Bible Reading in the Early Church

Many centuries have passed since the Gospel was first preached, and in times of oppression, persecution and spiritual darkness, when Bibles were scarce, some who could not read would listen carefully when the Scriptures were read and commit the precious words to memory. Learning by heart played a great part in the ancient world -- a fact which has to be remembered when we consider the educational work of the first Christian missionaries. Ordinary Christians carried a good deal in their minds...and there were some whose memories were prodigious. In the fourth century Eusebius met in Palestine a blind Egyptian, who had been exiled from his country, of whom he wrote, that "he possessed whole books of the Holy Scriptures, not on tables of stone, as the divine Apostle says, nor on skins of beasts or on papyrus, which moth and time can devour, but in his heart, so that, as from a rich literary treasure, he could, ever as he wished, repeat now passages from the Law and the Prophets, now from the historical books, now from the Gospels and the Apostolic Epistles."

--- Adolph Harnack

Bible Reading in the Early Church, 1912