Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, manuscripts in Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew, the illuminated Christian Gospels, the Talmud, the Koran—with these forms and collections of writing came the expectation that a person would read them out loud and would, in a manner of speaking, conjure their reality.
In his book A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel points out that Aramaic and Hebrew, the “primordial” languages of the Bible, draw no distinction between reading and speaking. The same word stands for both. Buddhism and Hinduism also give an exalted place to the spoken word.
The opening words of The Odyssey—“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story”—make this clear: The storyteller is acknowledging at the start that the tale he tells is not his own, and that he hopes for divine assistance in telling it well.
I think it is pretty interesting that people engaged with reading this way. The author of this article notes that it becomes a living story. This also had the benefit of reaching persons that could not read. I wonder if the content was remembered more vividly through both seeing and hearing the words.
Is this surprising to anyone. Reading/writing being a common skill in the populace is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Sure but this isn’t just about reading and writing as skills. So you don’t find it different that everyone used to read out loud to themselves as a common practice and now everyone reads silently? Would it not be strange if everyone read books out loud to themselves on a bus or in their home?
they were reading out loud to other people who could not read most of the time. At that point it would just be habit because its so unoften one would read alone.
I suppose that makes sense, especially if texts were rare