The technique of writing not only generates the law, but also makes possible the invisible, monotheistic form of divinity, the one God who speaks through “holy writing” (undoubtedly alphabetical) and has since been shared by the three great “religions of the book” (Judaism, Christianity, Islam).
The first and second commandments of the law prohibit images and verbal naming; they are not so much religious norms as media norms; they concern the body and the form of human expression:
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the condition of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any image of that which is up there in heaven, nor of that which is down here on earth, nor of that which is in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down before them or serve them” (Exodus 20:7).
The first commandment outlaws idolatry, that is, the use of images in the worship and representation of the deity, a prescription still valid for Jews and Muslims.
And here is the second commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold innocent those who take his name in vain.”
The ban on naming God’s name in worship affects ritual and oral tradition, what for the Greeks was called myth.
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