Books in Western Civilization were invention of the medieval period, out of necessity for Roman Catholic Christian scripture (Truitt). Prior to the widespread practice of Christianity, scrolls served the same function, allowing readers to start at the beginning, save their place mid-text, and read through to the end. For instance, in Judaism, practitioners read the religious text from beginning to end, and when they finished, they would start again. However, in Christianity, the services place the liturgy thematically rather than spatially, and it required a new method of storing that information so that priests could read scripture out of order. This new method, as previously stated, was the book.
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