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Some suppose Jesus might have had some ability to speak if not read Greek, which in that era was supplanting Aramaic as the international language of administration and business across the eastern Roman Empire. On 10 occasions Jesus challenged scribes or Pharisees with “have you not read?” He could have been quoting memorized passages that were quoted back to his opponents, but evangelical exegete Ben Witherington finds key circumstantial evidence: “It would have been singularly inept, ineffective, and inappropriate for Jesus to upbraid them for not reading if he himself had never read these texts and they knew he was illiterate.” We don’t know, and that doesn’t prove Luke 4, but it becomes plausible. Later, such public schooling was established in country towns so Nazareth could have been included. But Jewish historians say a century before Jesus’ time the reforming Sanhedrin leader Simeon ben Shetah founded a Jerusalem academy for boys (yes, no girls) that could be attended by youths from the provinces. Ehrman emphasizes the widespread illiteracy in Jesus’ day. Jewish tradition emphasized the education of children as the duty of parents, though royal families employed tutors. In Luke 4:16-21, Jesus attended the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, stood up and read Isaiah 61:1-2, a messianic prophecy about the coming “year of the Lord.” He then made the dramatic announcement that “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The illiteracy camp can point out that the parallel in Mark 6:2 quotes no Isaiah text and doesn’t say Jesus read Hebrew Scriptures, only that he taught. Whatever Jesus’ skill with written Aramaic, one Bible passage indicates he had some working knowledge of Hebrew, the language of the Jewish Scriptures and used by the religious elite.
WHAT LANGUAGE DID JESUS SPEAK SERIES
(Yes, he’s the Muslim-turned-Christian-turned-Muslim-again that CNN then hired to host a religion series but sacked over his profane tweet assailing President Trump.)Īs an aside, note that Random House promoted Aslan’s book as “balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources” instead of “other historical sources.” Such sleight of hand excludes the Gospels - our earliest and most extensive material - from the historical materials regarding Jesus. On the popular level, Reza Aslan asserted this in his heterodox Jesus biography “Zealot,” which was so lauded by the “mainstream” media.
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Scholars like England’s Chris Keith and America’s Bart Ehrman think it’s most probable he could not read and write. On literacy, there’s no way to know whether Jesus could read or write Aramaic.