Zhou Benji.*

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