We also need to get our modern idea of what is “literate” out of the picture. Most ancient, even Senators would be considered “functionally illiterate” today. Due to how things were written, many times even scholars had to go over a page carefully, parsing it out and even sounding out some words. Julius Ceasar was considered remarkable in that he could read a letter straight though on the first try.
OTOH, the widespread prescence of graffiti proves conclusively that many of even the very lowest classes would read and write a little.
As to Jesus being a carpenter, wiki sez "Jesus is identified in Mark as a τεκτων (tekton)[49] and in Matthew as the son of a tekton.[50] Like most people at the time, he presumably was trained by his parent in the family trade. Tekton has been traditionally translated into English as “carpenter”, but is a rather general word (from the same root that gives us “technical” and “technology”) that at the time could cover makers of objects in various materials, and builders, from tent makers to stone masons.[51] The specific association with woodworking is a constant in Early Christian tradition; Justin Martyr (d. c. 165) wrote that Jesus made yokes and ploughs, and there are similar early references.[52]"
Thus it’s hardly a certainty that Jesus started as some sort of “Day laborer”. In any case, many adults have gone on past their poor beginnings to become scholars.
Wiki sez this about the Literacy of Jesus “*There are a number of passages from the Gospels which state or imply that Jesus could at least read.[42] In Jesus’ day, few people could read and fewer still could write.[43] The question of Jesus’s literacy has been much discussed in modern scholarship; the Jesus Seminar and others feel references in the Gospels to Jesus reading and writing may well be fictions.[44][45] In the view of John Dominic Crossan, a peasant such as Jesus would not have been literate.[46] James Dunn observes that, given the importance of reading the Torah in Jewish culture of the time, a Galilean villager such as Jesus might have learned to read.[47] John P. Meier concludes that the literacy of Jesus probably extended to the ability to read and comment on sophisticated theological and literary works.[48]”
*
Nor would it be shameful back then to portray a man as having little in the way of letters. Being illiterate then was not the huge shame it is now. There’d be no need to lie about it.
So, as tomndebb has shown, and as graffiti has shown, it wasn’t unusual for a Jew in that area to be able to read a little. Assuming that Jesus could puzzle his way thru a page of Scripture, helped by memorization, is hardly the same as thinking Jesus was some sort of great scholar. It’s a reasonable possibility, and is born out by the Gospels.
I don’t know anything about actual historical conditions, but for Jesus as a literary character, I’ll note that IIRC there’s a Gospel passage about Jesus’s childhood where Joseph and Mary play “Wait, I though you had him!” and eventually discover the kid hanging out in the temple with the Priests. Now, in the book it’s played up as miraculous for one so young to debate rabbis as an equal, but we don’t need to be too revisionist to read it as merely describing a child that’s unusually (but not impossibly) interested in books and reading. There are lots of documented historical examples of children from working class families showing interest in learning from a young age and therefore getting more education than typical for their background (all from more recent times, true, but demonstrate the possibility). So I’m saying, if social conditions in 4 BC Palestine were similar to, say 18th century England, it’s not implausible that a child could get a little more literacy than typical for their social class.
Most academic translations (e.g., the NRSV) have it bracketed, and indicate in footnotes that other ancient authorities include the passage. The oldest extant manuscripts don’t include it.
If you’d like to check:
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/ --I believe this is the earliest Biblical manuscript online in its entirety. and the leaves containing the Gospel of John are in very good shape. It does not contain the passage.
I’m not denying that it’s not in the earliest extant version or that it is “complicated”. I’m debating the “it’s not inmost modern versions” part. Having consulted some of my "paper-based bibles they do have it, but mentioned that the end of chap. 7 and the beginning of 8 may not be on the original version and may even be Luke’s. Both, however (they are Catholic versions) make not debate as to its canonicity or inspiration.
Even if the passage is really John’s, Jesus might’ve been simply doodling as a way of showing contempt rather than writing.
The Greek word used in that passage is grapho, which means literally “to scratch,” but can also refer to writing or drawing. The passage, most literally, says that Jesus 'was scratching in the dirt with a stick," which does not necessarily mean writing, but does not necessarily exclude it either.
sigh I didn’t want to have to trot this out, but here’s the story about John 8.
John is still wandering around till Christ returns, being one of the Two Witnesses who will stand against The Beast and the False Prophet. He wrote the Gospels, the Three Epistles & the Revelation. Well, a few centuries later, he remembers about Jesus saving the adulteress & writes that down. Also, he re-reads his First Epistle & it occurs to him about “Three Witnesses” also being “In Heaven- the Father, the Word and the Spirit”, so he writes that down. He doesn’t even think about later generations collecting various copies & comparing them. So there ya go!
According to James BeauSeigneur’s THE CHRIST CLONE TRILOGY.
But in any case, most ancients (no matter how literate) didn’t write their own stuff, they had secretaries to write it for them.
That is one thing that always is a hoot- some atheist “expert” claiming such & such a book of the OT couldn’t have been written by it’s attributed author as “the language is that of a educated Greek” :rolleyes:. Gomer Pyle voice Suprise, surpise, suprise!:eek: No shit Sherlock. :dubious: Of course it appears written by an educated Greek, it was written by a secretary/scribe who was educated in Greek. Mind you, since some works *were *pseudepigraphal, there is good reason for some skepticism.
What’s amazing is that even when (as in 1 Peter) it even sez it was written by a secretary, the nimrods continue with their bogus argument.
The stuff that was allegedly written by secretaries would still have been dictaed by the nominal author. The secretaries weren’t doing the composing.
Most of these scholars you sneer at are not atheists, by the way. Bruce Metzger, for instance, who was considered the leading textual critic in the world, and a mentor to Bart Ehrman, was an ordained minister. There’s no atheist conspiracy going on, and you don’t really understand the arguments you’re talking about. It goes beyong mere vocabulary or literacy and has to do with particular rhetorical techniques, knowledge of the LXX and other things that show the suthor had a Greek education. Trying to say “oh, that’s because he had a secretary” does not explain away anything unless you want to say that the secretary composed the whole thing, including the specific literary and rhetorical devices themselves.
You also don’t seem to have much of a grasp on who has the burden of proof. If you want to put a specific author’s name to a text, it’s up to you to prove it.
I Peter is totally pseudoepgraphical, by the way. He didn’t write it. We don’t have a single written word from anyone who ever knew Jesus. That is a fact.
This was in response to “Since none of the apocryphal books, even the ones written centuries later, have ever been attributed to Jesus himself..” That book, although of extreme dubiousness, is indeed a “apocryphal book, attributed to Jesus himself”.
NT. :smack: But of course the scholarly OT of that period was indeed written in Greek- the Septuagint.
Again, you are assuming modern day transciption. The ancients liked to have their secretaries polish up the language. Indeed, one of the few "books’ we have from that period that is almost undoubtedly in the exact words of the author is Ceasars Commentaries- which was roundly denounced by his contemporaries by it’s childish language and form.
Also, of course, when a educated man translates for a uneducated man, in the normal corse of things, the wording gets fancied up. James or John or Peter likely dictated in Aramaic, which was translated to Greek. It’s likely they all spoke Greek to a extent, but doubtless as a second language, and perhaps picked up as a adult.
Actually, since I am unbiased, I likely understand it better than you. For example, here’s a cite from wiki " Most critical scholars are skeptical that the apostle Simon Peter, the fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, actually wrote the epistle, because of the urbane cultured style of the Greek …"
It’s fairly likely that Silvanus wrote in a urbane cultured style, being apparently a professional secretary.
Most of the wiki article is cribbed from Early Christian Writings, written by a diehard athiest.
Indeed, It does appear that maybe 1 Peter and 2 Peter were not written by the same person, and some doubts have been cast upon 2 Peter. Which doubts are the main base of Authorship_of_the_Petrine_epistles.
However, in
wik sez “The author identifies himself in the opening verse as “Peter, an apostle of Jesus”, and the view that the epistle was written by St. Peter is attested to by a number of Church Fathers: Irenaeus (140-203), Tertullian (150-222), Clement of Alexandria (155-215) and Origen of Alexandria (185-253). Some scholars believe the author was not Peter, but an unknown author writing after Peter’s death.[2] These scholars estimate the date of composition to range from 75 to 112 AD. The traditional view, and that of the original church fathers, was that the book was written by Peter. There is no substantive evidence to disprove this and so traditionally the book is thought to have been written sometime before 64 AD by Peter himself.[3]”
Few scholars doubt 1 Peter: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Epistles_of_Saint_Peter
*A. Authenticity
The authenticity, universally admitted by the primitive Church, has been denied within the past century by Protestant or Rationalist critics (Baur and the Tubingen School, Von Soden, Harnack, Jülicher, Hilgenfeld, and others), but it cannot seriously be questioned. It is well established by extrinsic and instrinsic arguments.
(1) Extrinsic arguments
(a) in writings of the first and second centuries, e.g., Justin’s letter to the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Papias, Polycarp, Clement of Rome, the “Didache”, the “Pastor” of Hermas, and others. The Second Epistle of St. Peter, admitted to be very ancient even by those who question its authenticity, alludes to an earlier Epistle written by the Apostle (iii, 1). The letter therefore existed very early and was considered very authoritative. (b) Tradition is also unanimous for St. Peter’s authorship. In the second and third centuries we have much explicit testimony to this effect. Clement and Origen at Alexandria, Tertullian and Cyprian in Africa, the Peshitto in Syria, Irenaeus in Gaul, the ancient Itala and Hippolytus at Rome all agree in attributing it to Peter, as do also the heretics, Basilides and Theodore of Byzantium. (c) All the collections or lists of the New Testament mention it as St. Peter’s; the Muratorian Canon, which alone is at variance with this common tradition, is obscure and bears evident marks of textual corruption, and the subsequent restoration suggested by Zahn, which seems much more probable, is clearly favourable to the authenticity. Moreover Eusebius of Caesarea does not hesitate to place it among the undisputed Scriptures.
(2) Intrinsic arguments
Examination of the Epistle in itself is wholly favourable to its authenticity; the author calls himself Peter, the Apostle of Jesus Christ (i, 1); Mark, who, according to the Acts of the Apostles, had such close relations with Peter, is called by the author “my son” (v, 13); the author is represented as the immediate disciple of Jesus Christ (i, 1; v, 9, 11-14); he exercises from Rome a universal jurisdiction over the whole Church (v, 1). The numerous places in which he would appear to be the immediate witness of the life of Christ (i, 8; ii, 21-24; v, 1), as well as the similarity between his ideas and the teaching of the Gospels, are eloquently in favour of the Apostolic author (cf. Jacquier, 251). Finally, some authors consider that the Epistle and the sermons of St. Peter related in the Acts show an analogy in basis and form which proves a common origin. However, it is probable if not certain that the Apostle made use of an interpreter, especially of Sylvanus; St. Jerome says: “the two Epistles attributed to St. Peter differ in style, character, and the construction of the words, which proves that according to the exigencies of the moment St. Peter made use of different interpreters” (Ep. cxx ad Hedib.). Peter himself seems to insinuate this: Dia Silouanou houmin . . . egrapha (v, 12), and the final verses (12-14) seem to have been added by the Apostle himself. Without denying that Peter was able to use and speak Greek, some authors consider that he could not write it in the almost classic manner of this Epistle. Nevertheless it is impossible to determine exactly the share of Sylvanus; it is not improbable that he wrote it according to the directions of the Apostle, inserting the ideas and exhortations suggested by him."
*
Now, I know some are saying “Catholic Encyclopedia”- actually, their scholarship is undoubted. Note they are quite doubtful that the Apostle Matthew (at least in the form we have) the Gospel attributed to him. And they devote a whole page to the argument that the Book of Revelation was not written by John the Apostle.
In other words- Peters claims it is his, and all the writers of that period and the immediate period afterward agreed. Thus, you need to prove otherwise. When we have someones name on something, you have to prove otherwise, and “style” ain’t gonna cut it. It’s a poor argument, one rooted in a basic ignorance of the period. Same as with ancient literacy, where you trot out the completely specious made up figure that 98% of them were illiterate. Odd that every single freaken wall we have from that period is covered with graffiti- apparently written by senators and scribes for their benefit, eh? :rolleyes:
Hmm,
The 83 pieces of graffiti found at CIL IV, 4706-85 are evidence of the ability to read and write at levels of society where literacy might not be expected. The graffiti appear on a peristyle which was being remodeled at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius by the architect Crescens. The graffiti was left by both the foreman and his workers. The brothel at CIL VII, 12, 18-20 contains over 120 pieces of graffiti, some of which were the work of the prostitutes and their clients. The gladiatorial academy at CIL IV, 4397 was scrawled with graffiti left by the gladiator Celadus Crescens (Suspirium puellarum Celadus thraex: “Celadus the Thracian makes the girls sigh.”)
Foremen, common workers, prostitutes, johns, gladiators- the lowest levels of society- could clearly read and write.
In the last, you are quite wrong. Not only do we have 1 Peter, we also have the Gospel of John and the Epistle of James, who was the *brother of Jesus, *thus likely knew him fairly well.
This is not the only reason. In fact, it’s the least of the reasons. I have Raymond Brown’s Introduction to the New Testament right here in front of me, Brown was a Catholic Priest and considere by contemporary standards to be a conservative scholar. He lists the reasons why the scholarly consenus is against authenticity in order of (in Brown’s reckoning) ascending persuasiveness:
“The excellent quality of the Greek,” which extends, as I said, beyond mere vocabulary and includes evidence of formal education in Greek rhetoric and close familiarity with the LXX.
Furthermore, the letter does not say that Silvanus was a secretary or a scribe. That is a selective interpretation of a phrase, “Διὰ Σιλουανοῦ…ἔγραψα” (through Sylvanus…I have written") which refers, in every other known use of that construction (“through whom I have written”) refers to the bearer of the letter, not a secretary.
Quoting Peter Kirby now from his ECW entry on I Peter:
Indeed, other occurences of the phrase in Acts 15:23, the letters of Ignatius (Rom. 10:1; Phil. 11:2; Smyr. 12:1; Pol. 8:1), the letter of Polycarp to the Philippians 14:1, Martyrdom of Polycarp 20, and the subscripts at the end of letters by Paul (in the Byzantine text tradition) confirm that the Greek is used of the carrier of the letter. Wayne Grudem adds: "Moreover, the fact that Peter calls Silvanus a faithful brother as I regard him, argues strongly for Silvanus as the bearer (note Paul’s similar commendation of the bearers of his lettersin 1 Cor. 16:10-11; Eph. 6:21-22; Col. 4:7-9; Tit. 3:12-13).
2. I Peter’s dependence on the Pauline writings.
A reference to a universal persecution of Christians, something which did not happen during peter’s ostensible lifetime.
References to “presbyters” (“elders”) within the hierarchy of the church, which was a post-apostolic development. The author also calls himself a “fellow presbyter,” which is not something an apostle would have done since apostle is a higher title.
[quoting Brown directly] “The writer calls himself ‘Peter’ rather than Simon or Simon Peter.”
6.The use of the word “Babylon” to refer to Rome is post-70.
Quoting Brown directly in summation:
If Peter wrote the letter, the possible range would be 60-65. If the letter is pseudonymous, written by a disciple, the range would be 70-100. One might doubt that the respect for the emperor inculcated in 2:13,17 would have been likely during the time of Nero’s persecution which began after the fire of 64 (he was assassinated in 68) or in the final years of Domitian’s reign (81-96), after the revolt of 89, when he let loose his hostility toward those of suspicious outlook (p. 807 below). Thus the two ranges can be reduced to 60-63 and 70-90. Pastoral care for Asia Minor exercised from Rome would be more intelligible after 70. Similarly the use of ‘Babylon’ as a name for Rome makes better sense after 70, when the Romans had destroyed the second Temple (n. 22 above); all the other attestations of this symbolic use of the name occur in the post-70 period. The best parallels to the church structure portrayed in I Pet 5:1-4 are found in works written after 70. All this tilts the scales in favor of 70-90, which now seems to be the majority scholarly view.
(An Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 721-722)
I bolded the last few words because you seem to have some confusion about the majority scholarly view.
This is fatuous. as has been pointed out to you before, the ECW site is on;y an index of links to other texts and commentaries, with intro pages composed mainly of quotations from a range of scholars.
Furthermore, my list above comes from a conservative, Christian scholar (and a well-respected one), not from an atheist.
Not in Palestine. You can’t use graffiti from Greco-Roman cities to draw conclusions about provincial backwaters.
You’ve got to be kidding me. I Peter has been dispensed with already. Pretty much nobody thinks that John is authentic. There is basically zero evdience to support that authorship tradition and plenty against it.
The epistle of James, like I Peter, is also regarded as a pseudoepigraph by modern consensus, and for some of the same reasons, but I’m too tired to go into it now. Maybe tomorrow.
And assume he is “Brown has been described as “the premier Johannine scholar in the English-speaking world”.[15] Terrence T. Prendergast stated that “for nearly 40 years Father Brown caught the entire church up into the excitement and new possibilities of scriptural scholarship.”
But then “Brown identifies three layers of text in John: 1) an initial version Brown considers based on personal experience of Jesus; 2) a structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources; and 3) the edited version that readers know today (Brown 1979).”
Let me bold that first part for you “an initial version Brown considers based on personal experience of Jesus”
Thus, according to your own expert-** the Gospel of John was based upon the Apostle Johns** own personal experience of Jesus.
Next- we have already dispensed with Peter Kirby, he’s completely worthless as a cite. I won;t even both with him.
So, now do you have the actual link to your cite? I have little doubt that there’s other info you that conviently would argue elsewise.
Yes, and has been said- ECW carefully choose what sources he wants to cite, using only those that support his athiest agenda.
Actually, as has been pointed out by tomndebb, the Jews in Judea (it wasn’t called Palestine then) Samaria had a tradition of literacy, with the Roman Head Count did not. Furthermore if you read the article ancient graffiti was spread over the entire ancient world, including Greece, Ephesus (modern day Turkey) and Egypt. You’re going to have to show that somehow Judea was free of graffiti and literacy when the rest of the Mediterranian was covered with both.:dubious:
Yes, as I said, Father Brown was a conservative Christian scholar. He was in the minority on that opinion of John, but even so, he thought it represented only a small part of the Canonical Gospel, with other layers (including the miracle stories) accrued later on.
This is just avoidant and silly. I also notice you’ve avoided every single point made by Brown.
My cite for Raymond Brown is, as I said, the book itself. I gave the title of the book and the page numbers, but not every cite is linkable.
This is completly false as any cursory reading of the site would tell you. Kirby selects for a spectrum of views, and he both quotes from and links to conservative scholars.
I use the word Palestine to refer to the entire region that included not only Judea, but Galilee and Samaria as well. Galilee was not part of Judea, so it would be incorrect to use that place name when talking about rural Galilee (and just for the record, the region was called Palestine by the Greeks since the 5th Century BCE).
According to John Dominic Crossan (another Catholic scholar, 95%-98% of the Palestinian stae was illiterate in the 1st Century CE. Graffiti in Greco-Roman cities outside of Palestine have no relevance to the conversation.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. My cites in this thread have been books.
In the realm of the tangentially relevant, there is a tradition that Mary was literate, with depictions of her mother St. Anne teaching Mary as a child to read being a frequent image in medieval art.
- actually, their scholarship is undoubted. Note they are quite doubtful that the Apostle Matthew (at least in the form we have) the Gospel attributed to him. And they devote a whole page to the argument that the Book of Revelation was not written by John the Apostle.