The Written Word
For most of our human history, storytelling was oral. Myths were spoken or sung by diverse storytellers who could select and modulate their narrative to best suit a given audience, emphasizing some aspects and ignoring others.
Sally Mallam • The Oral Tale
Scribal 500BC to 1550:
Literacy – even when only for social elites – transformed the oral paradigm. Plato's Socrates stood at the transition between the Oral and Scribal paradigms. In the Phaedrus dialogue, Socrates recounts how the Pharaoh explained to Thoth that this invention would destroy our “memory” – pointing towards the fundament
... See moreLanguage, written language especially, is a peculiar, powerful, dangerous, and ultimately mysterious human gift. Written words cause ripples in the fabric of reality. The words in the Bible alone may have caused more death, brutality, and oppression, and more love, charity, and redemption, than any other collection of writing in human history. What... See more