I am again very grateful to have been included in a wonderful event. This time to David Lincicum and Jeremiah Coogan: The Material Gospel. A small group of people with different points of view, but at the same time with a clear intellectual coherence to discuss a wide variety of issues. The program included three sessions with two papers each. I include the program below. The topics discussed went from the practical use of books and techniques and strategies to use them for consultation, the evidence in a treatise by Galen on book production, destruction and disposal of Biblical codices, including reuse as palimpsests, rolls in Late antiquity and the biography of a codex as a way of understanding codex circulation and use.
The “material turn” is producing lately many interesting new approaches to many historical questions. As a papyrologist, I enjoy greatly this opportunity to claim the importance of the papyri in the reconstruction of a human practice as important as reading and writing.
Session I
David Lincicum (Notre Dame): Welcome
Clare Rothschild (Lewis University): “Galen’s De indolentia and the Early Christian Codex”
Jeremiah Coogan (Notre Dame): “Navigating the Gospel: Nonlinear Access and Practical Use”
Nathan Eubank (Notre Dame): Respondent
Session II
Chris Keith (St Mary’s University Twickenham): “The Gospel Read, Sliced, and Burned: The Material Gospel and the Construction of Christian Identity”
Angela Zautcke (Notre Dame): “Erasing the Gospels: Insights from the Sinai Syriac Gospel Palimpsest”
Paul Wheatley (Notre Dame): Respondent
Session III
Sofía Torallas Tovar (University of Chicago): “Resisting the Codex: Christian Rolls in Late Antiquity”
Matthew Larsen (Princeton): “Codex Bobiensis: A Real-and-Imagined Biography of One Gospel Manuscript”
Robin Jensen (Notre Dame): Respondent
