Those rules which were not confirmed,
progressively lost authority, were "erased" from the people's
memory, and ceased to affect the rhythm of their lives. The
written word survived the oral, as well as the living who
uttered it or wrote it down. This word, abstracted from voice,
gesture, and movement, and abstracted from the individual, was
progressively assigned a more privileged place in the hierarchy.
The writings seemed to have a life of their own, independent of
the scribes, who were believed to be only copiers of everlasting
messages entrusted to them.
Written words express the longing for a unified framework of
existence, thought and action. Within such a framework,
observance of a limited number of rules and procedures could
guarantee a level of efficiency appropriate to the scale at which
human activity took place. This is a world of human practical
experiences transcending natural danger and fear. It is a
universe of existence in which a species is committed to its
further self-definition in defiance of nature while still
dependent upon it. Religion as a human experience appears in
this world as a powerful tool for the optimization of the effort
involved, because it effectively constitutes a synchronizing
mechanism. In the practical experience of religious writing and
the associated experience of reading or listening to a text, the
word becomes an instrument of abstraction.
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