The Biblical Hebrew word qara/qera means both call and 
read.  "And God called (qara) the light Day..." (Gen. 1:5) 
 "'Whosoever shall read (qera) this writing, and shew me 
the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, 
and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the 
third ruler in the kingdom.'  Then came in all the king's 
wise men: but they could not read the writing, nor make 
known to the king the interpretation thereof."  (Dan. 
5:7-8.)  Daniel, like Joseph reading Pharaoh's dreams, can 
show Belshazar the interpretation thereof.  There are, of 
course, occasions when silent reading is assumed, as, from 
near enough the same period as Daniel, in Euripides' 
Hippolytus, where Theseus comes upon and reads the letter 
in the hand of the dead Phaedra silently, or at least as 
if unheard by company, even while it sounds or resounds in 
his own ears:

Theseus:
     O horror! woe on woe! and still they come, too deep 
for words, to heavy to bear. Ah me!
Chorus-leader:
     What is it? speak, if I may share in it.
Theseus
     This letter loudly tells a hideous tale! where can I 
escape my load of woe? For I am ruined and undone, so 
awful are the words I find here written clear as if she 
cried them to me; woe is me! (Trans. H.P. Coleridge)

Things read in secret are presumably typically also read 
silently (as they may also have been written) -- and would 
therefore have been read, perhaps, with extra effort, 
because of the suppression of the habitual vocalization? 
one wonders.  Augustine in the Confessions is surprised to 
come upon Ambrose reading silently (or, as we might also 
say, introvertedly), but elsewhere in the same text 
Augustine himself reads silently, at least momentarily, 
when he comes upon the famous passage -- upon his hearing 
a girl across the way singing "tolle, lege" -- about 
putting on Jesus Christ, or else he wouldn't have 
thereupon pointed it out in the text to his colleague 
Alpyius--though they'd been reading Paul together, and 
that presumably aloud, just before.  Old texts not only 
lacked spaces between words and visual differentia like 
upper-case/lower-case distinctions, and letters with 
varied heights (contra uncials), but also lacked 
punctuation & paragraphing.  It seems odd to us that words 
on a page would be heard rather than seen, perhaps even 
odder in the case of pictographs, hieroglyphics, 
cuneiform, ideograms, consonantal clusters without vowel 
points...  It also seems odd that anybody could read at 
all, and make ready sense of what they were reading, 
without the text being broken down into sentence units. 
  It must have taken at least two tries (one by each side 
of the bicameral brain?).  Compare Psalm 62:11, "God hath 
spoken once; twice have I heard this," or Job 33:14-16: 
"For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it 
not.  In a dream, in a vision of the night...Then he 
openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their 
instruction:...").  Breaking a Bible text into verses was 
something Jerome did, to help beginners make sense of it. 
 Of course we often write as if we were speaking--"Freud 
says," meaning "Freud wrote."  If the meaning of the sign 
in the library that says "Silence is Golden" dates from 
legislation for scriptoria in the ninth century, before 
that, then, it was a gabble, as might be reflected in 
stories like that of Pentecost and the translation of 
Scripture into the LXX.  But in the Houghton Library of my 
youth senior scholars in the reading room were allowed (by 
the rather formidable Mrs. Jakeman) to use typewriters to 
transcribe what they were reading.  The result was the 
gabble of the scriptorium, though maybe more like Morse 
code, phonically speaking.  Students rattling away at 
their laptops while the prof. speaks in small classrooms 
somehow remind me of the pre-golden scriptoria.  Of course 
I'm wondering if any of this sounds right (so to speak). 
 After all, we counsel students to read what they've 
written aloud to a roommate, before submitting it to their 
teacher, to find out if it really makes any sense.
  -- Jim N.

  On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:11:37 -0400
  Anne Prescott <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Then there's the story, all over Google, that a startled 
>Augustine  came
> upon Ambrose reading without moving his lips--one source 
>cited (I think
> maybe one also cited on this thread) claims that this is 
>our oldest record
> of silent reading. As a classicist might point out, all 
>the important stuff
> in the Middle Ages is really classical--I think 
>Augustine counts as very
> late classical, after all. How did early Carthusians 
>read? Silently, I
> assume. Indeed, couldn't some of the literate in even 
>ancient times have
> read silently when trying not to reveal, e.g., the 
>contents of a letter or
> just bother others? I find it hard to believe that 
>Ambrose was the first.
> Anne.
> 
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Katherine Eggert <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> Elspeth Jajdelska (*Silent Reading and the Birth of the 
>>Narrator*) has
>> recently argued that silent reading became widespread 
>>only in the 18thcentury, with increasing childhood 
>>literacy.
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> One reader of Sidney and Spenser, at least, was in the 
>>habit of thinking
>> that reading was a silent activity: Shakespeare’s 
>>readers are silent unless
>> they have to convey the information to the audience or 
>>another character.
>> Ophelia’s not mouthing words aloud when Hamlet comes 
>>upon her reading a
>> book, and Polonius has to ask Hamlet what he’s reading. 
>> “Look where sadly
>> the poor wretch comes reading,” says Gertrude of Hamlet. 
>> (Not “Hear where.
>> . . “ )  Achilles interrupts Ulysses’ silent reading in 
>>Troilus, 3.3.
>> Imogen reads silently a bit before going to sleep, 
>>unaware that Iachimo’s
>> hiding in her bedchamber.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Katherine****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Katherine Eggert****
>>
>> Associate Professor of English****
>>
>> University of Colorado at Boulder****
>>
>> 226 UCB****
>>
>> Boulder, CO 80309-0226****
>>
>> [log in to unmask]****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> *From:* Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [mailto:
>> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Martin 
>>Mueller
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 11, 2012 1:55 PM
>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>> *Subject:* Re: two questions****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Paul Saenger's book Space between Words makes the 
>>argument that silent
>> reading is due to two independent medieval inventions: 
>>the space between
>> words and lower case letters with their ascenders and 
>>descenders. Put these
>> two things together and a lot of words, especially 
>>common words, have
>> shapes that are processed as individual units and indeed 
>>call on different
>> processing units in the brain. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Being a proper medievalist, Saenger naturally claims 
>>that all the
>> important stuff happened long before the Renaissance. 
>>****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> MM****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> *From: *Hannibal Hamlin <[log in to unmask]>
>> *Reply-To: *Sidney-Spenser Discussion List 
>><[log in to unmask]>
>> *Date: *Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:48:59 -0400
>> *To: *<[log in to unmask]>
>> *Subject: *two questions****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Dear Si-Sp Colleagues,****
>>
>>  ****
>>
>> I have two questions of different sorts.****
>>
>>  ****
>>
>> First, for a graduate course I'm teaching on the 
>>Petrarchan tradition, I'm
>> curious what members feel are the best 
>>essays/chapters/excerptible pieces
>> on FQ 3.****
>>
>>  ****
>>
>> Second, does anyone know of hard evidence for the 
>>beginning of silent
>> reading (or conversely the continuance of reading 
>>aloud)? Last year, I
>> heard Gordon Campbell claim a very late date (17th c.?) 
>>for the beginning
>> of silent reading, and I've heard other claims made, but 
>>without
>> substantiation. Is there an authoritative study? 
>>Specifically, would
>> readers of Sidney and Spenser have read aloud, even 
>>privately?****
>>
>>  ****
>>
>> Many thanks,****
>>
>>  ****
>>
>> Hannibal****
>>
>>  ****
>>
>>
>>
>> -- ****
>>
>> Hannibal Hamlin
>> Associate Professor of English
>> Editor, *Reformation*
>> Co-curator, *Manifold Greatness: The Creation and 
>>Afterlife of the King
>> James Bible*****
>>
>> http://www.manifoldgreatness.org/****
>>
>> The Ohio State University
>> 164 West 17th Ave., 421 Denney Hall
>> Columbus, OH 43210-1340
>> [log in to unmask]
>> [log in to unmask]****
>>
>>
>>
>> ****
>>

[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121