Was Jesus literate? As the Son of God He could do anything but for those who do not believe such claims did Joseph and Mary or someone else teach Him how to read and write?
I would suppose that he could read Hebrew, as this would have been an important part of a young Jewish boy’s education. Whether or not he could read, write, or speak Greek or Latin is a different matter, though if you accept that he was God himself it probably follows that he could do anything. According to Luke, Jesus stayed in Jerusalem at age 12 and amazed the scholars in the Temple. How could he have studied so much Jewish law without being able to read?
From the KJV:
Unknown.
He may even be a fictional character.
Actually, I’m given to believe that Jesus even as the Son of God was not all-knowing in the sense that God is. If he knew everything, he couldn’t be 100% human. So I don’t think QSH’s question has theological problems.
Since our only historical record of Jesus is the Bible, that’s the only place we can look. We know that Jewish culture would require him to be able to read and write Hebrew. But we can guess on the Greek: Did any of his Scriptural quotes sound like they came from the Septuagint, rather than directly from the Hebrew Bible?
I know it happens a lot with his disciples. A lot of the Scriptural quotes in the New Testament come from the Greek translation of the Scripture.
Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character too, but if anyone asked, “Could Holmes read,” you’d be foolish to say, “Unknown.” You’d look to the stories to see what Arthur Conan Doyle said, and if there was a passage in which Holmes was shown reading the Sunday Times, you’d say, “Yes, he could read.”
The Gospels indicate that Jesus read the Scriptures publicly. Hence, the answer is “Yes, he could read.”
Never mind. Astorian beat me to it.
Since Holmes was a fictional character, anything he could do, has to be only consistent with the fictional story his author wrote about him.
Since Jesus is supposed to be a real person, the possibility of him being fictional supersedes any of his expected capabilities.
How about this: Jesus, as described in the Bible, was literate.
OK… taken into consideration.
Given that the Bible is hearsay, dozens of years after Jesus was supposed to be alive, any of its claims are highly suspect.
According to scholarly estimates, 95%-98% of the Palestinian state was illiterate at the time of Jesus. He also belonged to a peasant class (actually a sub-peasant class as a tekton, which was basically a subsistence level, day labor class) who would not have had any opportunity for or exposure to education growing up. Peasant kids did not go to school, they went to work (the later Jewish emphasis on education and literacy was a post diaspora development, when study became the focus of religious life after the dstruction of the Temple). There is very little chance he was literate.
Perhaps he was dyslexic, and all this time he was just very fond of his dog.
Diogenes seems to have forgotten that the Bible describes Jesus as having lived most of the first decade or more of his life in Egypt, doesn’t say where but the largest Jewish population in Egypt at the time was the well-established colony in Alexandria which had been given equal rights with Greeks by Alexander and later Ptolemy on the city’s foundation.
He is described as having conversations with a Roman centurion and Pontius Pilate. While the former may have understood Hebrew or Aramaic, having helped the locals build a temple. Pilate is unlikely to have. Of course there could have been a translator. But knowing Latin or Greek in an area where they had a prsence for years wouldn’t have been unusual.
Not only could he read, but He could speak in red lettering.
Seems to me that there are two questions here:
Was Jesus, as described in the Bible (and perhaps other sources) literate?
and
How likely is it that the average wandering prophet in first century bible lands would be literate?
The first question is easy, because regardless of its veracity, the Bible describes Jesus as reading and writing.
I think we have to limit ourselves to what is described in the Bible, which is our only real source of information about him. And yes, in the Gospels he reads from the scriptures and writes on the ground. So at the very least he could read and write in Hebrew.
His discussions with Pilate could have involved an interpreter, so there’s no requirement that he speaks Greek or Latin; and even if he did even less reason for him to be able to read or write in it.
Anything else based on his class (for example) is pure speculation. The Bible describes him as a rabbi and having been educated in the scriptures. We know next to nothing about his childhood or education.
Given the widespread use of Greek throughout the eastern Roman Empire, including Egypt, it is extremely likely that everyone spoke at least a little Greek. Note that the Gospels and Acts were written originally in Greek – partly because Luke was Greek, and partly to reach a wide audience. So it is practically certain that a Jewish prophet, as described in the New Testament, was fluent in Greek.
He was a carpenter before his ministry. Carpenters us basic geometry, trig etc. all the time. You need math to set the stakes & layout strings for a square foundation before building. You have to level the ground. All using string, water levels, transits etc. Very basic tools.
An example. 3-4-5 rule is used to check for a square corner. It’s based on the Pythagorean Theorem. The units don’t matter, inches, cubits, cm, whatever. The ratio works.
If we are thinking of the same passage then, no.
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The passage itself apocryphal, being added several centuries after Jesus’ death. It appears in no modern Bible.
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He was making marks on the ground, not writing.