Our lives are filled with words. From road signs to billboards to social media feeds, words are everywhere. Though we may not think of the act of reading or buying a book as an adventurous activity today, since their initial invention, books have had the potential to be both highly valued and highly controversial.
Irene Vallejo is a philologist, historian, novelist, and regular columnist for the Spanish periodicals El País and Heraldo de Aragón. Her book Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World takes readers on a historical odyssey exploring how books shape human culture. Amid discussions about book banning, this is a timely and intriguing volume.
Though the subtitle might make the book appear to be a dry academic history, Vallejo’s presentation of history as a story and her vivid prose (brilliantly translated by Charlotte Whittle) create an engaging narrative. Through a series of vibrant anecdotes, Vallejo seeks to recapture the perilous history of the book in order to awaken a new passion for preserving literature.
Literary History as a Mosaic
Vallejo begins by describing the assembling of the world’s books for the Library of Alexandria. It was a center for research and a repository for ancient wisdom, but it was destroyed due to persistent unrest in the city.
Each historical anecdote she narrates in the first half of the book functions as a tile in a mosaic. Together they create a picture of the formation, significance, and tragic destruction of Alexandria’s famous library.
Book foragers traveled the world in search of rare manuscripts and scholars worked in the Museum of Alexandria, reaping the harvest sown by the scribes who invented the first alphabets. Vallejo’s focus is on history, but she frequently draws parallels to the modern world to show how our contemporary experiences of literature relate to these ancient scenes.
In the second half of the book, Vallejo shifts her focus from Greece to Rome, depicting how the Romans borrowed, used, and adapted Greek literature. She traces the change in book format and material from the scroll to the codex (our conventional book form) and from papyrus to parchment to paper, which for the first time allowed the Gospels to be bound together as a single volume. Each of these tiles helps shape a larger story.
The main purpose of the book comes into focus toward the end as Vallejo reflects on the concept of canon, both as it relates to Christian Scripture and to the concept of a “classic.” Ultimately, she exhorts readers to remember, value, and preserve books in general. Much like the anecdotes of literary history that make up the book, each ancient text is a precious tile in the mosaic of human history.
God’s Gift of Writing
Papyrus invites us to appreciate the remarkable nature of books and writing. Christians can go further in connecting these developments with the activity of God in using historical events to preserve the Scriptures.
Each ancient text is a precious tile in the mosaic of human history.
The stories Vallejo recounts can encourage Christian reader to have gratitude for God’s preservation of the Bible and the many texts by faithful authors through church history. Though the Library of Alexandria was destroyed, its legacy lives on through the translations and scholarly achievements it encouraged. Without the efforts of thousands of individuals throughout human history to create alphabets, translate texts, and collect manuscripts, much of the scholarship that serves the church today wouldn’t be possible.
Since God reveals himself in history, the writings of people in the past have a deep significance for Christians. Ancient texts often reveal common themes through countless lives of individuals made in God’s image. History is worth preserving, especially through ancient texts, as a testament to the gracious, sovereign work of our God in and through the lives of ordinary men and women.
Discretion Not Destruction
Another major theme of the book is the danger of censoring literature, both in ancient and modern contexts. Vallejo speaks ardently against any limitations on reading imposed by anyone from Plato to Christian monks to the Nazis. She paints rejected writers in the ancient world as tragic heroes and connects recommendations against free access to any books with the book burning practiced by the Nazis and the “firefighters” of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
For Vallejo, it seems, there’s no reason to prevent anyone from writing or reading anything. She’s upset by people removing words or canceling authors that don’t fit with modern sensibilities. She’s equally critical of those who seek to censor progressive volumes in schools and public libraries. Vallejo bolsters her criticisms with historical anecdotes.
Though Christians may disagree with Vallejo’s celebration of the sexually explicit content of Sappho’s poetry, still we can mourn the failure to preserve more of the works by ancient female authors. Preserving ancient writings in their authentic forms is a way of honoring every author’s distinctive value to God, whether male or female.
History is worth preserving, especially through ancient texts, as a testament to the gracious, sovereign work of our God in and through the lives of ordinary men and women.
The most heart-rending of these stories relate to the burning of the library of the Serapeum in 391 and the brutal murder of the pagan philosopher-virgin Hypatia in early fifth-century Alexandria. Mobs of Christians were responsible for both destructive acts, and the church father Cyril of Alexandria was implicated in Hypatia’s death.
These stories, as Vallejo clearly intends, are disquieting. They point to the sinful excesses present even within the church. And yet they don’t provide convincing proof of Vallejo’s underlying assertion that all literature is of equal value.
Faithful Christians must continually differentiate between truth and error. We must use discretion rather than destruction. We have to be discerning about what is Scripture and what isn’t. We must recognize the tendency to sin in secular authors and in the heroes of our own history. At the same time, we must respond to error with grace and truth, recognizing every author is an image-bearer whom we’re called to love.
Catalyst for Dialogue
Vallejo’s book is engaging, thought-provoking, and somewhat unsettling. It forced me to think deeply about books, history, and my interactions with others. Some of the violent and explicit content requires reader discretion, especially for teens. However, Papyrus is a brilliantly written entry point for conversations about the value of books in this world.
With debate raging about book banning and censorship, this volume offers an excellent way for Christians to engage in meaningful conversation with our unbelieving neighbors as informed, historically sensitive interlocutors.
The Gospel Coalition