"Historians have noted that the shift from oral to written scripture often results in strident, misplaced certainty. Reading gives people the impression that they have an immediate grasp of their scripture; they are not compelled by a teacher to appreciate its complexity. Without the aesthetic and ethical disciplines of ritual, they can approach a text in a purely cerebral fashion, missing the emotive and therapeutic aspects of its stories and instructions.”

-Karen Armstrong

“On the elite level, laymen became more erudite than churchmen; grammar and philology challenged the reign of theology; Greek and Hebrew studies forced their way into the schools. On the popular level, ordinary men and women began to know their scripture as well as most parish priests; markets for vernacular catechisms and prayer books expanded; church Latin no longer served as a sacred language which unified all of Western Christendom...The two-pronged attack was mounted from one and the same location— that is, from the newly established printer’s workshop.”

-Elizabeth Eisenstein

Sources: https://old.reddit.com/r/DilettanteryPodcast/comments/neeh52/117_elizabeth_eisenstein_part_3_christianity_the/?

1.17 Elizabeth Eisenstein Part 3: Christianity, the Reformation, and the Bible