Loading...I received a very interesting question recently on a topic I’ve never been asked about, ever, to my recollection, but which I’ve thought about a good deal. Here ‘tis:
QUESTION:
Given that most people in the ancient world could not read, and that gospels, letters and so forth were read to gatherings to help propagate Christianity, is there any evidence that readers were not always faithful to the written word, but changed it as they read to reflect their own beliefs?
RESPONSE:
This is such an important issue that it is amazing the question hasn’t occurred to most people. Including, I should emphasize, the vast majority of biblical scholars! Go figure.
Scholars are well aware, of course, that scribes copying the early Christian texts modified them on occasion, often in minor ways and sometimes significantly. But what about other kinds of alterations, arguably every bit as important, made when the texts were being read aloud to ancient congregations?
The first thing I’ll say is that …
“If you’ve ever heard a professional actor read a few lines from Shakespeare in different ways, you’ll know what I mean.”
Sounds impressive! Can you give us a link for that?
Nothing comes to mind. A friend of mine is an actor in London who does Shakespeare, and I’ve heard him do it (from Hamlet) and it’s quite striking. Maybe someone knows of something for us online?
One of many examples. Check out Laurence Olivier’s rap which begins his filmed Richard III (“Now is the winter of our discontent…”). Now contrast this to that by Al Pacino or that by Ian McKellen. All online.
Or Richard Burton’s, or Kenneth Branaugh’s “to be or not to be” with that of, I kid you not, Vincent Price in “Theatre of Blood” (a hilarious flick!).
This illustrates the concept of PROSODY, the non-linguistic (vocal intonation/pitch/rhythm/amplitude; gestures such as head tilt and eyeball rolling) aspects of spoken language which we all employ without thinking (verbally) about it. Prosodic intonation is often AS important, often MORE important than the words actually spoken and can change their meaning. This is how irony, sarcasm, etc. are projected AND interpreted. Prosody mostly is controlled by, is a function mostly of, the right hemisphere, whereas the words we think (of) and speak are products, for almost all of us, of the brain’s left hemisphere,
Interesting, huh?
Altering ones prosody on demand is what’s taught in acting school. Think Stanislovski.
I take it that there are no examples of contemporary writers commenting on reading practices, praising or condemning others’ readings, etc.?
I don’t know of any, but that would be great to have!
I know that you are an expert on the writings of Didymus the Blind. Recently I have come across his name in connection with two contentious and debated issues and would be grateful if you could give your view as to whether Didymus can shed light on these.
Re the ‘Filioque’ – the view that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both Father and Son (and not only from the Father). This argument split the Church (Eastern and Western). In my reading it was suggested that Didymus, although an Eastern Father, appeared to support the Filioque phrasing.
Re the ‘Woman caught in Adultery’ – seemingly Didymus gave support to the place of this pericope in some early(ish) manuscripts.
When you did your research on Didymus did you find that his views gave any support to the arguments around these matters.
1. Didymus, of course, was living about 700 years before that became an issue, and so didn’t address it. I don’t recall his exact phrasing that could have later been used.
2. Kind of. I think I was the first to notice this; I discussed it in an article in an academic journal, I suppose thirty years ago or so?. He summarizes a story similar to the Woman taken in Adultery, but doesn’t quote it or say that he found it in the Gospel of John. Instead he says that it could be found in “some” Gospels. That made me wonder if there were different forms of the story floating around in different Gospels, and I ended up arguing that in fact there were, and that two of them came to be amalgamated in the form that became the story later copied into manuscripts of the Gospel of John. The article is here in case you’re interested: “Jesus and the Adulteress,” New Testament Studies, 34 (1988) 24-44.
This happens every Sunday in every church in America, perhaps the world. A preacher builds a sermon around a section of scripture then ties it to other scriptures to prove their point, even though those other scriptures may have no relationship to the main one. But the congregation doesn’t know that, they believe what is preached and take it with them. This affects even those who read the Bible for themselves because when we read it we remember what some preacher told us and how things tie together. That’s why for most of my adult life I never noticed the discrepancies until I came across your writings and others like you. Congregants are not presented with information coming from different letters sent to different ancient churches but are instead presented a single book, demarked by Old and New sections, that confirms and reconfirms itself. What I realized after finding your works is that I used to *stumble* over various parts when reading the Bible, things that seemed not to fit, but because of what I heard from preachers I glazed over them.
Been there brother.
Bart, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you talk about “why” people wrote down gospels and other writings. I’m sure some simply wanted to preserve the stories but there must have been others who were specifically commissioned by wealthy believers to create something that fit a certain belief? Or some that were written knowing that a new gospel with a particular point of view would fetch a good price from the right wealthy believer? Do you have evidence that suggests specific gospels were written for sale? Does your research shed any light on this aspect?
And then the “who” question. I know we don’t have their names, but at the time they were written, what sort of person would have the time, literacy and resources to write a gospel? Were they likely to be monks or students or opportunists or what? Would they have had a patron who was keeping them fed and housed while doing it? How long would it take to actually write down the words in a typical length gospel document, using the writing devices of the time?
Enjoying the blog, thanks
Jeff
AS it turns out, Gospels were not sold for money and they do not appear to have been commissioned by wealthy persons (or any persons). it’s so hard for us to get our mind around what book production and distribution was like in ancient contexts. But these books almost certainly were written by people to communicate with their communities the “true” stories about what Jesus actually said and did, just because they thought that was important. They would not have been monks or students or clients of rich patrons. We wish we knew who they actually were, but all we know is that they were highly educated (in comparison with most everyone else) Greek speaking Christians who had heard lots of stories and wanted to give a literary account of them to bring some order and sense to them.
Thank you Bart, I’m curious about how you were able to exclude monks, students or clients of rich patrons? What are the indicators or evidence of that conclusion? Thanks again.
There weren’t any monks at that point in history. We never hear of rich patrons funding copying practices, at least until the highly unsual case of Origen of Alexandria, and even ancient sources treat that as highly unusual. All that changes drastically with the conversion of constantine and the influx of wealthy elite into the church in the early fourth century.
In Jewish practice, when someone reads from the Torah, two gabbai’s (plural “gabbaim” in Hebrew) monitor their reading and correct any errors in real time. I don’t know if this practice dates back to the early part of the Common Era, but given that Christianity began as a movement of Jewish believers in Jesus, I wonder if they might have employed a similar method.
Thanks! but yes, these practices didn’t come into Judaism until centuries after Christianity had split off from it. We don’t have anything like it in the early Christain tradition.
Edecter: There is a similar thing in the Dead Sea Scroll community. If my memory is correct, members were to read and interpret scripture for part of each night. If 10 or more members gathered to do this a leader was to be present to oversee them.
Preachers are still explaining what passages from the OT and NT mean, and in the process, applying their personal biases. Plus, everything gets distorted by the doctrinal lens characteristic of that denomination. Passages from Paul don’t get the same spin in Catholic and Protestant contexts: for instance faith vs works gets different treatment. That’s just one example. The preacher’s personal spin frequently determines whether one “likes” one church over another, even if the denomination is the same. Although I think you find this problem more in Protestant denominations, since Catholicism is more top down. Christianity is so far from monolithic, you can scarcely think of it as the same thing from church to church. If that was not the case, there would not be so many preachers with a cult following. I won’t name names.
How about the (originally oral) targums of the Hebrew Bible? Same sort of thing? Of course, read in liturgy they couldn’t go too far astray (or could they?), but there would still have been opportunity to shape an illiterate’s understanding of a text. Growing up Catholic (I’m 69 now), I was told by my priest NOT to read the Bible. He would explain what I didn’t understand. (Or maybe I just remember it that way.) Thanks!
This is one of those fascinating and arguably crucial aspects of text (and consequently theological) transmission that it is just impossible to do anything other than make educated guesses about. I am reminded of arguments (that I may well have picked up from your books, Dr Ehrman) that the early great works of literature, such as the Iliad and Odyssey, which were originally performed orally by bards, could have been subtly changed with each performance. Btw, thank you for the heads up on Kim Haines-Eitzen’s work (Guardians of Letters), which looks like an enthralling read. Bryn Mawr have an in-depth review on it which seems very comprehensive. Thanks again.
Yes, reading aloud is an art, and it deserves to be practiced with some passion, especially for worship services. We’ve all suffered thru presentations by “wooden” readers. Everything is interpretation, both in delivery and receipt. Reading between the lines is crucial, as is listening that way.
Literalism is a “great red dragon” which can divide any house — to wit, the so-called “originalism” used to argue that our founding bylaws must be interpreted with a mindset that is centuries long gone.
~eric.
MeridaGOround
Is it correct to say that in the time-frame you used (120 CE – 220 CE) the gospels were not yet considered to be the *inerrant* word of God? If those who read to the Christian communities did not believe it was inerrant, it would seem more likely that the readers would be more willing to make changes to what they read from the gospels.
yes, the modern idea of inerrancy is very … modern! (the fundamentalist idea started at the end of the 19th c.). Early Xns revered the Gospels, but by and large they did not think they were word-for-word from God.
I think it would be very interesting to have some posts about this: how did Christians view the Bible (or the NT or the Gospels) throughout the centuries. In particular the differences of point of view between modern denominations.
Good idea!
Bart, it doesn’t at all affect your argument, but I have to point out that basic education and literacy in at least parts of Europe predated the Industrial Revolution.
Appropriately enough for this blog, it was because of Christianity, specifically, the reforms advocated by Martin Luther in the 16th century. He felt believers should be able to read the Bible for themselves and arrive at their own understanding of it. For that reason, he pressed local authorities to provide basic education for the masses. For some time afterward, literacy rates were higher in Protestant areas than in Catholic ones.
Joseph Henrich discusses this in statistical detail in his recent book The WEIRDest People In the World.
Thanks.
I wonder whether they read Πρισκασυν at 1 Cor 16:19 as Πρισκασσυν. That would make Prisca into a man, and P46 does indeed add the extra sigma. How many women were literate?
1 Tim, 2 Tim, and Titus were not written to communities where those individuals were located. That would have exposed the forgeries. In any case Titus was Timothy’s praenomen and he may have been dead long before those “letters” were fabricated.
When I was in Catholic School in the 50’s, we had to memorize not only prayers but also the Catachism all sort of other things. Even now there are some who can’t read and just memorize the religion. Also, statues and icons of saints and such have objects and symbols that tell a visual story to help with memory. This seems to have started early on. How it may effect the meanings of the texts is an interesting question.
Off topic comment. I stumbled, literally, across Prof. Francis J. Collins, during some readings of Covid 19 articles. He is the head of the NIH, National Institute of Health, and Dr Anthony Fauci’s boss. Ok, who cares? No one, right! As I continued to learn of him, I could not believe that someone existed out there with the exact opposite of , well, our beloved Dr. Ehrman, I know,everyone has a double ?. The interesting thing is this. They both attended UNC at Chapel Hill. Both studied at various Universities across the country. Both, highly distinguished individuals (scholars) for their research and work. Here is the kicker. They both changed their beliefs early in their life. I could not find/parallel two lives that are so similar in their roots, yet different in their journeys. Dr. Collins started as an atheist and now is a believer. Everyone knows Dr. Ehrman’s life. That’s it. Both men, in my personal life, have given me plenty to ponder. Finally, UNC at Chapel Hill *Rocks*.
It has a lot of stars in its horizon, and he’s one of them!
It’s not surprising that reading the writings out loud to a congregation would affect what was transmitted; every Sunday in most churches in America there are preachers citing various passages and then “explaining” them to the congregation. And we all know that a Catholic priest and a Methodist minister and a Pentecostal preacher are likely to say very different things about the same passage!
Very interesting Bart.
One possible nuance, however, is that Christians do seem to have prioritised learning to read amongst those seeking to join the community. So, in the 3rd century house church in Dura-Europos, the courtyard (the part of the church accessible to catechumens) was found to have large numbers of graffiti abecdedaries. Clearly, at this date in Syria, new believers were being instructed in reading.
This does not imply that such persons would have been considered literate by the standards of the educated elite; but that does not meant they could not read at all. Witness too the rich graffiti on the walls of Pompeii; it was clearly assumed that many citizens (both slave and free) had the capacity to read simple notices, advertisments and ribaldries.
Where are you getting information about the abecdedearies at Dura, in relation to Christian catechumens? As you probably know, we have discussions of the catechumenate generally, and there is nothing in them about teaching converts to read.
Six (or maybe seven) abecedary graffiti were found in the courtyard of the house church at Dura-Europos. One in the Syriac Estrangela script, the rest in Greek. On these and the catechumenate see ‘The World’s Oldest Church’, Michael Peppard, 2016; page 46.
Abecedaries are found in a number of places in Dura-Europos; but nowhere in such a concentration as in the courtyard of the house church. Otherwise, they are likely associated with the military garrison. As we know, the Roman Army expected a minimum literate capability in all those serving in it; apart from anything else, requests for leave had to be submitted in writing (we have over a hundred such requests amongst the Vindolanda tablets, each written in the soldier’s own hand). It is quite possible that the Church fostered a similar literacy.
William Harris’s estimates of literacy in Antiquity have now been overtaken by archeological evidence. On this see Roger Bagnall; ‘Everyday writing in the Greaco-Roman East’ page 142; “Writing was everywhere, and a very wide range of people participated in the use of writing in some fashion”.
These are both top notch scholars. To say writing was everywhere is not a statement about the levels of literacy though.
Perhaps Bagnall’s next paragraph makes his key point:
“The desire to be able to express languages other than Greek and Latin in writing shows that social, economic, and cultural needs were not sufficiently met by quarantining writing to a limited range with a small class of literate mediators. If that had been true, if writing were needed only for life’s most formal and enduring records, the eastern Mediterranean could have lived with Greek as its sole written language, somewhat on the analogy of the role that Aramaic was close to playing in the last century of the Persian empire over a wide geographical span. But writing was far more pervasive and important than that; it was used all the time for private, informal, spontaneous, and ephemeral communications, writing for which one would not wish to spend the time and money to go to a professional scribe”.
The same also emerges at Vindolanda; the (Batavian) commanding officers had access to military clerks for official communications; but these were not used to create proforma ‘chits’ for ordinary soldiers. Instead each copied out their ‘renuntium’ reports and ‘commeatus’ requests themselves. Harris is ‘agnostic’ over this demonstrating their functional literacy; Bagnall is not.
Thanks. Where would scholarship be if everyone agreed?
With reference to your points about the catechumenate Bart.
In the Apostolic Tradition (ch 17) “Catechumens should hear the word for three years”. This may be expanded in chapter 20 as “hearing readings and receiving instruction”. It is not stated that catechumens will learn to read themselves – but three years is a long time.
Those reading to catechumens presumably are the ‘readers’ installed by the bishop at chapter 11; but how might these have learned to read?
For Harris – as I understand it – the route to literacy was by the full literary syllabus provided through ‘ludus’ and ‘grammaticus’; and as this was confined to the social elite in Graeco-Roman culture; so too was literacy. But Tertullian, (‘On Idols’ ch10) is unbending, a believer cannot teach this syllabus; though they might learn it. The Apostolic Tradition (ch 16) is less strict; but still appears to exclude these teachers from instructing other believers (or their children).
But the Dura papyri and graffiti seem to identify other educators of adults in basic reading and writing; as an ‘orthographos’, and possibly specific to the Army, a ‘pollio’. So were there Christian equivalents?
I’m not quite sure what you’er asking. There would certainly have been literate members of the congregation, and the bishop chose among them which ones would have teh official capacity. If 10-15% of the population wsa literate, then any community of 50 people would have 5-8 people who could fill the role.
Thanks for you time Bart
Perhaps there were always sufficient persons in each tranche of catechumens who had been through the ludus/grammaticus syllabus when young.
But otherwise (and away from Rome); Christian churches of 2nd/3rd century would need to be able to reproduce those essential functions for which literacy was a requirement. How did they do so, with a literary syllabus irremediably tainted with idolatry?
Hence the interest in the Army at this date. Vegetius (De Rei Mil. 2.19) describes an institution in whose functioning the purely oral element was absent. Nothing existed without being specified in a written record; nothing moved without written authorisation, no action happened without a written report. Yet this non-oral Army was sustained in a culture without a general education system; and the evidence from Vindolanda demonstrates that, if anything, Vegetius understated the case – even amongst a wholly Batavian auxiliary unit, none of whom were native Latin speakers or had even met a grammaticus.
I am proposing that what the Army did, Christian churches could have done too. And likely by similar means; the tricky issue being how we might now discriminate this within the surviving literary/archeological record.
I’m afraid there is no evidence that they did so. The earliest Christains were almost entirely in urban areas, and so they tended to have *someone* who was literate. Scholars have looked for evidence of Xns being trained to read in the first couple of centureies, scoured every surviving source of every kind whatsoever. It’s just not there.
For an example of different readings of the same line, see Ian McKellen, as coached by the great Shakespearean director John Barton, starting at 14:13 in this film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2VnxiW3oqk&list=PLboSQWmG70j_S2nWkRlncZYW49nLeFKWj&index=1
Fantastic. A real pity he is known more for Gandolf than Lear. (OK, I love the Lord of the Rings. But really….)
Could the parallel verses of Matthew 24:15, Mark 13:14, and Luke 21:20 shed light on this issue?
The Matthew and Mark verses refer to “the abomination of desolation” and say “(let the reader understand)” I have heard that the parenthetical was potentially a note for the church’s public reader to pause the reading and provide further explanation. Perhaps the reader would say something about the description of the “abomination of desolation” in the Book of Daniel, especially given the additional details provided in the Matthew verse.
The Luke verse doesn’t contain the parenthetical, but it substitutes “Jerusalem surrounded by armies” for the “abomination of desolation.” This substitution in Luke seems to be a rather loose interpretation, perhaps done for the sake of “Theophilus” (Luke’s stated audience).
Interesting point.
Thank you Bart.
Has this search for evidence of Christian literary training included linguistic analysis of informal writing – similar to that undertaken by James Adams on the Bu Njem ostraca, and the Vindolanda tablets?
Adams maintains – very plausibly – that, in these caches of military documents, it is commonly possible to discriminate the language and orthography of those (very few) writers who had been educated under a grammaticus, from those who had acquired their literacy in other ways.
More pertinent for the issue in question perhaps; he also proposes that much of the informal writing from Vindolanda and Bu Njem (originating from those who are clearly without a literary education), nevertheless displays a degree of orthographic and grammatical standardisation that is best explained as deriving from formal training promoting widespread literacy in the Army; with an emphasis on “utilitarian clarity rather than grammatical precision.” Notwithstanding that there are no unambiguous textual references to such training.
Have their been counterpart linguistic studies of Christian informal writing (letters, tablets, graffiti, ostraca)? Does enough of it survive?
I’m afraid not enough survives from the early periods; the only Christian writings we have from very early, of course, are those of the NT and books like 1 Clement and the Didache. None of these betray higher levels of rhetorical training. We do not have any access, of course, to orthography or penmenship; it is often thought that Paul’s claim that he signed off with large letters (Gal 6:11) indicates he did not have a high level of writing literacy but there are obvioulsy other explanations (e.g., that he had bad eyes). Since we don’t have “originals” we can’t do some kinds of analysis. For the copies we do have from the second and third centuries it is possible to establish the kinds of training scribes had. that’s the subject of the book by Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters, who shows the early scribes received training to produced documentary not literary texts.
Thanks Bart; very full and helpful
Bart, how about a situation in which the reader must translate from the language of a letter to a different language understood by the congregation? Is there any mention of that anywhere in antiquity? Could this explain anything notable about the quality or variation of early non-Greek manuscripts?
The only situation like that I know of is with the hebrew bible, translated into Aramaic in a process that later became the Targums. I don’t know of any evidence of this happening in Xty.
I’m asking this question here because it kinda relates???? I watched the debate between you and Licona in the resurection and i have no idea what year. You mentioned you think the disciples of Jesus had dreams and maybe hallucinations (im not quoting) of the risen Jesus which caused them to carry on the oral tradition of his resurrection. I was wondering if you think it’s also possible that they were just liars? Or maybe people later were Liars? My main reason for asking this is I am currently reading your book(and Zlatko) the Other Gospels ( non canonical Gospels) which in my opinion is a whole lot of early church propaganda! Do you I think it’s possible that there was a lot of lying going on when canonical gospels and non canonical gospels were written?
It’s certainly *possible*, but I really don’t think there’s any reason to think so. False stories about people circulate *all* the time, and usually they just happen — they are not usually someone lying. (I hear stories about myself all the time!!)