Every author has a unique writing style. When asked to compare two different authors, one might find some similarities between the two. When asked to compare Brown and Hurtado, the first thing one might ask is what is their topic. The reading of Brown and Hurtado both relate to some form of Christian history.

Hurtado wrote that Christians have always preferred the codex over a scroll. He incorporated much evidence into the start of his work to give the reader some background. He gave quantitative evidence and even included pie charts showing his numbers. Hurtado also cited many sources in his work. Some of his pages were half foot notes! He wanted to give us as much information about the topic before he went into the discussion of the codices.

Brown wrote about Christianity throughout the ancient Greek and Roman world. Brown gave evidence throughout the reading, but he cited very few sources. With little to no cited sources, one assumes that the knowledge written in the excerpt was all based on Brown’s opinion. Brown included some images in his work as well. The images were mostly of ancient pieces of artwork that helped to show the time period Brown was trying to tell us about.

Brown’s style of writing seemed a bit more formal than Hurtado’s. Both authors were very informative and provided evidence to back up their claims, however, Brown used more complex sentences and a larger vocabulary than Hurtado did. Brown’s excerpt was also in chronological order. Hurtado was not exactly telling us a history, but more so telling us the reasons why Christians preferred the codex.

The audience that Brown was writing to would have to be educated people such as students and scholars. The reader was already need to have some type of understanding of the events that Brown talks about. While Hurtado’s reading seemed more simple, most people would be able to read it. It was long, but it easy to understand. Hurtado knew that not many people know about early Christian writings, so he decided to provide as much evidence as he could to give his audience some sort of background. Whereas Brown assumes his audience already knows about ancient Greek and Roman times, so he just starts with his context. However, both authors were successful in informing the reader about early Christian times.