Was Jesus Literate?

Episode Outline:
0:00 Could Jesus and his followers actually read and write?
1:04 Bart and Megan on election-day nerves and hoping for less “interesting” times
3:22 Why mass literacy is a modern phenomenon, not an ancient one
5:08 How many people in the Roman Empire could read and write?
7:08 Was literacy any higher in ancient Jewish society?
8:59 What exposure ordinary ancient Jews had to writing in daily life
11:31 Why Judaism was unusually a “religion of a book”
14:04 Is there evidence that Jesus himself could read?
17:25 Could Jesus teach without being literate?
18:32 Is there any evidence that Jesus could write?
22:15 Were the disciples likely to have been illiterate too?
25:02 Who is the first clearly literate Christian we know?
26:11 When and how Christianity became increasingly book-based
28:29 Were there early Christian groups not reliant on texts?
30:05 How literacy helped Christianity spread as a unified movement
31:47 Were the Gospels missionary literature or written mainly for insiders?
33:36 Bart’s course promo: The Scribal Corruption of Scripture
36:53 Weekly Update: why textual criticism has mattered to Bart since age 18
39:22 Outsmart Bart: Numenius, the Gospel of Truth, and the Ascension of Isaiah
43:01 Final summary: Jesus, literacy, and why books mattered so much in Christian development

Episode Description
Nearly everyone today assumes that Jesus could read and write. But is that historically plausible? There is only one story in the New Testament where Jesus is shown to be able to read (Luke 4) and he is never said to be able to write (except in the story of the Woman Caught in Adultery that was added by scribes only later John 7-8). In this episode we consider the literacy rates of antiquity (very low!), and discuss who could learn to read and then write, how they were educated, and whether it is likely that an impoverished dayworker from a poor family in a remote backwater of the empire was one of them.

Also watch these episodes:
New Testament Scholarship for Non-Scholars
New Testament Scholarship for Non-Scholars

Christianity One Year After Jesus
Christianity One Year After Jesus

The Omnipresent Fear of Death
The Omnipresent Fear of Death

Megan asks:

-It’s a pretty fair assumption that in the modern world, in many cultures, basically all children go to school at least to learn to read and write. Was that common in the ancient world?

-Do we have estimates for the percentage of people who were literate in the Roman empire?

-Was this different in ancient Jewish societies?

-In practical terms, what exposure would Jewish people have had to writing in both their religious and secular lives?

-How about the pagan cults? Were written texts an important part of non-Jewish religious practice?

-What evidence do we have for Jesus being able to read?

-How about writing, is it likely that Jesus could write?

-Would it have been unusual in Jesus’ time for a religious leader to be illiterate?

-What about the disciples, do we have evidence for their literacy?

-Who is the first literate Christian that we know of?

-While literacy may not have played a key role during Jesus’ lifetime, modern Christianity is defined by the Bible - a collection of written documentation. Can we say when Christianity became a book-based religion?

-Do we know of any early Christian groups that were not somehow reliant on the written word?

-Paul’s letters are some of the foundational documents of the New Testament, and obviously required literacy for both their creation and dissemination. Would you say this reliance on literacy is characteristic of the spread of Christianity, or is this an e-ception that happens to have been preserved?

-Were the Gospels meant as missionary literature to teach about the significance of Jesus?