Codex

If you were to make a replica of Nag Hammadi codex today (and many bookmakers, both amateurs and professionals, have done so), you might make a few changes. It is easier to obtain cardboard and paper than it is to find papyrus, and you would be forgiven for buy8ing premade leather in preference to raising, slaughtering, and skinning a goat. With your raw materials assembled, you fold your sheaf or paper in half and cut the leather to match; you trim the closed pager to a flat edge; you pierce the lot with an awl; and you string it all together with leather thongs. The material may have changed, but the basic design will be a faithful echo of the original. Yet if you then compare it to this book -- or, better, one of those hand-me-down leather-covered, gold-lettered tomes that gather due on the bookshelves the world over -- it will quickly become apparent that we no longer simply make books; now we bind them. ~ Page 283