One may tend to assume universal literacy, even in the western world is a fairly recent phenomenon.
I’ve always understood that private institutions such as the church educated a select few people, primarily from the ranks of the elite to further the church agenda by securing future priests and raising revenue up until the 20th century.
But how did common people like tentmakers,carpenters and fishermen and/or their children get educated to read and write lengthy letters and gospel stories in the first century C.E?
Did everyone have access to education in the Roman Empire or was that a particularly Judean society mandate?
I’m not sure what access the common citizen (or slave) had throughout the Roman empire. There are enough written works and texts on monuments to suggest that literacy was not actualy rare, but I do not know how prevalent it was.
In Judea (and among the Diaspora), however, literacy was actually quite high. Even before the destruction of the temple in 70 (actually, something over 150 years earlier), the Pharisaic movement had begun to emphasize participation in the synagogue–with a strong mandate to have all men participate, requiring that they be able to read from the scrolls. To this end, they established schools throughout all the Jewish communities and actually created laws that mandated time for children (or boys, at least) to be excused from labor for the purpose of studying Hebrew. They were quite successful and they established a high rate of (male) literacy in Judaea, Alexandria, Babylonia, and other locations.