No it isn’t. There are perfectly consistent positions that accept some sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels as authentic, but view most or all of the historical narrative those sayings are wrapped in as inventions.
Dio, you’re giving me a headache. You make up new meanings to words, you deny obvious fact, you say you didn’t say things when you did, you ignore pertinent statements…what’s the point?
I don’t give two fiddler’s farts if Jesus could read. It’s totally possible, and not in a “less than two per cent” kind of possible. If the man could not read and was claiming to be a Jewish authoritative figure, he would have encountered some PR problems. I’m sure the Sanhedrin and Pharisees would have capitalized on that. :o
Ah, insulting my literacy skills. I got into trouble for that once. Maybe he *wasn’t *from Galilee. I don’t know. You don’t know. What I do know is that taking one or two things about a man from the Gospels and then discarding the rest is a little sketch. You said he drank wine. How do you know? Oh yeah, you cited the Gospels. So why can’t I cite the Gospels in reference to Jesus reading and the way in which he was addressed? I’ve never claimed the Gospels to be historically accurate, but I’m not going to toss them entirely when trying to figure out this Jesus character. :o
Isn’t the point of Jesus that he defied likelihood? Where was Joseph in his life? Did he die? Did Mary re-marry? Did Jesus have brothers? Didn’t James write? Wasn’t his uncle a priest? Or do you dismiss all of those things because they are in the Gospels? If so, fine, but you have very little to add to this thread besides “A first century supposed carpenter was likely illiterate.”
The only caste system that I know of in Jewry is tribal, which I noted in the earlier post. You are confusing class with caste. Again. I’m not denying social hangups, taboos, or class. I am taking issue with your use of “caste”. You say that a caste system would prevent someone from acquiring literacy.
Oh awesome. Refer me to a man who has his own academic enemies. Historical Jesus theories aren’t uniform. Jesus wasn’t the first supposed mosiach in Jewish history. sigh
Look, you’re going to believe what you want to believe because in an area like this, there are so many theorists that one is bound to agree with you.
I have zero personal investment in whether or not the man was illiterate, but I have never argued absolutes in murky areas of history. You seem comfortable with that. You also seem to be comfortable in disregarding Jewish history, Jewish theology and the Hebrew language! :smack:
Where do I say that? You speak an untruth.
Yeah, and your background in Biblical Greek was really helpful when discussing ancient Hebrew iconicity. :rolleyes: Does your background in Jewish history start and end with Jesus? You don’t seem to think him to be a Torah scholar, yet the man speaks as though he were writing a tractate in the Talmud! Did he not make reference to the sh’ma? Does his Golden Rule not sound like Hillel?
I don’t know if there were Pharisees in Galilee and I don’t know how much of Jesus is true, but I won’t discredit the Jewish themes in the Gospels - even if I question what became of it all.
Honey, you can have Ph.D. from Mickey Mouse University and still make poor arguments.
Can you let me see the papers you’ve produced? I’m not saying you don’t know Biblical Greek. I’m just needing a little bit more than “I know more than you do! neener neener!” And yes, I* do* question your logic train.
School me, Dio. Write a quick thesis statement and back it up with some ABCD points for the rest of us. Add sources so we may go and learn. :o
Nothing would prohibit Jesus from learning how to read except the lack of a teacher. The Talmud mandates that at least one man in every small town should read so that all can learn the Torah from him. You act as though the entire population of Nazareth were illiterate men who chipped at rocks all day. I’m going to bet that if Jesus wanted to learn to read, it would have been open to him somehow. Teaching Torah has been the obligation of every Jew since Moses, and literacy is a fine gateway for Torah study. No, literacy is not required for Torah study or Jewish instruction, but the words of Jesus suggest he was well-versed in 1 C. Jewish thought.
Me either.
Wrong.
This is simply inaccurate and uninformed.
You really do have reading comprehension problems. It doesn’t matter if he was from Galilee or not. IF he was a Galilean peasant, as the Gospels claim, then it’s highly unlikely that he was educated. That does not amount to an assertion that he was a Galilean peasant, only a statement about what was likely IF he was.
I didn’t say he drank wine, I said the Gospels say he drank wine. Read with comprehension.
I don’t know what the hell this question means. It’s a theological question with no reference to anything that can be assertained from historical evidence.
That last sentence is, in fact, the answer to the OP’s questiuon and the best answer possible.
I think yyou have a misunbderstanding of what the word “caste” means, or how it can be used.
I didn’t present you with any theory.
me either.
Me either (with the exception that I absolutely dismiss supernatural claims). I have spioken only in likelihoods.
I’ve dismisseed nothing of the kind. I just apear to klnow more about those things than you do.
This was you:
The OP asked if Jesus was literate. We don’t know. So we take into account what we do know. Well, that doesn’t get us anywhere. Josephus is only somewhat reliable. We have to look at the Gospels. If we question their validity then the only thing we can do is throw our hands up and say, “I donno. Impossible to say.” If that is your position then SAY THAT and leave the thread be.
[/quote]
Yiou have not exhausted all avenues simply by reading Josephus in the Gospels.
It starts well before Jesus.
There is no evidence to think that he was, and ,
Jesus didn’t write the Gospels. They do have him quoting Hillel, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he actually did. If you see an old episode of Davy Crockett, do you assume that all the dialogues is actually taken from history?
Who’s discrediting Jewish themes in the Gospels?
[qupte]Can you let me see the papers you’ve produced? I’m not saying you don’t know Biblical Greek. I’m just needing a little bit more than “I know more than you do! neener neener!” And yes, I* do* question your logic train.
[/quote]
I have a BA in Religious Studies and Classical Languages. Believe me or not, I don’t care. If you can ever spot a mistake in my Greek call me out. You have not identified anything wrong with my logic. It is your own that is muddled.
Dio’s arguments in a nutshell:
It’s hopeless. :o
And the lack of schools, time and resources. Very few Palestinian Jews were formally educated in the 1st Century, especially not peasants. The soms of tektons did not go to school, they went to work.
The Talmud didn’t exist in the 1st Century, but this would say nothing about Jesus in any case. Sure he would have likely gone to a synagogue and heard the Torah read aloud, perhaps even learned quite a lot of it orlly. That wouldn’t have made him literate, though.
They probably were.
Not during childhood. He wouldn’t have the time, the money, the resources or the access.
Nobpdy knows the words of Jesus, and Torah study is not what’s being asked about. Literacy is.
There was no Moses, by the way.
Um…My dad lacks a formal education and he can read.
During the Jewish revolt in the 1st C., schools were established to teach men how to read. There was also a push for formal Torah education. It didn’t come out of nowhere.
It had not yet been compiled and written down. This is not to say that the schools of Hillel and Shammai were not in existence! Hillel predates Jesus! I thought you were a Jewish scholar?
The Oral Law existed.
See above.
I never claimed it did. But there would have been* at least* one literate person nearby.
My dad learned how to read when he was seventeen. I already addressed you on the access issue.
Oh good God. I spoke of it as a time period.
*
You think** I’m **silly, but your argument is based on subjective guesswork.
So what? That’s still more educatuon than a 1st centuray Palestinian peasant could have gotten. Your dad, for instance, actually had the ability put his hands on books.
Who said those schools were not in existence. Why do you keep inventing things I didn’t say?
I Know. I never said otherwise. What the hell are you talking about. What does that have to do with when the Talmud existed?
This is a faith belief.
Maybe, maybe not, but so what? That person would not have been the child of a day laborer.
Your dad’s experience has no relevance to this thread.
No, my argument is based on actual reading and research.
So let’s see your research.
You dismiss the Talmud. OK. You dismiss the Tenach. OK. You dismiss the Torah. OK. You dismiss the Gospels. OK.
So let’s see your research that shows first century poor Palestinians were restricted from learning how to read.
If Jesus was quoting Hillel, that would indicate -
oh wait
I’m not allowed to use the Gospels for sourcing of what Jesus said.
Shucks. :smack:
I dismiss them as reliable history, yes, of course, It would be empirically irresponsible to take them at face value.
You keep making up things I didn’t say. They wreen’t “restricted” in the sense of actively prevented by others, they just lacked the money, the time, the access and the resources.
Do you imagine you’re making some kind of point with this?
For the record, the Gospels don’t actually cite Hillel as the source for anything. They present that saying as if it was Jesus’ own. It also wouldn’t mean thta Jesus was quoting the Talmud (which didn’t exist yet, so he couldn’t have been), but that he was quoting Hillel, who’s sayings still certainly remained in recent memory.
You keep making arguments that are not arguments.
Well, I’d like to provide some ideas that may give credence to the idea that Jesus could read, but you won’t accept anything. So leave the thread already.
Noooo, but the teachings of Jesus are rather…House of Hillel-like.
Sheisters.
Hillel’s writings are in the Talmud, so when I say “quote Talmud”, I should’ve said, “Quote Hillel” or “said the same things that are said in the Talmud”, since I don’t know of any of his parables/teachings that aren’t found in the Talmud or Tenach. Also, both men were alive at the same time. But hey! You don’t believe that either existed or the validity of Oral Law. So why are we talking? Oh yeah, cause you think -
Since you can’t cite or debate in this thread…I can see how you’d think so.
You said the caste system prevented them from being literate.
Your comment “they just lacked the money, the time, the access and the resources” says you think all Jewish boys of non-priestly class were in this category.
I’m asking where you have this information. Thanks.
I’m presenting information that shows it was unlikely.
You should have said “quted Hillel.” He couldn’t have quoted the Talmud.
Barely. Using the traditional dates, Hillel died when Jesus was a teenager, but that juts goes to my point that Hillel’s sayins still would have been fresh memories and Jesus wouldn’t have needed the (not yet written) Talmud in order to quote him.
I didn’t say any of these things and your distortion of my words is becoming dishonest. Please quit making up things I didn’t say.
Not as such. I said the circumstances of Jesus’ social class would have made it diffficult. It was also an era where, to cite Crossan - “95-98% of the Palestinian state was illiterate.”
Most of them were. That is correct.
John Crossan’s Historical Jesus.
You said caste system. Again and again. I never said it would be* easy*, but you made it sound like it was virtually impossible.
Again, you do not need formal schooling to become literate. I was reading before preschool. Do you know who taught me? My mother. Literacy is not bound by social class, though lower income families do have lower literacy rates.
Just because you are poor does not mean you cannot achieve the ability to read. You can be poor and lack the money to buy a BMW, but the cost of learning how to read depends on who is teaching you and what the market value is for that skill.
If his mother, father, or brothers (again, the Christians do claim he was a man from Galilee who had a literate brother…) could read, it’s not unreasonable to think that so could he.
Most. The story of historical Jesus wouldn’t be that incredible if we didn’t think he was intellectually superior. Literacy is not required for intellect, but it sure does help when you’re discussing theology.
We know that Israelites had access to literacy. There was no tribal restriction. Your citation of 95-98% is based on the idea that most agricultural nations have lower literacy rates. You’re applying this to life in Galilee 2,000 years ago to a community that you know little about. You refuse to put it in any kind of Jewish context because you dismiss Jewish records of that time.
All of your knowledge is based on subjective guesswork. It’s very neat that you want to tell people that they are wrong about their own history based on your superior knowledge of what happened two, three, or four thousand years ago, but since I don’t ride the Dio Time Machine, I’m going to take it with a grain of salt.
It is one thing to disprove a theory by providing absolute truths, but all you’ve done is pick and choose what you’d like to hear and put it forth for an “argument” while dismissing *everything *else.
I understand that not all information or evidence is equally valid…but your strongest argument is, “We don’t* know *because we don’t have absolute proof.” Holy farts, Dio, welcome to ancient history!
Finally, Dio, you cite your sources.
Crossan. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant.
He is a theorist, no? Didn’t I say earlier that you could pick and choose a theorist to match your beliefs? So your “authority” on this subject is based on one book by a guy who has theories about the historical Jesus. That’s it? Okay. So instead of saying you know more about Jewish history than I do, just admit, “I am in this guy’s camp.”
:rolleyes:
You’re not a researcher. I am not a researcher. But your ‘evidence’ that supports your claim is based on a guy who makes - yeah - subjective statements based on what little information he has. All of this is subjective. Stop acting like the Dio Brain Reigns Supreme here.
I’m not saying Crossan’s work isn’t valuable and I’m most certainly not claiming Jesus was as depicted in the Bible. But Crossan’s methodology and non-Canonical sources are the same kinds of things that you claim to not be relevant in this conversation. Also, isn’t this the guy who says Jesus was known as a magician? Crossan depicts Jesus as a revolutionary. If anything, Jesus rode in on the coattails of the thinkers before him.
When I noted that Jesus echoed Hillel, you shot it down because “We don’t know if he actually said that”. Yet you cite a man (Crossan) who considers the Gospels to be historical when citing the words of Jesus. Hmm…
No. You are throwing out one book. That is not presenting information. I read The Gospel of Thomas, too. Can’t cite it here because it’s not allowed in the Dio rules, but anyway.
I didn’t say that he would have had to read Hillel. I most certainly don’t think they met! I said that Jesus ascribed to theories held by esteemed and literate men that were in the Camp of Hillel. In Jesus’ teen years, Shammai had taken control upon Hillel’s death. The nature in which he spoke suggests that either a) he stole it all from someone else and had no understanding of his words or b) he is the student who became a rav based on his knowledge, authority, and followers or c) he was an illiterate buffoon who claimed to know all that he did not.
You dismissed the Oral Law. Are you backpeddling? Can I use the Talmud to make some some points yet? :rolleyes:
Yes it was functionally a caste system, and I never said it was impossible, I said over and over that it was highly unlikely.
You still need a teacher, you need books, you need paper and you need time. Palestinian peasants in the 1st century had none of these things.
Yiou really don’t have any grasp of what that word meant in the time and place we’re talking about.
There is no claim in the New Testament that his brother was literate. Where are you getting that?
“The story of historical Jesus?” What does that even mean? And what does intellect have to do with literacy?
Wrong.
Irrelevant. Another one of your strawmen. I’;ve never seen somebody refute so many things taht were never said.
No it’s based specifically on estimates (made from a variety of archaeological and historical and cross-cultural anthropological data.
what makes you think I know “very little about it?” I have researched it for years and read extensively about it.
You are misinformed about waht “Jewish context” meant at that time, and I have not dismissed any contemporary Jewish records. The Gospels are neither Jewish nor contemporary. The Talmud dates from centuries later.
I assure you, it is not. It’s based on, among other things, an actual college degree in the relevant subject matter and many, many years of independent research.
I’m telling you, and you only, that you are misinformed about the circumstances of 1st Century Palestine with refards to literacy.
I provided objective and dispassionate information. I don’tp[ersonally care if Jesus could read or not. I have no dog in that fight. You appear to be upset because it doesn’t jibe with your own mistaken/misinformed perceptions about the realities of that time and place.
I don’t even know what you’re referring to or trying to refute. We can’t know anything for sure about Jesus, but we can know something about the life of a 1st Century, Galilean day laborer. That is my argument.
Irrelevant to his basic historical scholarship. I did not present any of his theories, and Crossan is far from the only scholar who has this kind of estimate of literacy rates. I would also point out that you haven’t provided a scintilla of historical evdience that Jewish peasants could read.
I am a researcher.
I never said either of those things were not relevant, and I doubt you know anything at all about Crossan’;s methodology.
[quote]
Also, isn’t this the guy who says Jesus was known as a magician?[/qute]
No. Crossan doesn’t say that.
This has no bearing on the thread, but it does not appear that you have any idea what Crossan means by “revolutionary.”
Crossan does not consider the Gospels to be historical. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
This is an inane comparison.
It’s more accurate to say that the Gospels attribute a saying to Jesus which is similar to one said by Hillel, but so what? You cited the Hillel saying when I told you that the Talmud didn’t exist in the 1st Century. What does one have to do with the other?
Or Mark incorporated one of Hillel’s sayings into his Gospel. Or both Jesus and Hillel were citing Leviticus, or the authors of those respective books were both citing Leviticus. If I want to get really pissy, I can point out that Mark’s Gospel predates the Talmud, therefore the Talmud could have been stealing from the Gospels.
In any case, none of this is relevant to whether Jesus was literate. Citing an attributed saying as evdience of literacy is circular since the accuracy of the gospels is exactly what’s being examned. If you want to rely on the Gospels, you can just cite Luke saying that Jesus read from a scroll in the synagigue. No need to make inferences from attributed sayings.
The Talmud is not comntemporary. We have no record of contemporaneous “oral law,” so it can’t be examined.