Just askin' qweschinz, here. I mean - seriously: Herculaneum didn't do codices, but (papyrus) scrolls only, upon abandonment. When people passed correspondence around this was also scroll-by-scroll. The Jews and Samaritans famously retained a scroll culture. The first Christians more-famously weren't far distinguished from Jews; scroll-culture remains assumed in John's Apocalypse.
Herculaneum's abandonment like Pompeii's was incomplete when the volcano exploded which was year 79 in our calendar, in which calendar Paul was active in, what, the 40s and 50s. Paul should have been using (short) scrolls. Same with his copyists.
We have an argument from Luke Stevens on "The Two-Volume Archetype of the Pauline Corpus". Volumes, here, being scrolls, on account a single codex can easily hold the whole set of Pauline writings, but maybe not - if papyrus - a single scroll. Parchment is a thing for the Old Testament but not (yet) the New. Going by Stevens' abstract which is all I got: Codex Vaticanus aka "B" or "03", although of course a codex itself, bears witness to this division of scrolls.
Here in B the Epistles weren't supplied with headings(!). If they were, they'd go: Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians... then it gets weird. It's Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, Hebrews up to 9:13. The rest is missing - in the codex. (The codex was apparently broken at the end and resupplied - mediaevally - with the rest of Hebrews then the Revelation.) But in that surviving ancient codex is an enumeration which seems to skip between Galatians and Ephesians; with the enumeration running from Hebrews(!!).
Stevens believes that the classic Romans-Corinthians-Galatians formed the first scroll, with Hebrews introduced to the top of the second scroll containing the rest. I am unaware even in "liberal" Pauline scholarship of challenges against Philippians, Philemon, or 1 Thessalonians. Interesting that Ephesians is here already (although not as "to Ephesians" yet). How about Titus? 2 Timothy? 1 Timothy, I dunno, may or may not be in the base scroll although I'm sure it made the codex on account 2 Peter is in there. Was 2 Thessalonians in the base scroll? ...The Letter Of Tears . . .?
Stevens thinks Saint Luke himself assembled the two scrolls. Did this first scroll continue to the long (canon) ending of Romans; or did it truncate this, as Marcion found it? I doubt Luke's party included the full text of Romans. Mark might. Anyway truncation is easiest concluding a document, which in this scroll Romans does not conclude.
I am open to Lukan compilation of the second scroll however, especially if it did start at Hebrews. Reading Hebrews as Pauline would shift focus away from the Kingdom toward the Priesthood - toward the virgin Mary. Stevens instead muses whether 2 Peter formed the appendix to the second scroll.
I was going to leave Stevens alone - I've bothered him enough this morning - except that the Koreans think he's onto something.
I'll lay this down: the second scroll will be difficult to locate, if it existed. The first scroll on the other hand looks like the essential "Book Of Paul" (before Luke!). 1 Clement knew Galatians / Corinthians / Romans in whatever order; I think that so did 2 Clement, and everyone agrees upon Ignatius and Polycarp.
If we find this first scroll in Herculaneum - well, we can hope. I much doubt that 2 Peter existed in AD 79 however; any more than 1 ClementBarnabas or the rest. CARRIER 12/10/23: Okay, I've been convinced of 1 Clement...
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