Illiteracy in Bible Times

[howardyou]

I've read conflicting statements on the degree of literacy in the first century Roman Empire. Does anyone here really know? And what effect do you see that having on first century evangelism? Here are two, of many, directions we could go with this conversation:

-Were Peter and John illiterate? (see Acts 4:13)

What was Paul up against in trying to demonstrate fulfilled prophecy? (see Acts 17:11, where the Bereans are mentioned as something unusual)

[Weboh2]

Anything which suggests Petra and John were illiterate is a mistranslation of agrammatos which means less written of. We have their writings which suggest that they weren't illiterate.

[Adam]

Anything which suggests Petra and John were illiterate is a mistranslation of agrammatos which means less written of. We have their writings which suggest that they weren't illiterate.
You can't prove it by Peter. Most scholars think Peter was dead long before II Peter was written, and even I Peter is often regarded at best as from his school of thought. That he personally penned it in Greek seems a stretch.
Along the same line, that Peter did not write a gospel but (at best) had Mark write down his story, gives us the impression that he was not literate. Not to speak ill of him, for during his life-time he had to deal with his native Aramaic and later with Greek and Latin. But that's all the more reason to think that he was not master of any of the three to do the writing in any of those languages.
I do believe John wrote (or had written for him) the three epistles and that he was intimately involved in the gospel bearing his name. My particular conclusions even have him editing it in Greek. He would have done this about the 60's, giving him three decades to rise up above being merely a Galilean fisherman. But I don't believe he himself devised or wrote down the Johannine theology so distinctive to the Gospel of John. That came from Jesus himself and Nicodemus as the scribe (my personal opinion). So I don't regard even John as a great thinker or scholar.
Adam

[Jaltus]

Actually, Adam, quite the converse. The natural method of letter writing for ANYONE of that time was to have a scribe write it for them, even if they were literate. The point of having a scribe is to allow one's thoughts to flow and let the scribe edit them into a better rhetorical format.

As for the fisherman charge, please remember that Peter owned home in multiple locations, not something a poor fisherman is wont to do. Likely Peter was in the elusive "middle class," where he owned multiple boats and his family had a good amount of money, though would not be even close tot he Jerusalem aristocracy.

[Jaltus]

Oh, as for literacy, scholars hugely debate this, but odds are literacy was at about 5% for the Empire in general but likely higher in Israel, perhaps between 15-25% (reading Torah scrolls).

[howardyou]

Thanks for the clarification. I hardly know a word of Greek myself; I was just repeating something I'd read. But I did not in any way mean to imply that Peter and John were not the authors of their books. It just puts in perspective how large a library the Old and New Testaments really are--not by modern standards, of course; but to have the coherent writings of a good twenty different Christians in the first century--it's really something.

[Weboh2]

Adam, you don't have clue about Johanine theology, because you don't know greek. John never wrote anything to suggest dietyhood for Christ

[Adam]

Adam, you don't have clue about Johanine theology, because you don't know greek. John never wrote anything to suggest dietyhood for Christ
Why do you assume that I don't know Greek?
Why do you lie about John, or are you implying that John did not write any of the five New Testament books usually attributed to him?
(I'm assuming that by "dietyhood" you mean "deity", even though it apparently makes you a liar to assume so.)
Adam

[Jaltus]

Adam, you don't have clue about Johanine theology, because you don't know greek. John never wrote anything to suggest dietyhood for Christ

I find it interesting that the Johannine corpus, especially the gospel, are dated later by liberal scholars because they display a significantly higher Christology than other NT books, especially attributing deity to Christ. And, for the record, I do know Greek.