The form of the manuscript book begins to shift from the scroll to the codex, though this transition may not be "complete" until around the fourth century. For first drafts, brief writings, and notes the Romans use various forms of bound parchment leaves. For diplomas and other brief documents they write on bronze, lead, and wood. For formal presentations they prefer the paprus scroll. The scroll remains the prefered form for literary works until the 4th century. The first recorded use of the codex for literary works is attributed to Martial who experiments with the format in the first century. "Some have said that Julius Caesar invented the first codex during the Gallic Wars. He would issue scrolls folded up accordion style and use the "pages" as reference points." Scribes prefer to write on the side of papyrus with the fibers running horizontally. When they write on the outside of the scroll the writing on outside is easily worn off.

The transition from the scroll to the codex is often credited to early Christians. Certainly they do not feel bound by tradition, for they do not continue to use the papyrus scroll like the classical Greeks and Romans, nor the parchment scroll like the Jews. To write the books of the Bible the Christians use the codex to a greater and greater extent, first on papyrus and then on parchment. Whether the Christians are responsible for the change from the scroll to the codex or merely adopt it, the fourth century will see both the triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire and a revolution in book production which makes it possible for the first time to make books big enough to hold the whole Bible in one volume and also to hold all of Virgil's poems in one volume. Christians prefer the codex format for the Scriptures used in liturgy since a codex is easier to handle than a scroll, and one can write on both sides of the leaves, allowing more information to be recorded in less space. This is a form of information storage preferable for people on the move. The codex also allows the development of bindings which may be protective as well as decorative. Bindings would have increased the longevity of codices versus scrolls, and over time this would have been recognized as a significant advantage.

"In 1994, the British Library Oriental and India Office Collections acquired a collection of twenty‐nine fragments of manuscripts written on birch bark scrolls in the Gāndhārī (a dialect of Prakrit) language and in the Kharoṣṭhī script. They were contained inside a clay pot, also bearing an inscription in the same language, in which they had been buried in antiquity. Preliminary analysis of these documents indicated that they dated from about the first century A.D.,which would make them the oldest surviving substantial collection of Buddhist manuscripts, as well as of any kind of Indian manuscripts.

"The exact findspot of these manuscripts is unfortunately unknown. But in the past several manuscripts of the same type have been reported to have been found in or around Haḍḍa near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, although none of these have ever been published and most of them apparently are now lost. It is therefore likely that the new manuscripts came from the same region. This area closely adjoins the region known in ancient times as Gandhāra, the homeland of the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script, which were current from about the third century B.C. to the fourth century A.D."

The scrolls in the British Library and others in the Senior Collection and the Schoyen collection have been called the "Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism."

"Estimates of the death toll range from 600,000 to 1,300,000 Jews: there was 'no room for crosses and no crosses for the bodies'. Over 100,000 died during the siege, and almost 100,000 were taken to Rome as slaves. Many fled to areas around the Mediterranean. The Romans hunted down and slaughtered entire clans, such as descendants of the House of David . On one occasion, Titus condemned 2,500 Jews to fight with wild beasts in the amphitheater of Caesarea in celebration of his brother Domitian's birthday."

Unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament is written in a relatively narrow span of time, probably over less than a century. The 27 books of the New Testament are written by various authors at various times and places, probably in Koine Greek, the vernacular dialect in first-century Roman provinces. "Koine Greek is not only important to the history of the Greeks for being their first common dialect . . ., but it's also important . . . for being the first 'international' form of speech, and eventually the chosen medium for the teaching and spreading of Christianity. Koine Greek was unofficially a first or second language in the Roman Empire."