Memory, oral transmission, writing, and displacement

Meaning

Memory and writing are complementary but unequal means of preserving secret knowledge. The benefit of writing becomes necessary when human memory and stable oral transmission are threatened.

II.4.35 gives banishment, killing, flight and captivity as disruptions that can scatter teachers and destroy continuity. The Esdras narrative then explains a recovery committed to books, some public and others reserved. This does not simply repeal the author's defence of secrecy: recording knowledge and disclosing it indiscriminately are different acts. The account is his explanation of transmission and loss, not independently verified history of every ancient text he invokes. It also gives a reason for the present work's combination of exposition and deliberate reserve.

The English retains the concrete series of displacements rather than compressing it into a vague “historical change.” “Without the benefit of writing” describes the earlier mode, not a claim that no ancient people had written records.