Chapter 2: Writing And Power

Chapter two goes into detail about how writing has greatly impacted and influenced religion and power. What I learned from this section was that the development of writing withheld many advantages for a culture; we are talking about communication, religion, water regulations, agreements, and money. Religion, philosophy and literature go hand in hand in this chapter because with language you’re able to bind people together. Forms of writing are as old as humanity itself; even then cave paintings have been used to imply messages such as self-expression. What impressed me other than how many different languages that are around the world was they all contained a common theme and that was religion and how the earth was created or how we have a God or Gods. By studying written passages of creations from the bible, to rah, and rig veda, we are able to understand peoples cultures their values, morals, and their relationship to the world. Works of religion and the philosophy/ morals that come attached to it gives us a sense and the people who follow a sense of their past and missions to shape their collective thoughts. Writing offered cultures with that it possess certain advantages the ability to read and write elevated certain individuals, groups, and classes within cultures for example Greeks and the first New Testament author “Mark”, he wrote his gospel “around 70 C.E” in a common language and this creates complexity for religion as they were trying to convince the upper class they were expected to listen to these people and this changes history because it defies it. Language is so powerful because it creates these relationships and it pushes to traditions and rituals.  If we look more into the chapter and these sources of writings that given to us we can compare and contrast these similar themes of how the world was created with source 1: Excerpts from Atra-hasis, 2: excerpts from book 10 of the Rig Veda, and 3: Book of Genesis, this theme is a god that creates everything from nothing and we have a mother and a father which brings people all over the world together because we are all one brother and sister.