Stephen H. Webb on the Primacy of the Word Made Auditory
Voices, by which I mean their audible texture, pressured waves moistened by mouths and propelled by the diaphragm through the air, are as easily lost in time as they are in space. There is no medium through which we can hear the distant past, so we are stuck with the written word to try to figure out what stirred our ancestors' ears. As a result, the soundscapes of the past are silent places. The Gospels say more about what Jesus sounded like than what he looked like—he spoke as one with authority and his voice raised the dead—yet churches have paintings and sculptures of hi . . .