"The Israelites at this time were, and for a long time to come would be, what Walter Ong called a “hearing-dominant” culture. Think of the rabbis in the synagogues that would develop in the aftermath of the overthrow of both kingdoms, reading the text aloud and then commenting on it. And of course to this day Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worship all feature the oral reading or recitation of sacred texts to an audience — even if members of those audiences, instead of actually listening to the reading, are following their own copy of the text with their eyes."
Alan Jacobs reads a passage from 2 Kings where Josiah finds the Torah and comments on the importance of speaking the word.
1 comments:
Oral tradition is of great interest to me. In corporate worship I have a personal preference not to follow along with the reading as it's being spoken. Part of this reason has always been an internal sense of continuity with the oral tradition. In large part this has also been because my work involves reading (a great deal) I have a tendency to race ahead of the speaker, read in and around the context of the passage, and read it in the (much internalized) habits of a doctoral student - instead of the habits of a worshiper. Waiting patiently for another to speak the words helps me dwell on them - and excise, for a moment, hard fought habits of a too busy mind.
This is also one of the elements I appreciate most about attending Mass in the mornings - the tradition of Scripture spoken aloud, heard, commanded and ingested - corporately.
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