William Johnson

Journal Article Journal of Biblical Literature · 2026 This close study of 40 extant fragments of papyrus bookrolls with Jewish and Christian content focuses on details like format and scribal habits that might suggest distinct scribal communities. The study isolates three groups. (1) Nine BCE-era Septuagint p ... Cite

Descriptive Catalogue of Papyrus Bookrolls with Jewish and Christian Content V1 Harvard Dataverse

Dataset · November 3, 2025 Supplementary dataset to the article, "Papyrus Bookrolls with Jewish and Christian Content," Journal of Biblical Studies (forthcoming, 2026). ... Full text Link to item Cite

From Bookroll to Codex

Chapter · 2025 Featured Publication The first part of this overview of ancient books in the Graeco-Roman world focuses on the details of scribal production for papyrus rolls containing ancient literary texts (‘bookrolls’), so as to give a clear view of the regularities of format and conventi ... Cite

Punctuation, Iota Adscript, and Nu-movable in Ancient Literary Bookrolls

Book · 2025 Featured Publication A close study of scribal features for 400 ancient Greek literary papyri in bookroll format. ... Link to item Cite

Ancient Books Website

Internet Publication · 2025 Featured Publication The Ancient Books Website (ABW) joins a long tradition of open- access tools for papyrological research. The website provides data complementary to those in tools like the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB), now part of Trismegistos (TM), and the Digi ... Link to item Cite

Typological Catalogue of the ancient Roman Scribal Tool Known as a Bone Rule

Journal Article Journal of Open Archaeology Data · January 1, 2023 The dataset contains a typological catalogue of archaeological small finds of an ancient device known as a “bone rule” or “bone ruler” or “bone spatula,” together with scaled drawing and full metadata for each item in the catalogue. The ancient device has ... Full text Cite

The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Classicist's View

Chapter · January 1, 2023 Full text Cite

Reading for Efficiency in Ancient Rome: THE CASE OF PLINY THE ELDER

Journal Article Reception Texts Readers Audiences History · January 1, 2023 Readers in ancient Rome did not have efficiency of reading as a goal. The much-cited exception that proves the rule is a letter of the Younger Pliny (Letter 3.5, early 2nd c. CE) that describes the extraordinary reading habits of his uncle the Elder Pliny, ... Full text Cite

Scribal Tools of the Trade: Bone Rules, Dividers, and Lamps as Writing Aids

Journal Article segno e testo · 2023 Cite

Bone Rules Catalogue, v. 7, Harvard Dataverse

Dataset · 2023 A catalogue with all known details for a small finds item associated with writing aids, and known as a "bone rule" or "spatulate bone rule." v. 1 (2022), v.7 (2023) ... Full text Link to item Cite

A TRIFLE, REPRISED: BRITISH LIBRARY SCHOOL TABLET ADD MS 34186(1)(2)

Journal Article BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PAPYROLOGISTS · 2022 Full text Cite

Duke Provenance Project.

Internet Publication · 2022 A relational database that captures all known information on provenance, including correspondence, purchase details, etc., for the 1400 Duke papyri. Access by registration. Available to researchers by request, due to document privacy restrictions. ... Link to item Cite

Ptolemaic Mummy Stuffings, 3: The Documentary Texts (Beinecke P.CtYBR inv. 5058, 5059, 5060, 5061, 5062, 5063)

Journal Article Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik · 2018 Featured Publication Cite

Isidora to Apollonia: a Private Letter in the Beinecke Collection (P.CtYBR inv. 5044)

Journal Article Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik · 2018 Featured Publication Cite

Oxford Handbook to the Second Sophistic

Book · 2017 Featured Publication Cite

Imperial Pantomime and Satoshi Miyagi’s Medea

Journal Article Didaskalia · 2017 Featured Publication Open Access Link to item Cite

The Second Sophistic: Periodicity and Scope

Chapter · 2017 Cite

The Essential Herodotus

Book · 2016 Featured Publication Cite

Ptolemaic Mummy Stuffings: An Intriguing Scholar’s Text in the Yale Collection (P.CtYBR 5018)

Journal Article Archiv für Papyrusforschung · 2016 Featured Publication Open Access Cite

Ptolemaic Mummy Stuffings, 2: A Comic Fragment and Grammatical Text in the Yale Collection (P.CtYBR inv. 5019, 5043)

Journal Article Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik · 2016 Featured Publication This is the second installment of a three-part project to publish a group of ten Ptolemaic papyri purchased by Yale’s Beinecke Library in 1998 (acquisition “1998b”), which came to the Beinecke as three hard wads that were apparently the stuffing from the s ... Open Access Cite

Learning to Read and Write

Chapter · 2015 Featured Publication Cite

Libraries and Reading Culture in the High Empire

Chapter · 2013 Featured Publication Cite

Bookrolls as media

Chapter · January 1, 2013 Featured Publication Cite

Pliny Epistle. 9.36 and Demosthenes' Cave

Journal Article Classical World · 2013 Featured Publication Cite

Review of Roger Bagnall, Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East

Journal Article BASP · 2012 Cite

The Oxyrhynchus Distributions in America: Papyri and Ethics

Journal Article BASP · 2012 Featured Publication Cite

Cicero and Tyrannio: Mens addita videtur meis aedibus (ad Atticum iv.8.2)

Journal Article Classical World · 2012 Featured Publication Cite

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities

Book · May 1, 2010 Featured Publication Readers and Reading Culture in the High Empire examines the system and culture of reading among the elite in second-century Rome. The focus is on deep sociocultural contextualization for reading events within specific communities, and thus the investigatio ... Full text Cite

Teaching the Children How to Read: The Syllabary

Journal Article Classical Journal · 2010 Featured Publication Cite

Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome

Book · 2009 Featured Publication Cite

The Ancient Book

Chapter · 2009 Featured Publication Cite

"Books," "Literacy," "Readers and Reading"

Chapter · 2009 Cite

Constructing Elite Reading Communities in the High Empire

Chapter · 2009 © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. This chapter takes Aulus Gellius's work entitled Attic Nights as an illustrative example to present a methodology for exposing the sociology of certain types of reading events and how a reading c ... Full text Cite

Hesiod's Theogony: Reading the Proem as a Priamel

Journal Article Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies · 2008 Featured Publication Cite

Review of Larry W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Eerdmans 2006)

Journal Article Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists · 2007 Cite

Review of Melissa M. Terras. Image to Interpretation. An Intelligent System to Aid Historians in Reading the Vindolanda Texts (Oxford 2006)

Journal Article Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists · 2007 Cite

The Story of the Papyri of the Villa dei Papiri

Journal Article Journal of Roman Archaeology · 2006 Cite

The Posidippus Papyrus: Bookroll and Reader

Chapter · 2005 Featured Publication Cite

Greek Electronic Resources and the Lexicographical Function

Chapter · 2004 Cite

Review of M.L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Egert Pöhlmann, M.L. West, Documents of Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001)

Journal Article Bryn Mawr Classical Review · April 2003 Cite

Bookrolls and scribes in oxyrhynchus

Book · January 1, 2003 Featured Publication Lying now under the sand 300 kilometres south of the coastal metropolis of Alexandria, the town of Oxyrhynchus rose to prominence under Egypt’s Hellenistic and Roman rulers. The 1895 British-led excavation revealed little in the way of buildings and other ... Cite