ABSTRACT

In many of the major, literate traditions of history, the idea of the primordial word of power is linked to the power of scripture itself. Historically, one of the most significant sectors of Christian life in which the oral function of scriptural word has been predominant has been the monastic life. In oral or predominantly oral cultures, the transmission of sacred lore as well as the sustenance of ritual life are dependent upon the sacred spoken word. The centrality of the words of myth and ritual has been commonly and persuasively traced to the presence in such cultures of a sense of the spoken word as something alive with magical or transcendent power. If some of the traditional forms of religious piety concerning holy writ seem foreign to modern culture because of our matter-of-factness about the written or printed word, they are nevertheless much easier to grasp than are those forms of piety that center on the spoken word.