(July 3, 2017 at 3:12 pm)Lek Wrote:(July 2, 2017 at 9:22 pm)Jehanne Wrote: Hebrew was also known, but probably not Greek, as that was the language of the educated, and the Gospels say that the disciples were illiterate.
I don't remember where the gospels say that all the disciples were illiterate. Where does it say that? The apostle Matthew was tax collector and I would assume that he would have to keep documentation in his job. In fact, the bible doesn't identify who most of his disciples were. How would we know they if were all illiterate or not?
Most (over 95%) of the peoples in the ancient world were illiterate. As the disciples were lower-case workers (fisherman, carpenters, etc.), they were almost certainly illiterate, and there's no good reason, historically, to think otherwise. Schools were virtually non-existent in those days, and so, they would have had to have been taught how to read and write, which was exclusive to the upper Roman and Jewish classes, which they were not part of. Besides, if they were literate, it simply begs the question as to why they did not leave any writings?
