Why can’t you call an oral teacher “rabbi” 2,000 years ago in an oral dominant culture? Jesus is constantly preaching and talking with people. I know of no writings of his own if such was so important to him.
Vinnie
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Literacy in its broadest sense describes “particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing”[1] with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use.[2] In other words, humans in literate societies have sets of practices for producing and consuming writing, and they also have beliefs about these practices.[3] Reading, in this view, is always reading something for some purpose; writing is always writing something for someone for some purpose.[4] Beliefs about reading, writing and their value for society and for the individual always influence the ways literacy is taught, learned, and practiced Literacy - Wikipedia
I think the gospels more than adequately demonstrate Christ’s literacy.
On the other hand, I suppose we could set our benchmark at Socrates. He was claimed by some commentators to be an illiterate, fat, drunken, slob…and the father of philosophy apparently.
Considering that the Greek word τέκτων (TEK-tone) refers to builders in general and can actually be understood as “contractor” to use today’s terms, it’s even more likely that Joseph was upper-middle. Though even if he was just a carpenter-builder, there’s a fair chance he was recruited to work on one or more of the Roman construction projects in the area – after all, even though the Romans tended to build with stone, it took skilled carpenters to build the frames that supported arches and other structures until they were complete.
It fascinates me that Jesus may have helped build the scaffolding supporting arches as they were being built and could have been present multiple times when the keystone was dropped into place at the top of each arch.
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Walton’s The Lost World of Scripture gives a good background on oral transmission and its value. Essentially, oral transmission had perhaps more authority in ancient society than the written word, with those oral communications written down as a “backup” rather than the primary mode of communication.
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Or more, if Joseph worked at all for the Romans.
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Why does “a word can be understood as” lead to “it’s even more likely.” This is a logical fallacy. Can is not does. Why not take the word with its most obvious meaning in its ancient context how church fathers did?
One in here claims Jesus and his whole family were literate and now we are claiming they were well to do ancient architects and structural engineers? We love reconstructing Jesus in our own image. Even if Jesus was working on Roman projects there is zero evidence he was anything more than a menial laborer. Little direct evidence against it as well except the following:
One suggestion about Jesus’ trade that is not so divorced from his own time is that he possibly found employment for a while in Sepphoris, a major city of Galilee that was only 3.7 miles north-north- west of Nazareth and just about an hour’s walk. Sepphoris had been destroyed during a revolt against Rome in 4 B.C. After his confirmation by Rome as tetrarch, Herod Antipas chose Sepphoris as his capital and began rebuilding it in grand Hellenistic style. While initial, intensive efforts tapered off, some building continued until Antipas moved his capital to the new city of Tiberias ca. A.n. 26. If Jesus had been employed in Sepphoris during the period of its magnificent reconstruction, he would have been brought into contact with urban culture in a strongly Hellenistic city.‘" The experience might have helped loosen the natural provincialism adhering to conservative Jewish peasants from the coun- tryside.’‘’
While intriguing, this suggestion remains a pure possibility with no real footing in any Gospel text.‘’’ More to the point, the Gospels never present Jesus preaching in or even talking about the strongly Hellenistic urban centers of Galilee. As far as we know, within Galilee his ministry<as well as verbal references) was restricted to traditional Jewish villages and towns: Nazareth, Capemaum, Cana, Nain, and Chorazin. Within Galilee proper, the Hellenistic cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias are notable by their absence on Jesus’ itinerary.‘’’ This general picture of Jesus’ activity in Galilee, consistent throughout the Four Gospels, does not favor early and influential contact with Hellenistic centers like Sepphoris. Such a theory, of course, cannot be positively disproved. But there is no solid evidence to support it, and the Gospels indirectly sup- ply some indications against it. In the end, we must conclude that the sparse evidence we have about the “interim” years of Jesus points in one direction: Jesus spent those years almost entirely as a citizen of Nazareth in Galilee, plying the trade of a woodworker. Special experiences in the area of education or employment that would have taken him out of Nazareth for a lengthy period of time must remain pure hypotheses, unsupported by the NT text.
Meier also writes:
In fairness, it should be noted that some scholars suggest an alternate description of Jesus’ socioeconomic status. According to them, both Jo- seph and Jesus were master builders who traveled extensively, worked sometimes in cities like Sepphoris and Jerusalem, and were relatively well to do.I" If such were the case, the renunciation of wealth by Jesus as he began his public ministry would have been all the more radical. Such scenarios, however, usually rest on an acritical meshing of various texts, dubious exegesis, and more than a little imagination.169 Nothing in the Gospels speaks positively for such a hypothesis.
We see there same process of aggrandizing the Historical Jesus that occurs in the infancy narratives continuing here in various interpretations. As far as Jesus’s job goes, Meier once again sobers us with his exegesis on tekton:
In short, in the whole of the NT, “woodworker” (tckton) is Ilsed only in Mark 6:3 and Matt 13:55, in the former text of Jesus and in the latter of Joseph. Hence the universally known “fact” that Jesus was a carpen- ter hangs by the thread of a half verse. Yet there is no cause for us to think that Mark 6:3 is inaccurate, especially since there was no reason why Mark or Christian preachers before him should have gone out of their way to attribute to Jesus a calling that enjoyed no special prominence in his society, is never referred to in Jesus’ own teaching, and has absolutely no echo elsewhere in the doctrine of the NT. With no countertradition to challenge it, the universally known “fact” may be allowed to continue to hang by its thread. I prefer to translate tekton as “woodworker” rather than as the popu- lar “carpenter” because the latter term has acquired a somewhat re- stricted sense in the contemporary American workplace, with its ever increasing specialization. A common definition of “carpenter” today is "a workman who builds or repairs wooden structures or their structural parts.H IH We tend to think of carpenters in terms of building houses or crafting the major wooden parts thereof. These days, most of us do not go to a carpenter for a piece of furniture, let alone for plows or yokes to use on oxen. Yet the ancient Greek word tektiin encompassed that and much more. The term tekton could be applied to any worker who plied his trade "with a hard material that retains its hardness throughout the operation, e.g., wood and stone or even horn or ivory."152 More specifi- cally, the term was often applied to a woodworker. That is likely the sense in Mark and Matthew since (I) that is the ordinary meaning in classical Greek; (2) the ancient versions of the Gospels (Syriac, Coptic, etc.) translate tektiin with words that mean “woodworker”; and (3) the word was understood in this way by the Greek Fathers.’
Some of Jesus’ work would have been carpentry in the narrow sense of the word, i.e., woodwork in constructing parts of houses.lS4 But in Nazareth the ordinary house would have had walls of stone or mud brick. Wood would be used mostly for the beams in the roof, the space between beams being filled in with branches along with clay, mud, and compacted earth. The people of Nazareth could not have afforded the use of wood to build whole houses, or even the floors in them. However, doors, door frames, and locks or bolts were often made of wood, as at times were the lattices in the (few and small) windows. Beyond carpen· try in this sense, Jesus would have made various pieces of furniture, such as beds, tables, stools, and lampstands (cf. 2 Kgs 4:10), as well asboxes, cabinets, and chests for storage. Justin Martyr claims that Jesus also made “plows and yokes.”'" While this is probably an inference by Justin rather than a relic of oral tradition, it does tell us what work a person from Palestine-which Justin was-would attribute to a tektiin.
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That’s an interesting observation.
I think that leans towards literacy, but doesn’t prove it apart from evidence that first-century rabbis were all literate. As I recall, literacy for a rabbi is not mentioned as a requirement until the late second century.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: What Nature and Scripture Tell us About the Bethlehem Star
As an unusually intelligent child, Jesus would have sought out literacy on his own.
For what end? Can you not fathom that literacy was not as important then as now? This is entirely anachronistic. There is nothing to suggest that an exceptional child must learn to write in antiquity. There is also nothing aside from a single incident in a highly questionable birth narrative to suggest he was an exceptional child in an intellectual sense.
Whilst i havent read your reference yet ( i cant find a kindle version of it and i cant read small book font),
I do agree with this Phil. However, perhaps the culture back in those ancient times was such that some individuals did all the speaking, and others the recording? (Socrates comes to mind as point and example)
Anyway, the point is, this suggests to me that the writer (or scribe if you like) understood the orator and recorded as per the orator’s intended meaning.
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He was a curious kid. That’s enough.
To make you learn how to read in a society with poor access to education where most people are illiterate and oral culture is the preferred method? Maybe if you were as curious as Jesus you wouldn’t offer such flights of fancy.
You may believe what you like.
I cant believe im siding with Dale on something…wow!
there are quite a few individuals in my denomination, religious scholars actually, who believe that in fact ancient minds were far more capable than ours. Part of the evidence they have for this lies in the fact that much of the bible was recorded so accurately and so consistently by its often disconnected writers, years after the actual events took place!
This suggests that the literacy argument really doesn’t stack up, especially given the Wikipedia definition that literacy is more than just being able to write!
“Antiquity” is a broad term and not really useful. In Jewish society the ability to read was highly respected, enough so that some estimates of literacy among first century Jews are given as 10%, and up to 15% in towns and cities. Such education would have focused on reading the ancient scrolls, and generally would not be provided to anyone but an eldest son. So in terms of historical context, Jesus qualified for that sort of education.
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They could also believe God put miniature versions of every animal that ever lived on earth in the manger/cave/stable that Jesus was born in. Yep, there was a tiny microscopic t-Rex there when Jesus was born. Maybe God wanted all creation to serve symbolically serve as witness to the first born of creation. We can all believe what we want. At the end of the day this is a discussion forum and evidence and reasoning is what matters.
So they make up textual data to make up belief in ancient superhumans and use both to reinforce one another in a circular farce? There is nothing remarkable about the textual record of the Bible. It’s woefully filled with errors, additions, alterations and interpolations. We have hundreds of years of darkness where there are no manuscripts and tons of evidence for alterations before the main textual record. A God who inspires inerrant autographs can also inspire inerrant copies. The evidence strongly shows he did neither.
So in an attempt to argue Jesus was literate you are arguing almost everyone was literate in the past because they were so much smarter than us? Dale only extended his argument to Mary and Joseph. You want all of Palestine literate?
Vinnie
And are they based on uncritical readings of Josephus?
There were no book stores and writing was relatively expensive and arduous especially compared to today. Are we to imagine every Jewish home with an Old Testament Bible in It for the first born son? Or written documents? This is all pre-printing press.
Jesus may have acquired a Torah education and some basic literacy in synagogue. It’s certainly not impossible but probability wise, it seems less probable than not.
Though Torah education might more have been: this is what Torah says, memorize it. I suspect books were hard to come by for the ordinary person in most of “antiquity.” But yes, there is some evidence literacy was becoming more important at that time in some circles.
Even Papias writing ca 110 favors the living and abiding voice.
Edited to add:
and the perpetual virginity of Mary takes exception to you thinking Jesus is the eldest son. Half brothers are all older 
Why should we have a problem with a literal account that Christ was born in a manger? I do not see what this has to do with literacy given the biblical reasons for why Mary and Joseph ended up there in the first place (A census that saw thousands flock to their home towns)
Your second comment…one can find plenty of significant resources that completely discredit that claim…including that of apparent textual errancy ( i like Bart Erhman but he’s demonstrably wrong on this)
Your third comment…What is the problem with ancients being literate exactly even if this extended across palestine or the world for that matter? Are you worried that their somehow being smarter than you discredits your world view and therefore cannot be tolerated? That is rather ironic given i find no competition in ancients literarcy and my world view…it supports my world view and is also consistent with the biblical narrative. BTW, in what age is it claimed Socrates existed…470-399BCE? Apparently a man who wrote nothing down, was a drunk, a slob, and yet apparently very literate!
Remember that even many of the upper echelon of society in OT times were probably not very literate. That is why they had scribes to record important documents for the royal courts and such. No doubt by Jesus’s day more were literate but still not common. Why learn to read, when there was nothing much to read. A few scrolls in the synagogue and a few inscriptions on the monuments. Jesus commonly said, “You have heard…” but never said “you have read…
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