Power of the Spoken Word

Abstract

According to Walter Ong, in the overwhelming number of spoken languages in the world, possibly tens of thousands, only around 106 have ever been committed to writing to a degree suffi cient to have produced literature, and most have never been written at all.1 Of the some three thousand languages spoken that exist today in the world, as few as seventyeight have a literature. Th ere is yet no way to calculate how many languages have disappeared before writing occurred among those speakers. Th ere are hundreds of languages spoken today that have no writing. Languages are essentially oral in nature worldwide and may perhaps remain that way always. Many language scholars believe the Greek alphabet was invented after the Phoenician alphabetic system around the eighth century bce.2 Before it was written, the Bible was itself an oral recitation.3 William Schniedewind, the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at ucla, explores when and why the ancient Israelite accounts— once conveyed only orally— came to be written down and attain the status of scripture. Th ere was a cultural shift that occurred in ancient Palestine that democratized the written word and allowed it to gain religious authority in the book we now call “the Bible.” Th e textualization of ancient Israelite society marked one of the great turning points in human history, namely, the movement from an oral culture toward a written culture.4 Even today, facets of the oral nature of the Bible, or Torah, occur in the sacred readings in religious services. Th is is in keeping with the reading being vocalized from the reading podium, or bima, to the congregation, who respond at appropriate times. Th e haft arah (prophetic writings) is read aloud by both bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah