Language

Diverted from rereading The Anubis Gates, we are concurrently reading two recently acquired volumes, one about interpretations of the Bible, the other describing a divergent timeline in which paper and printing with punctuation, upper- and lower-case letters and spaces between words are introduced in the Roman Empire in 167 CE. This convergence of texts focuses our attention on communication and we will now post about that subject, referring of course to our favourite authors, including Poul Anderson, but placing them in a wider context. 

That cooperative manipulation of the environment which generated speech differentiated homo sapiens from all other animal species. Consider the following progression:

spoken language

written language

literature

scriptures

We have evolved a long way from non-, then pre-, linguistic organisms and indeed before them from inanimate matter. The latter is not just inert and dead. Its capacity to change (energy) overcomes its resistance to change (inertia). Without these two contradictory forces, no events would occur and no objects or organisms would remain in existence from one moment to the next. There is spiral development to more dynamic levels of energy-inertia interaction, from inanimate matter through unconscious organisms and animal consciousness to ascending levels of human (and other?) intelligence and self-consciousness. At this stage, we can imagine more highly developed consciousnesses helping and guiding less developed consciousnesses as in the Cosmenosist philosophy in Anderson's The Day Of Their Return. However, this is unnecessary. Ascent to more dynamic and creative levels of consciousness continues - at present - even if only in a single species. At the same time, social inertia pulls us back towards self-destruction. Interaction continues but with unpredictable outcomes: continued ascent or abrupt descent?

Spoken Language

Until they spoke, our ancestors were at most pre- or proto-human. They developed oral traditions which - those that survived - have long since been written down. We read Homeric epics and Buddhist scriptures in Penguin paperbacks.

Written Language

The earliest written language was still largely oral, i.e., with no spaces between written words, people read aloud to make sense of the text and also for the benefit of those who were still illiterate. It was a big discovery that it was possible to read without being heard! Scriptures are still ritually read aloud in places of worship.

Literature

Written language could be just signs, hand-written notes or instructions, shopping lists, private correspondence etc. However, literature, writing handed down the generations, transmits knowledge and culture, improving on the work of the earlier oral traditions. All our friends are here, including Poul Anderson following:

the Bible

the Verse and Prose Eddas

the Sagas

Shakespeare

Mary Shelley

HG Wells

L. Sprague de Camp

Robert Heinlein

etc

Scripture

We have already mentioned Buddhist scriptures, the Bible and the Book of Thoth.

Scripture is literature regarded as authoritative and foundational. Every religious tradition has scriptures. Also, I regard certain texts as proto-canonical, i.e.:

the Greek "Homer and the poets" formally parallel the Hebrew "Moses and the prophets" and were also regarded as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality;

the Eddas are not called "scriptures" only because that was not done in pagan traditions but they are our sources for Norse myths, knowledge of the gods.

When a text is canonized, it is universally known that it is officially regarded as authoritative even by those who can neither read nor understand it and it becomes effectively a blank screen onto which later generations project whatever they want. Christian Nazis: Jesus was Aryan, not Jewish. An extreme example but nevertheless an example. He is also a shaman, a yogi, a Bodhisattva, an astronaut and everything else imaginable.

SM Stirling's American time travellers arrive after the closure of the Christian and Jewish canons but nevertheless they radically change history and also introduce printing very early. How will that affect later uses of the Bible in public worship, private reading, social ideology etc?

One of Poul Anderson's time travellers must avoid changing the content of the Germanic literature that he studies.

In one of Anderson's divergent timeline, a medieval theocracy survives into the twentieth century. Clergy rule in the name of the Bible but, obviously, most people will not need to read even a word of it. It will not even have been translated into the vernacular. The church controls printing.

Now I want to get back to some reading! (And a little eating and drinking. Satisfy the inner man.)