Sotah 023

2:
The word Amen denotes assent. Etymologically it comes from the same root as does the Hebrew word for 'truth'. The respondent is identifying himself with what someone else has said. It is sometimes useful to see what has been said about a term when it appears in a different context. When we studied Tractate Berakhot I wrote:

I believe you may be in error in noting, parenthetically, that it was not until the high middle ages that someone first had the idea of piling the leaves of writing one on top of the other and binding them together instead of sewing them in a long line: the first 'book' as we understand the term today.

My understanding is that bound manuscript volumes, or codices, date back to an unknown point in Roman antiquity, although they didn't really catch on as the standard form for published books until the second or third century. Books of the Christian Bible took the form especially early. They seem scarcely ever to have existed in scroll form, which may suggest yet another of the many ways in which the early Church sought to differentiate itself from its crosstown rival. Perhaps they frowned on hagbaha…

I respond:

I am sure that Josh is correct in what he writes. My own comment was from memory, and his message has prompted me to check up on my own source, which reads: