Writing: God's Invention

There are several occasions in the scriptures that refer to writing that was done by God.  The stone tablets which were given to Moses were “written with the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18, Deuteronomy 9:10).  When the woman taken in adultery was brought before the Savior, we read that “Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground” (John 8:6).  Amulek spoke of how there was “writing which was upon the wall of the temple, which was written by the finger of God” (Alma 10:2).  Enoch told his people, “For a book of remembrance we have written among us, according to the pattern given by the finger of God; and it is given in our own language” (Moses 6:46). 

One thing that I think we learn from these references is that writing is so important that even God takes the time to write.  Most of the “word of God” that we have comes to us through the writing of human prophets who record the inspiration of heaven, but apparently when He sees fit God Himself also writes.  This verse from Moses seems to teach us something about the origin of writing: it came directly from God.  Adam started writing because he had a “pattern given by the finger of God” that was then passed on through mortals.  Mortals didn’t invent writing; it came from God.  Galileo said that writing was “the seal of all the admirable inventions of man.”  Responding to this, Hugh Nibley said, “The sublimity of the thing brings its human invention into question—men never invented anything else like that before or since, and the idea that ‘primitive man’ insensibly floundered into it inch by inch over tens of thousands of stumbling years is simply hilarious” (Enoch the Prophet, pg. 127).  In other words, writing came from God Himself and was not a creation of man.  God has given us the ability and commandment to write: “For I command all men, both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them” (2 Nephi 29:11).  And ultimately the most important words to write are those that come from God.