Silent reading

It is often said that silent reading was virtually unknown in antiquity. Not quite true argued Bernard Knox. According to another scholar’s summary of his argument: “Knox adduced two examples from fifth-century Attic drama in which silent reading actually takes place on stage before the audience. In Euripides’ Hippolytus , Theseus notices the letter which is tied to the hand of his now dead wife. He opens it, the chorus proceeds to sing several lines, and then Theseus bursts out in a cry of grief and anger (lines 856-74). As Knox says, ‘Clearly he has read the letter and read it silently—the audience watched him do so.’”

Further: “The other passage comes from the prologue of Aristophanes’ Knights . There, a Demosthenes opens a writing-tablet containing an oracle and while looking at it he continuously expresses his amazement at its contents, asks for more drink but does not tell what he is reading. His partner presses him with demands for information, which Demosthenes finally gives (lines 116-27). Both passages make sense only if we infer that both Theseus and Demosthenes are reading silently.” Knox himself concluded that “for fifth and fourth century Athens . . . silent reading of letters and oracles (and consequently of any short document) was taken completely for granted.”

Frank Galliard, reviewing the evidence in a 1993 JBL article, concludes:

“There is abundant evidence that ‘we have in the culture of late Western antiquity a culture of high residual orality which nevertheless communicated significantly by means of literary creations’ [quoting Achtemeier]. There is no question that the predominance of orality in the ancient world has ‘potentially wide-ranging effects’ on NT studies. It still seems self-evident, from what we know about how ancient books were written and read, that we would get a more authentic experience of the text of the NT, and gain valuable insights, if we regularly did read it aloud, preferably from an uncial edition, with no punctuation or paragraphing, and in scriptio continua . But we should be mindful that the predominance of orality does not mean exclusivity, either in writing or in reading.”