ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how spoken and written words function in relation to holy power. It describes that Gregory's testimony indicates that it was not the practice itself of dealing with the written word, but the ideology in which this word was embedded, that determined the manner in which it was used. The chapter examines what Gregory tells us about the manner in which, for him and his contemporaries, the spoken and the written word functioned and interacted. In his rapid synopsis of biblical history, Gregory has the following to say about man's attempt to build a tower that would reach into heaven. Gregory's stories show too that truth was now primarily seen, and in a reality other than the everyday one, for instance in a dream.
