Biblical text - printed and digital,
Every text we know is understood in light of many texts that the reader has already encountered.
The text is something the readers create but it is something that also creates readers. The challenge here is the reader's interaction with the computer that is different than it is with a printed book.
On a computer the Bible becomes fluid. The digital Bible appears in multiple text files which can be easily added to, deleted, inserted or modified to suit the reader's preference.
The technology of the written text demands skills of reading and writing, In the modern world we take these skills for granted but actually reading and writing are neither natural or normal. No matter how transparent or effortless the skills seem there is nothing automatic about learning them. Ask someone who cannot read or write.
And for some of us that is where we are - learning the demands of the skills for digital technology.
Now writing is a technology that has its greatest value in the absence of the writer. And yes, once the text leaves the writer's hand the author no longer has control over it or any effect on how the reader will understand the text's meaning.
This is I'm thinking same for digital writing/reading.
Consider development from written (manuscripts), to digital or electronic and what the development means to future biblical scholarship.
The handwritten manuscripts were frequently altered by the scribes who copied them and the
The text is something the readers create but it is something that also creates readers. The challenge here is the reader's interaction with the computer that is different than it is with a printed book.
On a computer the Bible becomes fluid. The digital Bible appears in multiple text files which can be easily added to, deleted, inserted or modified to suit the reader's preference.
The technology of the written text demands skills of reading and writing, In the modern world we take these skills for granted but actually reading and writing are neither natural or normal. No matter how transparent or effortless the skills seem there is nothing automatic about learning them. Ask someone who cannot read or write.
And for some of us that is where we are - learning the demands of the skills for digital technology.
Now writing is a technology that has its greatest value in the absence of the writer. And yes, once the text leaves the writer's hand the author no longer has control over it or any effect on how the reader will understand the text's meaning.
This is I'm thinking same for digital writing/reading.
Consider development from written (manuscripts), to digital or electronic and what the development means to future biblical scholarship.
The handwritten manuscripts were frequently altered by the scribes who copied them and the
Canon was an attempt to guard against such alterations. Once a book was canonized it was recognized as authority and deliberate modifications were not permitted. The development of legal and ethical structures regarding copyright and plagiarism provided further secular security for the printed texts.
Now in the "electronic culture" the digitizing of text makes it possible for nearly anyone to prepare, copy, or modify texts, skills that were formerly the property of few. Anyone with a computer can physically rewrite the digital text in any way. Take a passage from the digital bible -cut and paste into word and bingo! You can alter the text.
So the stability of the texts is threatened by deleting, pasting, inserting and inserting. As the World Wide Web increasingly replaces traditional hard copy sources for texts such as the Bible the original text begins to lose all value.
Perhaps the text will be transformed once again into something nonalphabetic, whether sounds or graphic icons,
2 Comments:
In a piece with lots of food for thought the sentence: "Now writing is a technology that has its greatest value in the absence of the writer." is well worth thinking about!
I am not (yet) convinced that digitising a text diminishes it's authority. The ability to alter a digital copy is only a faster version of the way a manuscript could be altered in copying...
A "canonical" digital text may still be canonical - see for example the lively discussion on Better Bibles Blog.
I believe that Biblical text printed or digital still is canonical ... we tend to cut and paste the text but we cannot remove it from the canon ...
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