The Mystery of Jesus Christ. (Page 9)

CoIin: Thanks SG

The most obvious answer would appear to be that Jesus (assuming he existed) was illiterate. Illiteracy was the norm back then, quite the reverse of what it is today. Only the elite could be expected to be literate. And from what we're told of the humble origins of Jesus, he was anything but "elite".

Zanjan: History knows where Shakespere lived, I saw a picture of his house. Fact: , I've never searched the British Land Titles Office to see if that's true so I take it on reasonable faith. I have no reason not to.

Colin, all Jews of the time and place were literate. Jesus read in the Temple from the scrolls, and wrote in the sand. Pen and paper were hard to come by but vellum was plentiful, though pricey. Obviously, they didn't have the time to carefully inscribe it.

Illiteracy was the norm for non-Jewish populations. Actually, it was very common in Canada even when I was young. The shocker is these illiterate ones actually graduated from high school - THAT is either a miracle or splendid proof of the powers of human resourcefulness.

Muhammad was definitely illiterate but had an amanuensis to record it as delivered. Then read it back to Him for approval.

sprocket girl: zanjan
yes i have visted shakespears residence. i dont think anyone doubts his life... more silly arguements if he took credit for someone elses work..
i think he wrote the works.. but anyhow was just saying its crazy that people will challenge anything...

Zanjan: True......they seem not to understand that a challenge doesn't exist without anything to back the challenge. Most of us wouldn't challenge a grunting bear, who's staring right at them. The bear doesn't need to submit paper documents to prove his capabilities.

The opposing Jews weren't stupid - they well knew Jesus had the requisite "stuff" to be a king - that's why they feared Him. Notice they didn't challenge Jesus; instead, they tried to trick Him. They were quite experienced at that. Everyone knows their enemy yet a clever man can still be a fool.

chayi: Not true
To say that they were politically and corrupted, was made by jesus and his followers, but the truth was that jesus was evil

Again; in the bible is only written the good stuff and in a good way, what they are really pure jewish knowledge and wisdom, and far after he was already gone, but everything what jesus really said and was, was not written in the existing bible

ghostgeek: If the old texts are to be believed, Jesus promised redemption from earthly sin by the simple geature of genuine personal repentance, an internal act of will and faith. In contrast, the orthodox Jewish method required the making of offerings at the Jerusalem Temple, and often involved an expensive journey. Economic and political considerations on the part of the Jewish authorities can thus be seen to underlie the arrest and execution of Jesus. In other words, the temple priests feared the loss of money and influence if Jesus' ideas took hold in the populace.

CoIin: @ ghostgeek

I'm just wondering if your research can offer any clues as to the possible literacy of Jesus, assuming for now that he did exist.

Anyone claiming to KNOW this one way or the other can, I suppose, be safely ignored.

Zanjan: There is no religious body that wants to lose members yet all of them lose a few. Fact of life. However, some refuse to accept that. Refer to the many horror stories of those adherents that either tried to or succeeded in escaping the group. A corrupt group doesn't treat apostates well after they leave; an honorable one does.

Chayii, I really hate to bring this up again but you shouldn't forget the ultimate, unbiased judgment - God kicked the Jews out of the Holy Land and destroyed their temple. Once the deadbeats were removed, God handed Israel to the Christians to rule.

Lest you think this was accidental, that was the second time the Jews got the boot. Try as you might, you can't hide God's judgement or change history.

CoIin: Bart Ehrman is a leading Biblical scholar, the only one whose works I can claim any familiarity with. Here's what he has to say, in paraphrase, about the question of Jesus' literacy.

By the way - and this shouldn't even need saying - illiteracy has nothing at all to do with stupidity. I hope no one is getting the wrong impression. Jesus' not being able to read and write, if indeed this is the case, doesn't mean he was a dummy.



"Over at his blog Christianity in Antiquity, Bart Ehrman answers a reader's email about my monograph, Jesus' Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee (T&T Clark, 2011), a link to which is below. He speaks positively of the study (and my first book, which he and Eldon Epp published in their Brill series) and gives a useful overview of some of the pertinent issues surrounding this complex, interesting, and controversial issue. Bart and I are largely on the same page, as he notes, but he holds out some possibility for Jesus being able to read Hebrew. So much of this issue must remain unknown ultimately, but I think that's very unlikely. Ossuary inscriptions from the Second Temple period indicate that some level of familiarity of Hebrew existed even at the popular level. But knowing a few words and using them in a funerary context is a far cry from being able to read sophisticated scriptio continua Hebrew documents. Even in our own context, we wouldn't conclude from tombstones with Latin inscriptions that people in our culture can generally read Virgil's Aeneid, much less read it publicly. These types of literary skills--reading and writing and/or copying lengthy Hebrew texts (and remember that not everyone who could read could also write)--resided mainly among the scribal-elite circles who had the leisure time to pursue such an education. The vast majority of Second Temple Jews living off the land were illiterate, as they had no real use for literate skills and no time in which to acquire them. Bart rightly cites the influential works of William Harris and Catherine Hezser in this regard, who both show that there was nothing like a public education system that reached the majority of the populace. But even among the minority scribal elite who did receive an education, not all attained complete proficiency in reading Hebrew. One of the documents from the Qumran community, 4Q266, includes a statement that members were not allowed to read Torah publicly unless they could do so without having to "sound out" the words. And despite what many people say, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO RELIABLE EVIDENCE THAT READING AND WRITING EDUCATION OCCURRED IN SYNAGOGUES IN THE FIRST CENTURY. That is a projection of our own literate society onto the world of Jesus. There is no solid evidence that there was an elementary school in the synagogue at Nazareth, much less that Jesus attended it."

http://historicaljesusresearch.blogspot.tw/2013/07/bart-ehrman-me-and-jesus-literacy-chris.html

Zanjan: I taught all my kids to read before they ever went to kindergarten. They could read and pronounce out loud big words, like "omnipotence" while other kids hadn't even begun to learn the alphabet. By then, they'd also memorized a number of prayers with several paragraphs and could recite them without prompting.

It's true they could read better than they could write but only because of immature muscle development and control of motors skills at age 4.

I'm not saying ancient children had these same capacities at the same age, only that any mother could have taught them at home.

chayi: In reply to zanjan
God did never, and will never abandon Israel, look in the prophecy books, it says clearly; it means the descenders = the seed of Jacob, when the Israelites were sinning, the non israelites were worse, God makes Israel suffer they should improve

We know, and it says Deuteronomy, that God will return to Israel after years years of exile and sufferings, and it it's called the last the days

Zanjan: "descenders" - that means people going *down* Jacob's ladder, Chayii. How often do you get lost at airports?

"seed" refers to potential offspring - no guarantees it will germinate.

You don't belong to God based on your nationality or bloodline. You have to crawl your way to God and prove to Him your sincerity.

Israel is country with boarders, not a human being. The people who were born there aren't Israelites, they're Israelis. Do you see the difference?

The Holy Land isn't a label; the term refers to a condition of location -> the "Promised" land. As such, it's a legacy given to whomever God chooses is worthy of it.

lori100: I missed it...but there is lots of evidence that Shakespeare was a fraud....he and his family were illiterate for one....---------In Elizabethan times, “Shake-spear” meant “to shake-a-spear.” Shaking a spear is a reference to the Greek goddess of theatre, Pallas-Athena, also known as the “spear-shaker.” This goddess is always depicted carrying a spear, hence the pen name, “Shake-spear.”
any plays, not credited to “William Shakespeare” appeared under the nom-de-plume “Shake-spear,”-----------------A partial list of the Shakespeare doubters include Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Hardy, Oliver Wendel Holmes, Walt Whitman, Otto von Bismarck, Benjamin Disraeli, James Joyce, James Barrie, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, John Gielgud, John Galsworthy, Leslie Howard, Daphne Dumaurier, Malcolm X, Helen Keller, Derek Jacobi, US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and Henry James, who wrote, “I am haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced.”

chayi: You deny what the prophecy books say, and what The Torah says, that Moses said to Israel, in the prophecy of God, that he knows that Israel will sin, and they will be exiled and punished for a long long time, till the end of the times that they will come back to God with their whole true heart, and then God will please them like never before, for ever, look in Deuteronomy

It is because the seed of Israel are forced to be God's nation, because they are the holy seed and spirit, and even when they sin, its like an out side sin, not their spirit and soul itself, its from the outside influence they see from the non Jewish nations, and they learned from them to sin, and God punishes them to leave the sin ways, and to improve and complete their soul and spirit totally, and this will be by the end of the times, in today's time

Zanjan: I took my client to church today and the Pastor was still enamored on the theme of Pentacost - how did 3000 people suddenly become Christians all at once? This is something to ponder. So I did.

My thought was to feel sympathy for the pastor because he has such a tremendous challenge to animate his audience - how do you come up with fresh stuff on something that's so very old? Aha......SPIRIT!

Well, it happened that the young Associate Pastor's wife had just given birth; he presented their 3 day old daughter to the congregation. So, the elder pastor was truly inspired today, talking about the Plan of God -> the agony of death is the pain of birth into new life. Through death, God relieved Jesus of His agony; He moved into the next world where God could hand Him the Holy Spirit to pour out onto the people.

Then he said something interesting. I don't know if this is actually true or not but sure made me think a lot. He said the Jews would never get upset with anyone for believing in another teaching; if a Jew went to listen to the teachings of Christ and believed them, that wouldn't be any problem either, they were all still family and friends. Everything would be OK.

BUT, if if a Jew who believed these teachings was BAPTIZED a Christian, THAT"S when they were ostracized from the Jewish community - they'd be good as dead to them.

I reflected on how my family treated me when I became a Baha'i. (my family was all non-religious). At first, when I explained to them what the faith was about, so they didn't have to worry I'd joined some death cult, they were fine. No problem. But the moment they realized I was serious, and had turned over a new leaf, that I'd become another person - permanently -- that was the end. They wouldn't have anything to do with me.

Try as I might to keep unity, they pushed me out of their sight and never wanted to see me again. They disowned me. As the years passed and more distant relatives and friends inquired as to my absence, they responded it was by MY choice! There was nothing I could do to defend that.

So what happened here? God split us apart - not because we had different beliefs, but because we had different values. They saw where my treasure was, and it wasn't what they treasured.

So be it. If you want to step into a new life, be prepared to give up something you had before, if you can't abandon the old world, you can't enter into the new one. It took me a long time to realize that I couldn't "rescue" my family from slipping away.

Just wanted you to know that this is a universal dynamic - no one escapes.

Zanjan: Chayii: "and God punishes them to leave the sin ways, and to improve and complete their soul and spirit totally, and this will be by the end of the times, in today's time"

I agree - the end times is today's times, the 21st century. So, as a Jew, are you still feeling like you're being punished?

chayi: Not really, but till lately yes, but it's really not a question, because in suffering is a lot levels and what suffering, so it's in progress

Zanjan: I understand the value of suffering - very important to progress. I also understand that all things change - the Lord giveth and taketh. Have you ever thought that you could do something to change that suffering?

chayi: Sure i do, i am trying to do what God wants, with a true heart, my heart shouldn't have the slightest evil, my soul should be pure and true, and improve with everything i can, every new day, is better than the previous day, every day is closer to the good end

CoIin:

CoIin: Can you do something about Scotland's goal aggregate?

chayi: Everything is a process, evolving, and improving

ghostgeek: Colin, you asked earlier about the possible literacy of Jesus, assuming that he existed. I've seen diverse opinions on this matter, one stating that 97% of country folk would have been illiterate. This seems highly unlikely, given that there was a strong tradition of educating males so they would be able to take their turn reading the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament. The Jerusalem Talmud even says that the rule of Simeon ben Schetach (100 B.C.) was that all Jewish children should go to school. According to both Philo and Josephus education began early in Torah and was not just for the upper class elites. In addition, there are references to Jesus reading and writing in the Gospels:

Luke 4:16

"He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read" [ New International Version ]

John 8:6-8

"6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground." [ King James Version ]

If Jesus the man ever walked the earth then there is a good chance he had a grasp of the art of reading and probably of writing as well.

ghostgeek: Chayiii, your statement is blatantly false. The English football team proves that.

chayi: Failure with nonsense and evil, is a process to eliminate evil