Using a quote like this:
Never memorize what you can look up in books.
–attributed to Albert Einstein
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Plato would be appalled.
I’m not familiar enough with Plato to understand that.
Jeff
Plato believed that oral tradition was far more important than written texts. Having to write a text down or rely on a written text meant the person didn’t know the composition well enough.
Oh, cool. Thanks for the explanation.
Jeff
What if you don’t have to book with you but you have to relate it to others?
A good point TC. And I’m SO bad at paraphrasing I have to memorize Scripture.
Jeff
I understand the sentiment of that quote to an extent. In math and science there is too much to remember. My brain gets full of new stuff and the stuff I use but not on a regular basis gets pushed to the back. We are a information rich society and there isn’t the time to memorize what isn’t daily important – especially when it can be retrieved again and again.
However, I think that we take for granted that we will have the written word forever. Heaven help us if something cataclysmic were to happen and the information we thought would always accessible is denied us.
This is especially true of God’s Word. How humbling to think that the shelves of Bibles we have may well be turned into a few pages at any given time or that instead of discussing the current arguments about translations, we are trying to help each other reconstruct the NT from memory.
Nice comment Bitsy.
Heaven help us if something cataclysmic were to happen and the information we thought would always accessible is denied us.
I admit that one of the secondary reasons I memorize Scripture is a paranoid one. If I should become blind, I will still have all the Scripture I have memorized with me, accessible easily at any time. And who knows what will happen when I get older, if I reach that time.
“arguments about translations” kind of reminds me of 2 Timothy 2:23 if they’re not constructive comparisons.
Jeff