The Vanishing Word is organized into five chronological layers, each representing a major epoch in the evolution of biblical texts. From the original tongues of ancient Israel to the digital age, these layers trace how meaning was preserved, transformed, and sometimes lost.
Before writing was utterance, chant, and early Semitic speech including photo-Hebrew/mythic pre-linguistic "Edenic" speech, Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek (Septuagint).ogether, these languages reflect shifting political forces, cultural exchanges, and the theological evolution of ancient Israel. Their interaction defines the earliest strata of the Bible and reveals how the "Word" transitioned from sound to script.
Layer II explores the period from roughly 300 BCE to 500 CE, when the biblical text underwent its most dramatic and lasting changes. These centuries witnessed the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek (the Septuagint), the emergence of Christianity’s Greek New Testament, the establishment of the Latin Vulgate, and the formalization of the Christian canon through councils and doctrinal debate. This era marks the beginning of translation as power—a process in which linguistic decisions shaped theology, ecclesiastical authority, and the meaning of the “Word” itself. As the biblical languages shifted from Hebrew to Greek and then to Latin, so too did the interpretive frameworks through which communities understood God, creation, and revelation.
Layer III explores the period from roughly 500 CE to 1500 CE, when the Bible’s languages entered an era of loss, suppression, recovery, and transformation. During this millennium, Aramaic, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Ge’ez communities fought to preserve their ancient scripts while Latin Christianity consolidated authority in the West. Manuscripts were hidden, burned, translated, or abandoned as political and religious power shifted. With the invention of the printing press, scripture fractured into multiple versions, opening the door to widespread vernacular translation. This layer reveals how the Bible survived not as one language but as many—some fading into silence, others emerging anew through cultural upheaval, monastic devotion, and global expansion.