Scroll

The scroll (Hebrew megillah, Greek biblion) was the dominant book-form across the biblical world from at least the second millennium BC until the codex began to displace it in the second century AD. A scroll was a long horizontal strip — either Egyptian papyrus glued in sheets or carefully prepared sheepskin or calfskin parchment — wound around one wooden dowel (for shorter texts) or two (for longer works). Writing ran in narrow columns across the strip; the reader unrolled one column while rolling up the next. A full scroll of Isaiah, like the Great Isaiah Scroll found at Qumran, runs over seven metres long. Scrolls were stored on shelves in linen wrappers, or — for the Torah scrolls of a synagogue — in an ornate cabinet, the ark. In Luke 4:17 Jesus is handed the scroll of Isaiah in the Nazareth synagogue; he unrolls it to the place he wants, reads, and rolls it up before sitting down. Paul, near the end of his life, asks Timothy to bring 'the scrolls, especially the parchments' he left at Troas (2 Timothy 4:13).