I love your insight on how written language reshaped the divine—shifting from rigid graven images to words that try to pin the concept down, but ultimately remain elusive and untamed. It’s interesting that the human psyche still resorts to picking one over the other: some thrive in needing the graven image and others flourish in the abstract. It seems to come down to what one’s understanding can ultimately handle. Religions that shame the human psyche for being what it is -maybe only succeed at creating mental prisons, whichever side you end up on.
Vowels, yes. A sign for sound. Recording speech without making an interpretative guess. Otherwise, it slips toward recording events or ideas—a bit less abstract, a bit more associative/analog.
I love your insight on how written language reshaped the divine—shifting from rigid graven images to words that try to pin the concept down, but ultimately remain elusive and untamed. It’s interesting that the human psyche still resorts to picking one over the other: some thrive in needing the graven image and others flourish in the abstract. It seems to come down to what one’s understanding can ultimately handle. Religions that shame the human psyche for being what it is -maybe only succeed at creating mental prisons, whichever side you end up on.
> The Greeks, who invented the first fully-fledged alphabet
In what way were the earlier alphabets (Proto-Sinaitic, Hebrew/Canaanite, Phoenician) not fully-fledged?
Are you suggesting a special significance regarding the consistent use of explicit vowels?
Vowels, yes. A sign for sound. Recording speech without making an interpretative guess. Otherwise, it slips toward recording events or ideas—a bit less abstract, a bit more associative/analog.