Was Jesus Literate?

Great Debates
181

Why?

What are you talking about? I corrected myself when I said “quoted Talmud”. It’s possible that they formed ideas completely independent of each other, but not likely. I’m not even saying that Jesus was a follower of Hillel. I’m thinking about the religious strife in the first century. We were talking about literacy, but you keep derailing this thread. There is NO point in this. You use one theorist for a source. This theorist uses Gospels, non Canonical literature, various streams of Torah, Tenakh AND the Talmud in in his work. By your logic, his theories are now riddled with holes.

:rolleyes: I’ve heard that.

I did not say it was evidence of literacy. Ever. Please tell me where I say, “Jesus was literate” or “here is evidence he was literate”. I took the attributed sayings of Jesus and noted the political and religious context in which it was being said. I also theorized what the conditions would have been for him to have followers and be called ‘rabbi’ like the Bible claims. Tis all. You are asking me to prove something which cannot be proved while you make a claim that cannot be proved. I sought to prove nothing. I was trying to add to a discussion that you HIJACKED.

You don’t take *anything *in the Gospels to be true. (Clearly I take it with a grain of salt, you know, being Jewish and all.) We are not examining the accuracy of the Gospels. That’s another thread. I will not say the Gospels “are all fiction” as you claim, however.

:rolleyes: As another Doper pointed out, that is very easily done. But the OP didn’t ask that.

That is not even a word! What?

Textual criticism of the Talmud is welcomed. Most Jewish people I know that went to any kind of Talmudic class, be it in high school or as adults, address the issues of the Talmud, how it it came to be in its final form, and how Hillel (and later groups) influenced Jewish law and life.

Holy smokes, Batman, I never said the Talmud was an encyclopedia, but you’re silly to not use it as insight into Jewish history and theology.

I am done with you, Dio. Everyone is right. You like to run the Dio Show. You derail even your own arguments. Good day.

I hope the OP was entertained.

182

Because you’re comparing scientific data to religious fiction.

What does any of it have to do with whether Jesus was literate?

This is hilariously ironic. You’re the one who keeps flying off on tangents and non-sequiturs.

I didn’t present any of his theories. You don’t seem to understand the difference between citing a scholar’s facts, and citing his conclusons from the facts. Crossan’s information about literacy rates is not theoretical.

Then what are you arguing? What is your point?

And your beliefs about that are in error. You didn’t even get the title right. You thought they were depicted as calling him dayan. Calling somebody “rebh” did not indicate that that person had any kind of formal training or ordination, and did not mean the person was literate.

These accusations are unwarranted and childish. I’ve done nothing but try to stay on topic. You keep trying to change the subject, inventing things I didn’t say and then accusing me of hijacking? Get real.

I don’t take anything to be reliable. It may contain some historically authentic kernels, but we can’t really know what they are. The accuracy of the Gospels really has no relevance to the question at hand anyway.
We are not examining the accuracy of the Gospels.

This is another thread, but I don’t think you really know much about the scholarship in this ara.

What’s not a word? Which word?

Who said it isn’t? Why do you keep making up things that nobody said? What does Talmudic criticism have to do with the price of tea?

It can’t be relied upon as an accurate source of information for things that happened centuries before it was written.

This is a ludicrous smokescreen.

183

Actaully, we have given solid evidence and cites otherwise. The evidence is solid that a good % of the population had some literacy. You have no evidence to the contrary, other than a guesstimate by Crosston, a source whom you accept only when his statements are in line with your own beliefs.:dubious:

Crosston has no evidence at all for his guestimate. Of course, if we define “literacy” in modern terms, all but a tiny % of the population would today be considered "functionally illiterate. "

184

Odd, you accept Crosston only when you want to. :dubious:
Again, we have provided cites and sources that say the opposite.

No, you have not. You have made statements. Show me the links, the cites. And not just “Crosston”. You should be able to find a citable link. We have.

185

Where are his facts? Cite for me his FACTS. Don’t give me a book title. I want his facts about literacy rates in 1C Galilee.

Anyone who reads this thread would see otherwise, Dio. But whatever. It’s your show.

You’ve used the Gospels to make your “points”.

No, but we have used the Gospels - you, myself, AND Crossan. So if you want to give validity to or discredit a part, then you need to back it up with more than, “The Gospels are fiction!”

The sentence in itself is a grammatical error. I don’t know much about the scholarship of 1 C. Judaism? Scholarship of whom? Concerning what?

DIO SAYS:

In the first sentence, you used a word that doesn’t exist. In the second, you state that since the Talmud was complied after the Diaspora, we can’t examine it.

Talmudic criticism has nothing to do with the price of tea and everything to do with methodologies in examining religious text. While there was no written Talmud in 1 C, there are over 300 debates of Hillel and Shammai recorded later. Just because something was written post-event does not mean we cannot use it as insight into Jewish life.

Hence “critical”.

Pay no attention to the Dio behind the Curtain.

186

Hah @ letter writin’ fool.

But yes, writing and reading are two different kinds of things. One can be literate without writing. One can be bilingual without speaking.

187

His stated fact is that 95-98% of the Palestinian state was illiterate at the time of Jesus.

This is just a mishmash of more dishonest distortions, ad hominems and a demonstrated lack of ability to comprehend arguments.

For the record, leaping on typos is about the weakest and most desperate debate topic possible.

Your persistent dishonesty in this thread (for example, I have NOT used the Gospels as any kind of historical cites) does not make it worthwhile to pursue this with you anymore.

188

You claim an untruth. I did not say that anyone called him a dayan or judge. I noted terms for religious scholars. Teachers of the Torah could be rabbis or dayanim. (I’m going to go out on a limb and assume -im is the appropriate plural use and not -ot.) Jesus would not have been a dayan. But to say that rev could apply to any old teacher is false. You said that ‘rabbi’ equaled ‘teacher’ and nothing more.

Wiki on rabbi: Not very detailed, but proves my point: Rabbi - Wikipedia

snip

The way you dismiss “rab” being anything other than a “teacher” is like saying a teacher is a teacher, period. It’s all the same. If you asked my son who his teacher was, he’d say Morah Gold**. You don’t call everyone with a Ph.D. “professor”, do you? Be careful with your generalizations.

In modern Hebrew, rabbotai is like saying gentleman.

In the Grace after Meals, Haggadot, and various benchers, the term Rabbotai nevarekh will be found everywhere.

Look at the root rav. I did this in Post 139

I did not say - nor has anyone in this thread, I don’t think - that Jesus was an ordained rabbi. That would be impossible, since the Rabbinic movement was just beginning. But Hillel the Elder is often called the Frst Rabbi for a reason.

You keep asserting that Jesus had no formal education. Yet:

[ol]
[li]Formal education is not required for literacy - literacy can be passed down from one generation to the next or taught by a brother, neighbor, sister, wife, etc.[/li]
[li]The beth midrash was formed shortly after Jesus’ death, but these men were descendents from the House of Hillel or Shammai. The lack of formal beth midrash in early 1st C does not mean there was no religious instruction going on outside of Jerusalem.[/li][/ol]

From Wiki: Beth midrash - Wikipedia

Note the word “distinct”. Again, I did not say that he was referred to as a dayan. If Jesus had been part of the Sandehrin as a judge, then all of history would have been changed. You could be a Torah scholar and not be a dayan.

Since I am not allowed to call you a lair, I will just say it again: You speak untruths.

189

It is a fact that he has written it to be so, but how does that make your claim that 95-98 per cent of Jews were illiterate a fact?

Stating a fact does not mean the “fact” you stated was in any way factual.

Hardly.

There was no leap. I said that wasn’t a word. You’ve made countless typos and misspellings that I’ve ignored. I was wanted to make sure i knew what you meant before I addressed your non-word.

When I asked about Jesus drinking wine, you gave me a quote from the Bible. (From what I could see in that quote, it didn’t say he drank wine. It said he turned water into wine.)

190

I didn’t say that Jesus drank wine. I said the the Gospels said he drank wine. I also cited Matthew which makes a more explicit claim.

191

“There’s no way he studied with the Essenes…bla bla bla cite: Matthew”

I’m waiting for your FACTS about the literacy rate in 1C. Galilee. Not just a statement. I want facts and data. I want things we know to be absolutely true.

Thanks.

192

He has no facts. In fact his cite, Crossan has no facts either. I googled around and found what DtC apparently couldn’t links to Google editions (partial) of Crossan’s books. In the pages i could find, Crossan has no cites, sources of research for this factoid.

I did copy one line Crossan used, and searched that. I found a cite by a researcher in about 1900, who had found a few lines in a Jewish history about a small village that had only one man who could read the Talmud, and the man had to read it thus several times a day. Figuring from there, the author calculated a very low rate of literacy. Of course, he had no idea if the village was typical or it’s population.:dubious: That’s the extent of the research Crossan apparently relied upon. And, it was more than a century ago. Worthless.

Here’s are two more modern cites, with actual research and sources and cites and all those facts that get in the way of a nice opinion (stated as fact).:rolleyes:

http://www.craigaevans.com/evans.pdf

*Despite many scholars’ assumptions that Jesus was an illiterate peasant or, conversely, even a Pharisee none have critically engaged the evidence to ask ‘Could Jesus read or write?’ Some studies have attempted to provide a direct answer to the question using the limited primary evidence that exists. However, these previous attempts have not been sufficiently sensitive to the literary environment of Second Temple Judaism, an area that has seen significant scholarly progression in the last ten to fifteen years. They have provided un-nuanced classifications of Jesus as either “literate” or “illiterate” rather than observing that literacy at this time did not fall into such monolithic categories. *

That last is a point I have made several times- “literacy” in NT times did not mean what it means today. Many were “functionally illiterate” by todays standards, but could still read and write graffiti. Jesus could very likely slowly work his way thru the Talmud, perhaps half thru memorization. Hardly a scribe, sure.

193

Did you mean “Torah”? :smiley:

There’s nothing to say that literacy can’t be passed down. You don’t need a school to learn how to read. While the Torah did command that everyone should own a Torah, it’s not likely that they all did. Still, if his siblings were writing, it’s not so far off to think that he may have been reading. Writing and reading are not the same thing.

194

Right, sorry.:smack:

195

:stuck_out_tongue: I do that stuff all the time!

196

Crossans’ methodology includes a lot of cross cultural anthropology and archaeology. All the evdidence supports a very low literacy rate. The lack of access to resources and materials, along with the simple lack of time for peasants to do anything but work are still real obstacles you would have to overcome to explain how a simple day laborer could learn how to read. That’s kind of hard to do with paper or books or schools or time.

197

So the question posed by the OP can’t be answered definitively? Or did I miss something?
And in any event, what the hell difference can it possibly make at this stage of the game?

198

It can’t be answered definitively, but it can be answered with probabilities, and the vast majority of people nin the ancientworld at that time - not just in Palestine - were not literate. That especially includes the peasant classes like the one Jesus is alleged to have belonged to. It’s very unlikely that he would received any kind of education as a child, but his opportunities could have slightly increased after he became an adult.
It doesn’t matter to me whether he could or couldn’t read, but some people seem to get offended at the suggestion that this was unlikely.

199

Of course we can’t answer it. It’s all subjective. No one here gets offended at the idea that he may have been illiterate. We just don’t like Dio’s debate methodologies. He provides circumstantial evidence as fact and refuses to consider any other possibilities.

It would make more sense for early Christians to paint Jesus as illiterate to show that any man is capable of knowing God - sometimes even more so than his supposed religious superiors.

200

Hand me a Torah scroll and I’ll teach a child how to read. You keep ignoring the fact that Torah scholarship wasn’t restricted. Hebrews didn’t want to hide the Torah from the population like 13C Catholics, kay?