(August 5, 2012 at 1:53 am)Drich Wrote: You do know that less than an estimated 3% of the population durning the time of Christ could read or write. Of that three percent in christ's soceity 98% of the literates belonged to the priestly tribes. (meaning they were scribes and preists who were not allowed to write or rather record 'new material' only what was then known as scripture. Not that any of them would want to.) The other 2% belong to Rome, and as such would have had very little intrest in anything not directly effecting roman affairs.
http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~barilm/illitera.html
The first century was not a time in which things were written down for the sake of doing so. writting materials were extremely expensive and perserving those writtings was also very costly, and it was something to be considered. for even if a wealthy literate man did decide to write everything down, that writting would have need to be cared for in a scriptorium. for what they wrote with and on (papirious or parchemnt) would not have lasted very long in someone home exposed to sunlight and the open air.
It wasn't till the church had been established could it afford to record and care for what was recorded. Meaning nothing would have been perserved if it was written durning the life of Christ, because only the Jews had access to everything that was needed to record and perserve a text outside of scriptoriums of rome.
The simple fact is reading and writting means very little to a soceity who does not have the materials for people to read or write on.
Seems to me that the creator of the universe could overcome something as trivial as a dearth of writing materials. Also, the Romans and Chinese, who apparently were hogging writing materials, were at the same time making use of such a precious resource by meticulously recording provincial accounting.
Your argument amounts to this: my intellectual ancestors were fuck all stupid so they didn't need to write anything down.
