Tue Oct 1 09:33:43 1996

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Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 09:30:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: "James R. Adair" 
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: Silent Reading
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On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Timothy John Finney wrote:

> On a different matter, can anyone give me an authoritative reference that 
> says when people first began to read silently? I heard or read somewhere 
> that some ancient was astounded to see someone (I think the someone might 
> have been Clement or Jerome) sitting in a room full of books but not 
> making any sound as he read. If early copyists always read aloud as they 
> copied, perhaps certain implications would follow for New Testament 
> textual research?

Augustine (Confessions 6.3) was amazed that Bishop Ambrose of Milan read 
silently, since silent reading was definitely not the norm.  For a 
thorough discussion of this phenomenon, see three articles/notes in JBL: 
Paul J. Achtemeier, "Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral 
Environment of Late Western Antiquity," JBL 109 (1990): 3-27; Michael 
Slusser, "Reading Silent in Antiquity," JBL 111 (1992): 499; Frank D. 
Gilliard, "More Silent Reading in Antiquity: Non omne verbum sonabat," 
JBL 112 (1993): 689-694.

Jimmy Adair
Manager of Information Technology Services, Scholars Press
    and
Managing Editor of TELA, the Scholars Press World Wide Web Site
---------------> http://scholar.cc.emory.edu <-----------------

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