Power of the Spoken Word

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 sufficient 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 seventy-eight have a literature. There is yet no way to calculate how many languages have disappeared before writing occurred among those speakers. There 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. There 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.” The 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. This is in keeping with the reading being vocalized from the reading podium, or bima, to the congregation, who respond at appropriate times. The haftarah (prophetic writings) is read aloud by both bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah young men and women as a public demonstration of having reached adulthood and joining the adult Jewish community. The vocalized renderings allow the congregation to hear the prophetic reading aloud. It is an engagement of vocalized scriptural readings and an important benchmark in the life of observant Jewish young men and women that is celebrated at two strategic levels: the sacred reading of the selected text aloud and the responsive nature of the congregation. The scriptural reading aloud is a mutual meeting between the reader and his or her listeners. It is a combination of orality and literacy in a dynamic and meaningful way based on historical practice to modern times.

Another religious observance in which Jews invoke meaning is the retelling of the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt during Passover, when observant Jews reconnect themselves to their humanity, to God, and to the world at large. This occurs during the Passover seder meal when reading the story of the Exodus from the haggadah. The haggadah, meaning “order,” is the text participants at the seder employ to recount the events of the Exodus. The haggadah includes the Exodus story itself, ritual prayers, songs, and the blessings that accompany consumption of the leavened bread, or matzah. The story of the Exodus, in order to manifest itself securely in the minds of Jews, brings together the telling of the events surrounding Jewish history leading up to and after the Exodus. The ancient story attempts to transcend time and distance. The participatory nature within the seder and ritual readings assures the continuation of the people for all time. That is the main theme of the Passover observance. There are many similar religious observances by people the world over. The Passover seder is just one example of how the merging of the spoken word and texts brings about an interplay of the two in a meaningful way.

There has always been a combination of speech and written texts not only in religious observances and rituals but also in other communicative situations and settings. It is, however, possible that when writing is applied to otherwise unwritten narratives, something is more or less lost of the original text.⁵ One obvious aspect is the absence of the participatory nature between speakers and the audience. Since oral production requires listeners, this naturally facilitates the active engagement between two important entities without which no communication...