If one were really on the rabbinical track, then yeah. One has to be able to read the scriptures, and even today one goes to Hebrew school.

Guess I have to ask you : "Have you not read"? the parts in the Bible where Jesus asks : "Have you not read"..... etc, where Jesus is quoting scripture and correcting the Pharisees or whomever.... Jesus wouldn't ask that type of question without actually knowing how to read. If he was illiterate, but just knew a lot he would have been asking: "Don't you know, what I've heard?" Either way it's a moot point. It doesn't matter. The Savior is the Savior. But Jesus scholars have mentioned that he would have Learned: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Samarian, languages of the time.

From his background, you would not expect him to be literate. The story of the woman taken in adultery was added after the fact to show he could read and write.-- he wrote in the dust there. But its a forged addition to the story.

Cosidering the context of "have you not read" his audience was expected to have read it, not necessarily jesus to have read it.

Further the authenticity of christs dialogue is highly disputable anyway.

taught by rabbis, so I would assume he could read.

Jesus read the scriptures in the synagogue before declaring that what he had read was fulfilled in him.

kentish Wrote:
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> Jesus read the scriptures in the synagogue before
> declaring that what he had read was fulfilled in
> him.


According to whom? Recorded when, where?

An eyewitness account?

Could he not have just given a memorized recitation?

That section in Luke is interesting.

In a close reading, it doesn't say Jesus could read.

He stood up to read-to get the attention and the scroll. He locates a position in the Torah scroll, but it does not say he read it from the scroll. Luke himself quotes the Torah at this point, not indicating that Jesus read it.

In many ways, this is a performance of power, not a depiction of literacy. You might conclude that he would have had to read to find the location, but it is equally arguable that it is a miracle to the people that an illiterate could find the point in the scroll.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_ancient_Israel_and_Judah

One needs to only see the amount of ancient grafitti written throughout the ancient Graeco-roman world to know that reading and writing were not uncommon. And the Jews put even a higher value on literacy than the Romans as their religion was based on scripture while the Graeco-roman's religion was not. That's why we know so little about the Elysian mysteries. It was an oral tradition and open to the illiterate.

MarkJ Wrote:
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> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_
> in_ancient_Israel_and_Judah
>
> One needs to only see the amount of ancient
> grafitti written throughout the ancient
> Graeco-roman world to know that reading and
> writing were not uncommon. And the Jews put even
> a higher value on literacy than the Romans as
> their religion was based on scripture while the
> Graeco-roman's religion was not. That's why we
> know so little about the Elysian mysteries. It
> was an oral tradition and open to the illiterate.

That link gives a literacy rate of only 3%. So, not very high.

Much of the writing on tombs, jars, and such was considered magical protection at the time. These are spells.

Still, 3% is a very relative number. Few women would have been taught to read or write, so that is 50% of the population removed from the total, which doubles the count to 6% of the men. If the majority of the schools and teachers were in the larger towns and cities, where perhaps only 20% of the population lived, that would push the total of literate males in urban areas to 30% or more. Compared to the time of Charlemagne, when even the Emperor himself could not write and could barely read, this was a huge part of the population.

The gospels were written down within about one hundred years of the life of Jesus, which is another indication that there was a large, literate population. The letters of Paul to a number of congregations is another indicator of the widespread literacy.

Much Roman graffitti is satiric, sexual, or political in nature. The library in Alexandria was enormous and served thousands of people. The classical world was a literate place.

And again, your link disproves your claim.

From that wikipedia link:

"In ancient Israel women did know how to read and write (despite popular belief to the contrary), and did participate in commerce independently, although not when married. This required them to be knowledgeable in all the laws of Nezikin not normally taught to girls."

Yes, literacy was important to that culture in that region. We have surprising records. But the class those records pertained to was a small minority.

Jesus was not of that class at any point in his life.

Ehrman gives examples of scribes whose sole scribal ability was their signature. They were essentially notaries only.

It's similarly likely that none of the 12 were literate either. Paul was.

Women could read and write, but scribes could not? If there was a large number of literate women, there would be even more literate men. If you are going to argue that few people were literate, the number of literate women would be an invisible fraction of the literate population.

The estimate for literacy in the Roman Empire ranges from 5% to 30%. The role that written scripture played for the Hebrews argues that literacy was probably at the high end.

Jesus grew up near and probably worked in Sepphoris, a center of culture and learning. There would have been more than ample opportunity to have gotten an education there. I don't recall any mention that Jesus was poor or lower class. The complaint was that he hung out with lower class people, which would have not made sense had he himself been from that class.

Jesus grew up in literate society, was a middle-class artisan, and lived near a culture center. I think he was probably literate.

I'm saying you can't discard 50% of the populace because it suits your argument.

Scribe was often a familial or political appointment with a good income, not necessarily a position of merit.

"Few women would have been taught.." I did not exclude all women.

Are you arguing that large numbers of women would have been taught? If so, that argues for a larger literate base. You can't have it both ways.

When a text says that 3% of the population was literate, one needs to know who those 3% were. Probably not women, and probably not children, and probably not people in rural areas. Once those segments of the population are excluded, the literacy rate for urban, adult males is going to be much higher, as indeed it was throughout most of the eastern Roman world.

"Even if we assume that in cities (as happens all over the world in urban areas in comparison to rural areas), such as Tiberias, for example, the literacy rate was double and even triple in comparison with the towns, still the figures of literacy are around 2-15%. With the assumption that the rural population was around 70% (with 0% literacy), 20% of urban population (with 1-5% literacy), and 10% of highly urban population (with 2-15% literacy), the total population literacy is still very low. Thus, it is no exaggeration to say that the total literacy rate in the Land of Israel at that time (of Jews only, of course), was probably less than 3%."

A 2-15% literacy rate among the general population in the larger cities, which if confined to adults, most of them male, would nearly double the literacy rate for the select segment. Perhaps as many as one man out of three could read and write.

Such a clever comment! You must be an intellectual.

You have a closed mind. You can't allow others to have an opinion or belief that differs from yours.

You feel compelled to insult others with a different belief systems because you feel threatened? Superior? Can't you just live and let live?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2013 03:22PM by presbyterian.

That was not an insult. He/she was stating the fact that it's a waste of time speculating whether imaginary characters can read.

Proof: He reads the names on gifts and socks and gets everything right.

(Ignoring the "there was no Jesus" skeptics...)

He wrote something in the sand that caused folks to give up on the idea of stoning the adultress.

Sure, He's God and all that...but writing that well would be REALLY tough to do if you don't read :)

theGleep Wrote:
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> (Ignoring the "there was no Jesus" skeptics...)
>
> He wrote something in the sand that caused folks
> to give up on the idea of stoning the adultress.
>
> Sure, He's God and all that...but writing that
> well would be REALLY tough to do if you don't read
> :)
Precisely the power of that image.

Except it's a later addition to the book of John centuries after the fact.

... Santa CAN read -- fer sure, fer sure !!!

It's possible that Jesus could read, but not write. In his day, reading and writing were considered entirely separate skills. The possibility that he could not write, or had minimal writing skills, could explain why the New Testament contains books ABOUT Jesus but no books BY Jesus.

It's possible but given his background it's not too likely, atleast not in the sense we read today. And "reading" in ancient times often meant participating when someone else who could read would read out loud to everyone else. Remember, written documents were expensive to produce and copy and there were complaints that even many scribes were pretty much illiterate and just copied letter after letter without really having a clue what they meant.

It's really the printing press that has made mass literacy possible. To learn to read you first must have something to read, not some scrolls locked up in a synagoge only occasionally to be at your disposal for very brief moments of time.

Actually books were not that expensive in the Roman Empire due to slave labor. There were warehouses full of slaves copying books and they didn't get paid.That doesn't mean everyone had books or that literacy rates were high. However, a lot of guess work is involved in determining literacy rates in ancient times.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2013 05:07PM by bona dea.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri were excavated from what was the town dump of the third largest city in Egypt. The variety of written material is staggering. And this was just the stuff that tossed out. Tons of written material - marriage contracts, divorce contracts, tax declarations, census registers, hate mail, dinner invitations, letters-home-to-Mom. You name it, they have it on papyrus. A very literate world.

Not ONE written text involved the story of a guy who: 1. Walked on water, 2. Turned h2O into a complex polycarbonate alcoholic beverage, 3. Uttered words and zombies were razed, 4. Cast imaginary spirits into swine, 5. Spoke a word and cured a virus-based disease like leprosy, 6. Died by crucifixion, and rises from death after three days post-mortem, 7. Postulated that an after-life of fire and brimstone existed for heretics, 8. Did NOT articulate micro-biological diseases, 8. Refused to predict a Jewish holocost, world wars, Christian morons in the USA, the USA itself, Chinese culture, deductive logic, science, washing hands was beneficial, bleach, beer, evolution, gravity, physics, dynamism, objectivism, Mormonism, remote evoked garage door openers, the 1929 crash, the 2007 collapse, etc... Etc... Etc...

That literate and well-read population of myth-believing folk? Nah... I am skeptical.

HH =)

Archaeologists have excavated many theological texts from Oxyrhynchus.

When he was 12, his family inadvertently left him behind in Jerusalem on their way back to Nazreth. When they noticed he was not among various groups in the entourage, they hurried back to Jerusalem, and found in in the Temple, talking with the scribes and elders. Luke writes (2.46,47): "They found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers." So he was precocious, to say the least.

After the Resurrection, he accompanied two disciples on the road to Emaus. "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." (Luke 24.27).

I realize that quite a few people here consider the Bible to be completely unreliable. But Christ did not lead armies, build cities, or run empires. He taught and healed, and what we have of Him are these four Gospels. So if one is to make sense of Him, one has to work with what has been used for 2,000 years, and eschew fanciful sources such as the "Gospel of Thomas," the "Gospel of Judas," the Watchtower, "Science and Health" (Christian Science) and -- ESPECIALLY!--the Book of Mormon, D&C, and all that.

Right. Because that definitely happened.

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> After the Resurrection, he accompanied two
> disciples on the road to Emaus. "And beginning
> with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to
> them in all the Scriptures the things concerning
> himself." (Luke 24.27).

He wouldn't have had a scroll with him at that point, in all likelihood. So it would have been a discussion from memory.

Paul's writings, the earliest of them all, do not portray a Jesus who was ever physically extant, but mystical, like other deities of the time.

There's good evidence that the Gospels, written after Paul started his letters, were apologetic works to patch Christianity onto the root of Judaism. It's not a very good fit really.