Truly, language and religion,
especially language after the experience of writing, developed
practically in tandem. The transition from ritual to myth to
incipient religion is simultaneously a transition from primitive
expression, still tightly connected to body movement, image, and
sound, to a more self- organized system of expression becoming
communication. During the process, presented here in compressed
form, writing appears as a result of interactions between the
experiences of language and religion.
That writing is a premise for pragmatic requirements that will
eventually lead to literacy has already been generously
explained. It has also been pointed out that with writing
emerges the perspective of literacy into whose reality many more
practical experiences will eventually crystallize. Literacy and
religion are intertwined in ways different from those
characteristic of other human practical experiences. In the
historic overview to be provided, these peculiarities will be
pointed out. Expression, as a practical experience of human
self-constitution, interrupts the slow cycle of genetic
replication, and inaugurates the much shorter cycles of memetic
transmission-along the horizontal axis of those living together,
and along the vertical axis in the quickly succeeding sequence
of generations. The role of scale of human experience, the
relation between religious, ethical, aesthetic, political, and
other aspects, the relation between individual and community,
and between right and wrong will also be addressed in their
context.
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