Loading...How many Christians by near the end of the New Testament period – say, 100 CE – could read and write? In his intriguing article “Christian Number and Its Implications,” Roman historian Keith Hopkins tries to come up with some ball park figures.
As you may recall, he is assuming that there were Christian churches in about 100 communities in the world at the time (we have references to about 50 in our surviving texts, and he is supposing that maybe there were twice as many as we have any evidence for); and he agrees that if Christianity started out with about 1000 believers in the year 40 then with a growth rate of 3.4% per year, by the year 100 there would be just over 7000 Christians in the world.
That would mean the 100 churches would have an average of 70 believers. (Some of course would be larger – think, Rome – others would be much smaller; we’re talking averages here. And if Rome did have, say 120 believers, they would be meeting in *different* house churches throughout the city).
Hopkins points out that in antiquity the population would be roughly 30% adult male; 30% adult female; and 40% children under the age of 17. And so an average church at the time would have 20 men, 20 women, and 30 children.
Now, how many of them could read? The reality is that….
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I’ve always thought it odd that the written word obtained such supremacy in Christain circles when until the advent of the printing press the ordinary person didn’t have access to written anything and probably couldn’t have read it if he did. I agree with Ms Haines-Eitzen . . .it’s a good way of getting power and hanging on to it.
My personal belief is in a God who does not require wealth, privilege or intelligence as a prerequisite to a relationship with him.
Teresa x
Mine is that, if there is a God, he/she wouldn’t/doesn’t require a relationship with Him/Her.
The argument in favor of this would be that early Christianity gave birth to the Roman Catholic Church, which for centuries afterwards, tended to flocks of mainly illiterate peasants in Europe, few of whom ever so much as held a bible in their hands. Literacy was mainly the province of the clerical class, which controlled access to the holy texts (and preserved them, along with most of what we still have of the knowledge of the ancient world).
There was a concept of implicit faith–most Catholics didn’t even know what they were supposed to believe, in terms of the more elaborate doctrines. But by accepting the authority of the church, they were deemed to implicitly believe this. Protestantism put more emphasis on individuals explicitly knowing what their specific church (and as you know, there were no end of them) taught, what distinguished them from all the other churches, what made them the truest expression of Christian faith (Emo Phillips had a lot of fun with this in a famous comedy routine).
It’s easier to be unified as a body of faith when you don’t get into the specifics that much, because let’s face it–no two people have ever believed the same exact things in the same exact way. Putting the Word of God into the hands of individuals meant splintering Christendom into myriad fragments. But it also hastened literacy, and the growth of human knowledge, the dawn of our modern age.
But in the early decades, there really is no church hierarchy, and as we all agree, practices must have differed a lot. I find it hard to believe that those early believers didn’t want to read the Word of God themselves. Given that all Christians combined back then learning how to read wouldn’t have increased literacy rates at all, can we be sure that some of these early churches didn’t go out of their way to teach people to read?
The main obstacle to literacy is people not caring enough to put in the effort to learn–you need the desire, combined with access to reading material (which the early churches had), and a few literate people to pass on the knowledge. With the deep sense of community that would have been fostered by their sense of being special, apart from the rest of society, I find it hard to believe there weren’t attempts to increase the number of literate Christians. Once the numbers of Christians began to grow more quickly, and the hierachy began to take form–the sense of a privileged priestly class–then I could see an attitude taking hold that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that each believer being able to read and interpret scripture for him or herself would lead to disunity and heterodoxy. As in fact it did, many times, over the course of centuries.
What do you think?
One item I forgot to mention–many historians of the Reformation have posited that the rise in literacy that occurred at that time was motivated in no small part by people wanting to read the bible–which was just then becoming much more widely available, thanks to Mr. Gutenberg (it was the first book he ever printed, as is widely known). Obviously most early Christians couldn’t have owned their own copies, but if they hadn’t been passed around at great deal, read over and over again, subjected to constant wear and tear, wouldn’t we have more and earlier copies of the gospel texts? Somebody was reading the early copies, and making many more.
They were obviously read a lot, but that doesn’t mean that they were read by a lot of people! (Plus, books normally don’t last more than a couple of centuries)
The main obstacle to literacy in most societies is economic.
People from poor countries are often more literate than the spoiled children of the American middle class (you don’t believe me, look at Twitter). One reason why immigrants do so well here. They know the value of education.
I’m merely saying the literacy rate among early Christians might have been higher, because of the great status that would be conferred on those who could read–and therefore quite possibly interpret–the word of God. General literacy rates among a large population don’t accurately predict literacy rates for all the groups that make up that population. Poverty is an obstacle to learning, but it can be an incentive for self-improvement as well, when given the necessary social and cultural structures.
Personally, I would think the possibility of “power” and “control” being motivators for not teaching the general populace to read would be obvious. The church used Latin (and still does) for centuries even though no one actually spoke the language any longer as a method of distancing the uneducated masses from the priestly class. How many people did the church have massacred during the Middle Ages because they had the audacity of questioning ritual, liturgy and sacrament? This was an affront to papal power and control. The Cathars, Jews, Arabs, and Waldensians were all massacred at one time or another for questioning the church or just being in the way. The Spanish Inquisition killed how many? I don’t mean this to be an anti-Catholic rant, but there were no Protestants for many centuries. I would think that to imagine Christians were no less power hungry centuries before these events is naive. Methods would have to be used to stay in power and ignorant parishioners would be a fine way to get started.
Bear in mind, the medieval church went out of its way to identify the more promising members of the peasantry, and see to their education. Literacy was, to a great extent, a creation of the Catholic Church, but certainly they wanted to control it to a certain extent. To accuse all clerics of this would be foolish. Many were determined to spread the flame of knowledge as far as they could. And nobody saw the Reformation coming until it came. Even then, the Church mainly used stupid methods to contain it, like buying up all copies of forbidden books–not understanding that with the new technologies, they were just funding the printers to make still more.
I don’t think there was any desire in the early church to contain literacy. They would have have seen that as an agenda. Propagation of the word and survival. Those were the agendas. And founding a church–not really. They still believed the Kingdom was coming. They went on believing this for some time. You don’t worry about institutional longevity when you think all institutions are going to become obsolete in your lifetime.
What is the deal with Jewish literacy in the first century? Maybe you have a link or book where you’ve already discussed this)
I’ve read arguments that most of Jesus’ original apostles were illiterate and I’ve read other arguments that propose that because of the resurgence of Jewish nationalism that began under the Maccabees, there was an emphasis that Jewish men should be able to at least read the Torah in Hebrew.
And there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground between those two views, it’s all one or all the other. Can you shine some light or point me to where you’ve already shined a light?
The best book in general is William Harris, Ancient Literacy; the best book for Palestine is Catherine Hezser, Literacy in Roman Palestine. They are both quite telling.
I assume these materials read in the early churches was written in Greek.
Would readers be expected to translate the Greek into the local language?
I wish we knew!
“Maybe they weren’t overly eager to share their power …” Yes, and why do you think William Tyndale was burned at the stake on Oct. 6, 1536 for attempting to translate the Bible to English? … In retrospect, I doubt if it was just a mistake made by one Bishop.
Other than access to the Jewish scriptures, the Jesus movement, during the time of Jesus, would seem to be based on no scriptures other than the Jewish scriptures…it seems to have been an oral ministry led by Jesus. I often wonder who was literate within the Jesus movement, and was Jesus even literate? When Jesus was gone, the movement was still oral but gradually documents were created by those who could read and write. I think of the preface to the Gospel of Luke, that the writer studied many accounts which I assume were written, is one good example of this.
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are often called religions of “The Book.” But that seems not to be the case during the life time of Jesus when he taught and ministered.
Even today Christianity is seen as a Book oriented religion. The Bible is central (often worshiped) with certain translations seen as especially sacred, and those who can interpret it are those chosen and trained to lead the communities….The Clergy….and the Clergy then had the power in the community.
I often wonder when and how the oral ministry of Jesus transitioned to a religion based on the written word. We know that the letters of Paul were among the first, and the sayings of Jesus in “Q” would have been significant early on. This is a fascinating area of study, though frustrating due to a lack of very early documents.
I appreciate your post today very much in that regard. I hope you get into this in greater detail in your new book. Very good.
It has occurred to me that perhaps, since many if not most church congregations were somewhat informal affairs (family, friends, etc.), that the importance of needing to read in a relatively illiterate society may have spawned the first century equivalent of the “circuit rider.” If there were literate Christians who made the rounds of churches where literacy levels were low (or non-existent), then a relatively coherent doctrine could be maintained across many churches, despite the problem of literacy. Taking my guesswork to an even more precarious precipice, I can see the possibility that they even received remuneration from the congregations they served. I have been acquainted with small, rural churches who could not afford a regular minister, so they would pay a small stipend to an itinerant preacher to visit and preach to them. Not the same issue (literacy) but the same concept.
Kim Haines-Eitzen’s thesis on how literacy conferred power and control on church leaders is borne out well into the Reformation. During that time people were burned at the stake for translating the Bible into vernacular. Church authorities did not want the ordinary people reading the Bible because doing so would undercut the clergy’s power of interpretation of religion, thus weakening their societal control.
Another possible explanation…..since the texts held the secret. .ie…it was written down rather than just general knowledge of the gods, those who could read could point to the text and say to the illiterate, see….there it is, it’s written here therefore it’s true,
Bart, in considering literacy in the ancient world, I think it’s important to ask the question: how much material was available to read? It’s an interesting thought experiment: wherever you are now, scan 180 degrees around you and consider how much text-containing material you see. It may not all be literary. Some of the text might be contained on labels, or brochures, or junk mail. But you can read it, and you do read some of it. Then: imagine you are sitting in some like place in the ancient world, 2000 years ago. How much of this text would you see there? The answer is, just about none of it. Even if we put to one side the question of access to education, literacy depends on access to text. The elites that likely learned to read also had an elite access to enough text so that they could practice and maintain that skill.
Re. your last two paras: I’d certainly go along with Kim’s argument. I know that you can’t extrapolate backwards, but isn’t this almost exactly what happened when English language translations of the Bible first came along? For centuries, the text had been the exclusive province of the educated elite who could read Latin. The clergy were in control, were the only ones who could promulgate the scriptures and their interpretation of them. This was the accepted order: those who could read the scriptures told the general populace what they said and what they meant, and the general populace went along with it. All hell broke loose (if you pardon the expression) when people could read (and potentially interpret) the scriptures for themselves.
Further thoughts re the development of the early church.
Whilst the Roman Empire had a communications network which surpassed anything that had gone before – and so ideas could be shared – more recent history shows just how theologies can differ, even amongst apparently homogenous groups.
For example, the Millerites in the mid 19th century split into IBSA (who split into Jehovah’s Witnesses), SDA, Christadelphians etc. etc. Plymouth Brethren split into Open and Exclusives (and many sub divisions thereof), never to speak to each other again.
This is purely speculation (and I know that you can’t extrapolate backwards) but my feeling is that when meeting in small groups, with a small number of leaders (who could read and therefore preach) substantial diffences in theology and beliefs would arise. We see this in the Muslim religion today, let alone the Christian religions and the Judaic ones.
I’m not sure whether this is historically true or not (it sounds right to me) but the founders of the Plymouth Brethren left the Anglican church to follow the truth under ‘universal’ priesthood. Within two years, they’d split into three factions who never spoke to each other again, each convinced that the other was in unredeemable error.
And there’s the apocryphal story of the non-conformist who was washed up on a desert island. He immediately set to to build two churches. One to worship in, the other he wouldn’t be seen dead in.
This makes sense to me. I wonder if the gospels were written by powerful clergy in the early church to make sure they passed on the right version (ie, their version) of the Christian message to younger members whom they were training to be future clergy?
Interesting idea!
I can see that line of reasoning working for John. Definitely meant to be a cornerstone in its use of sacred numbers and signs to portray the divinity of Jesus.
The other gospels seem to be trying to present a biographical account. So much so that they may even be read that Jesus was not the Messiah at all.
On second thought, include Luke in with your hypothesis. He went as far as to write Acts, and so wrote an early history of the church along with the gospel. It seems like a good foundation to build the religion on.
Dr. Ehrman, I can’t help feeling that you’re thinking about this the wrong way. There’s an external variable in this case that you and other scholars appear to be taking for granted. Namely, it’s not that Judaism and Christianity were more book-centric. (I mean, they were in comparison to their pagan neighbors. But that’s incidental.) What’s important is that Jews and Christians were just as God-centric (or gods-centric) as their pagan neighbors. In each case, for both Jew and Gentile, knowing what the heavenly powers thought and willed for us was of utmost importance.
And there was only one way to know what the gods wanted. The gods would have to speak to us through some medium. Their will would have to be revealed to us either indirectly through a chosen person (i.e. a prophet/prophetess) or through the interpretation of some natural or chance occurrence (e.g. divination, augury, etc.) that was assumed to be heaven trying to communicate with us. In both cases, a human being would have to act as the receiver or interpreter of the revelation from heaven. But once that revelation was made, it was up to us to accept or reject it, to hold on to it or forget it. That’s where scripture comes into play.
What distinguishes scriptural revelation from oral revelation is that what is spoken, without ever being written down, is effectively lost in the wind — even when the smartest people with the best memories attempt to preserve it orally. (Indeed, that was the whole point of your most recent book, no?) But when an ostensible revelation from the Sustainer of the Universe becomes recorded for posterity, people tend to think that it was preserved in writing for a reason. They tend to exalt it beyond the transitory utterances of (presumably) lesser mediums. That’s why the Jews came to worship their scripture to such an extent. They truly believed that it was the preserved will of their god — the God! — and that’s why they continued to squeeze the juice from that fruit way past the point when those documents ceased to be of any use. (That’s why I often say that the New Testament canon is basically fourth generation Isaiah fan fiction.)
If you read the NT with an eye towards this fact, then it should be obvious that, on the surface, it’s all re-interpretations of the same old, tired relevations from God going back hundreds of years. But at some point, these writings went from being mere interpretations to revelations in their own right. The letters of Paul went from being mere apologetics and midrash to becoming the will of God himself working through Paul as a prophet! When that happened, that’s when the NT became not just writings to be read but to also be worshipped, just as the Jews worshipped their will of God in writing.
In other words, it wasn’t the ability to read these writings that made Christians important. It was the ability to show that God was speaking through you (and through these writings) that was important. That’s why the Holy Spirit was so emphasized, because they believed the Holy Spirit was a conduit through which God could and would communicate his will to humanity, and the Holy Spirit was what allowed the faithful to properly (re-)interpret the Jewish scriptures for the coming Day of Judgment.
Wonderful Bart 🙂
In your post today, you seem to assume that literate leaders of the early churches did not in fact teach other people how to read. I understand that there could have been obstacles to teaching other people in the church how to read. I can imagine that it may not have occurred to the literate leaders to teach other people how to read. However, I’m not sure that I understand the basis for your apparent assumption that the literate leaders did not in fact teach other people how to read. Is there a basis for this assumption other than the potential obstacles you suggest?
Many, many thanks!
Other than the fact that there’s nothing to suggest that Christians were being trained in literacy, not really.
An argument, then, that literate leaders of the early churches did not teach other people how to read would be, to a certain extent at least, an argument from silence?
Thank you so very much, Bart.
I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying your current series of posts. I’m very much looking forward to your *Triumph* book!
😀
Arguments from silence are normally arguments that a certain thing did happen, not that a thing did *not* happen. Anyone who thinks that something happened has the burden of proof.
So, could there be an insinuation that some literate leaders of the early church may have heightened the importance of the written word in order to protect their positions of influence?
Yes, that’s certainly possible!
I was just thinking about this yesterday… If Paul was writing letters to churches, how many could actually read them? It seems that Christianity started as an elitist religion… Power still drives the world today! Paul was using his skills at writing as a formidable weapon…
Most would “read” them by hearing them read out loud in the congregation.
Are your generalities applicable to the Jewish Communities, particularly the “Christian”Jews? It seems likely to me that the people of the Torah would have a higher literacy rate than the general population. Do we have any studies of the literacy rates specifically among Jewish Communities?
It appears that Jews were no more literate than anyone else. They most often *heard* their Scriptures rather than “read” them to themselves.
How many femaile apostles, deacons, etc. are mentioned by name in 1st century Christian sources you would consider reliable? Could that provide a basis for estimating how many Christian women in 100 CE were literate and potentially in leadership positions in the churches?
Just a few in the NT (for example Phoebe and Junica in Romans 16). The problem is that htere’s no way to know what percentage would have been mentioned.
I enjoy groups where I debate the evidence for atheism or theism. One of my friends is a Catholic who finally threw in the towel at my questions, saying, “why not ask a priest?” Perhaps there was value to receiving one truth from authoritative figures.
I wonder to what extent Pharisaic Judaism functioned as a backdrop to the churches outside of Palestine? The Didache’s likely Jewish beginning may indicate strong Jewish influence even in gentile lands. If so, the Pharisee’s themselves were a ready made example of learned authority to be copied, authority and all, by literate Christian leaders.
Good point. But the vast majority of Jews were not connected to the Pharisees
If Paul was literate and could read and write Greek (as evidenced by his many letters) and if he met with Peter and James then they all clearly spoke Aramaic (or Peter and James were fluent in Greek) in order to converse with each other. And, if Peter really did live in Greek speaking cities later in life, it’s not a stretch to think that he may have learned Greek and maybe even learned to read and write it. If he was truly a leader of a religious movement – be it Christianity or a Jewish sect – could he really have done so as an illiterate speaker of only Aramaic? I think something has to give in that argument: either Peter’s role in any kind of leadership or Christian movement was way overblown (which is what I believe) – or he had to have grown as a person as he moved first to Jerusalem and then to Antioch and the other more civilized cities he was mentioned as having lived in from the backwaters he grew up in. I can’t believe he would continue to somehow live for thirty or so years off nothing but his accounts of Jesus of Nazareth, speaking only Aramaic. I know the answer is probably that the stories of Peter are most likely just legend, but Paul does seem to attest to his existence and leadership in at least Jerusalem.
If we take Paul for his word that he studied with Rabban Gamaliel, then Paul would have had to be fluent in Aramaic and Hebrew as well as Greek. If we are to take the event in Acts 21 as historical, in verse 37 a Temple soldier asks Paul if he speaks Greek (which would be an odd question to ask if Paul is actually speaking Greek to the soldier, suggesting Paul is speaking another language — probably Aramaic), and in verse 40 Paul addresses the Temple mob “in Aramaic”. Furthermore, Aramaic was also spoken in cities such as Damascus and Antioch at the time, so Peter could have conceivably made his way through those cities with a combination of Aramaic and broken Greek.
Paul actually never says that. It’s what Acts says about him. I don’t think it’s accurate myself.
Fair enough, though my sense is that Paul probably knew Aramaic at the very least, seeing as how Aramaic was the lingua franca of Mesopotamia anyway, and if he knew Aramaic, he probably knew enough Hebrew to study scripture.
The problem is that he wasn’t from the Mesopotamia; he was from some major Greek-speaking urban area (Tarsus in Cilicia?)
Hyam Maccoby in his book The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity illustrates many instances in which, in his analysis, Paul made mistakes in his use of Pharisaic argumentation. His point is that Gamaliel only took the cream of the crop of students and such students would not have made the mistakes Paul did. Therefore, he concludes, Paul was not one of his students or was one that didn’t pan out.
Interesting post, I certainly smell a rat here also… Paul doesn’t think much of Peter’s teaching…very odd for someone whom was later claimed to be Jesus’s right hand man. Something doesn’t add up…
But how widespread would knowledge of the written materials be in Christian communities by the end of the first century? If we can conceive of “John” writing his gospel without knowing the Synoptics (and presumably his community wouldn’t have been the only one that didn’t know them) then many of these churches must have flourished in relative isolation, correct? And the oral traditions would have continued even after the gospels were written. Wouldn’t the primacy of the gospel texts over oral presentation been a second century phenomenon as their use became widespread?
Yes, I would assume so.
Also, Paul’s letters weren’t even collected until around the end of the first century.
There is also the (perhaps) complicating factor of language. We know that Greek was the language of the cities, and, perhaps related to this, Christianity was initially an urban movement (if Wayne Meeks’ study still holds water). But just as today, where you can find plenty of English speakers in Istanbul, but precious few in small towns in eastern Turkey, might it also be true that in the more remote outposts, vernacular languages had not yet succumbed to Greek?
Yup! That makes the study of earliest Chrsitainitiy especially complicated! (Since we have no sources in the vernacular languages, and it’s hard to know how much Xty had penetrated into areas outside of the cities.
So, by the year 100 there were about 7,000 Christians of whom 400 could read and church leaders may have wanted to keep their authority by not educating others to read. Wow! How in the world did Christianity ever get to first base???
Ah, that’s what my book will be about!
Under the scenario that by the year 100 there were about 7,000 Christians, of which about 400 could read, and further that an even smaller number would be able to write a complex letter or gospel, what is striking to me is that the relatively large number of authors from this period we either know about or infer: the four gospels and Acts, Q, M, L, and the signs document; Revelation; the authentic epistles of Paul, John, Peter(?); possibly some of the Church Fathers (Clement?). That’s perhaps 13+ authors out of the 400 who could read. Given the circumstances, this seems pretty impressive.
Yeah, good point.
As a “teacher,” I agree with the great effort involved in educating people. When you have so many (long) texts and these texts have elements that may not make sense (such as the “Sons of God,” which may be rooted in Canaanite mythology), these books can be difficult to understand, which can force readers to allow their leaders to “digest” it and feed it to them. This opens the door for various interpretations.
An example showing the difficulty of an individual attempting to understand on their own, particularly if there is no “Commentary” available, is in Acts, when Philip is told by the angel to approach the Ethiopian eunuch, he finds that the eunuch cannot understand the a portion of Isaiah, which is an extremely long book. Philip has to help him interpret it (note: the interpretation is taken out of context). See below for the verses.
Also, the sheer bulk of literature can obscure the many contradictions in verses and concepts that are present in Bible texts, which normally might have made someone rethink whether these scriptures are the “truth.” For example, if you are visiting a city an a tour guide only takes you to the thriving part of town, you may come away with an opinion of that place that is not realistic since you did not see the whole city. Church leaders often point their followers to the more palatable teachings, which limits their reading and understanding of the entire Christian Bible.
Last, when you add in the supernatural phenomena, such as miracles that still occur and the prophetic abilities that are quite common today in many Christians, these phenonmena may cause believers to accept what their leaders give them because their personal experience shows this faith to be “the truth.”
Acts 8:26-40 PHILIP AND THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH
26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south[a] to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. 27 And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28 and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29 And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” 30 So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this:
“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter
and like a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he opens not his mouth.
33 In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.”
34 And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” 35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. 36 And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?”[b] 38 And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. 39 And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
Oh I like what Kim theorized about power and it was also my first albeit cynical thought ! It’s logical because the next step (after centralizing power and money) within Catholicism was to make the church hierarchy semi divine and the Pope the sole recipient of God’s word no? (I know I’m on a tangent, let’s add ‘sin and sinners’ to the mix and base and we would have a lot of power and control held within the church hierarchy.)
I can’t reconcile that Jesus was illiterate. For one, he was a preacher which meant that he studied the scriptures somehow. How could he have had any followers without knowing the scriptures? In Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are commanded to write the commandments on their doorposts and gates. Doesn’t that show there was a certain level of literacy among Jewish practice?
Jesus read from the Isaiah scroll in Luke and it doesn’t seem to be anything out of place. John makes a bigger deal out of Jesus knowing his letters. Could it be that literacy was one of the things that set Jesus apart from others? A *miracle* of sorts. Only, there’s no miracle because children (even older children–teenagers) have the ability to read without being taught by an adult. It happens all the time; there’s nothing unusual about it. All it takes is simple interest.
All I’m saying is that reading does not require a formal education and it never has. A small percentage of people being literate in the first century does not equal to Jesus being illiterate. In fact, there’s more scriptural evidence that suggests he was literate instead of the opposite.
Btw, reading is a bit of a mystery: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read
I just want to add that literacy is part of my educational background, so I focus on it all the time at work. I teach special education, specifically, literacy and numeracy.
When a scholar says, 90% of a population was illiterate, I have ???? above my head. I think, did 90% of the people suffer from brain injuries? Were they starving to death, so reading was low on the priority list? Were they not allowed around words? Formal education may have been part of the issue for literacy but it couldn’t have been all of it. It’s virtually impossible for a normal, functioning person to not have a certain degree of literacy. Toddlers learn pre-print strategies such as associating the golden arches of McDonald’s to their happy meals. What’s under the golden arches? The word “McDonald’s”. Eventually, a child can see the word “McDonald’s” in isolation and recognize it without the golden arches attached to it. That’s without any person ever pointing out what a letter is or what sounds each letter makes. It’s hard-wired in our brains to be literate with or without a formal education–unless there’s a cognitive or environmental problem involved. Ancient people read the stars; that’s the first step in literacy–symbol/picture representation. No formal education required.
So what kind of literacy are we talking about here? Basic literacy, functional literacy, or sophisticated literacy with a broad vocabulary? Or literacy that only pertained to being Jewish, as in, the ability to read the 10 commandments and nothing else?
So when a scholar says that 90% of a population couldn’t read due to no formal education, I’m going to assume that people were functionally literate but were not necessarily able to write. If there were other reasons–little to no exposure to texts and tell me why, no words/pictures/symbols in towns and cities and explain why there weren’t any of these things, then it makes more sense to me.
I’d suggest you read William Harris, Ancient Literacy. (He is, of course, highly cognizant of the problem of what literacy even *means*)
I”d suggest you read Catherine Hezser’s book on Literacy in Roman Palestine. Most of our assumptions about literacy simply don’t apply to the ancient world.
You’re keeping me busy with the book list. 🙂 I hope I get time to read this summer.
Dr. Ehrman,
During the life of Christ and when Christianity was first established, it appears that, in comparison, Christianity attracted those who were “not noble” (1 Cor. 1:26) or educated (Acts 4:13).
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John demonstrate that the leaders of the Jews (those high in power, the educated, the “religious elite,” etc.) rejected Christ and wanted to kill Him, while the uneducated and outcasts, who weren’t in high positions, were glad to hear the things He said and followed Him (Mt. 9:11; Mk.12:37.).
From all evidence I am aware of, individual churches were first “shepherd” by a plurality of bishops/pastors who took care of the churches needs, not one bishop who was viewed as the authoritative voice of God (Acts 11:30; 14:23; 15:2; 20:17; Titus 1:5; 1 Tim. 3:1-7; Phil. 1:1; Acts 20:28;).
If I am not mistaken, there is no evidence of the innovation and advancement of monarchial bishops within local churches until the latter part of the 1st century, and their role seems to be much different than that of the NT description(s). Ignatius said, “We should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself” (The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, Chp. 6.). When comparing what the NT says, Ignatius’ conclusion is in stark contrast. In fact, the NT writers speak out against putting men on a pedestal (1 Cor. 1:11-17; Acts 10:26; Gal. 1:8).
Based upon the aforementioned, would you say that Christianity had an overhaul of its leadership role(s) and their purpose by the end of the 1st century? It seems Christianity didn’t really even begin to become a religion of academia interpreted through law and philosophy until the 2nd century and beyond, with the influence of Tertullian in Carthage, and Clement and Origen in Alexandria. It was then, without intention, that Christianity began to serve the interests of the powerful and intellectually elite – the opposite of what we see in the Gospel accounts.
Could it be argued that, from the time of Jesus & the establishment of Christianity, to the latter part of the 1st century, Christianity had already changed rapidly in these decades and would only continue to develop into a religion of academia, power, and control?
What seems intriguing is that the very religion designed to “free the oppressed” (Lk. 4:18) would become the very religion that would do the oppressing as evidenced by the 2nd century and onward.
Your thoughts?
Absolutely: the original “charismatic” organization of the church, where spirit-led individuals gave ad hoc instructions from God fell apart (for ovbvious reasons) (it’s the orgnaization attested in 1 Corinthians, e.g.) and the churches got organized, with duly appointed leaders who had authority, and so on. Already see that by the time of the Pastoral epistles — or at least the clear movement to that hierarchical model
Dr. Ehrman,
I’m not sure if this is overstating the point, but can it really be said that the originally intended Jesus movement grew, or was it more of the offshoots of it that grew?
From my study of many of the Early Church Fathers, they make some of the Scribes and Pharisees, who hated Jesus, look soft. I wonder, if you would have been able to take Jesus and the early disciples, give them a time machine, and transport them into the 2nd century, what would the Early Church Fathers actually think of Jesus and his disciples? My guess is that they would have crucified Jesus over again.
Your thoughts?
I’d say every movement is probably like that. When we say it “grew” we almost never mean that it grew the same as it was only bigger. It’s more like a potato that sprouts and you plant the various sprouts, but one of them grows much larger than all the others, which eventually wither (and the biggest one itself changes over time)