Literacy During the New Testament Time Period

“And he [Gideon] captured a young man of Succoth and questioned him. And he wrote down for him the officials and elders of Succoth, seventy-seven men.” (Judges 8:14)

I’ve always been intrigued by this seemingly unimportant line in the book of Judges, because it indicates that a random young man who was captured in battle was able to write, and that Gideon was able to read.

There is some belief that only an elite class of people were literate during Jesus’ time. In his book Ancient Literacy, William Harris argues that social and technological conditions were such that mass literacy during the time of the Roman Empire was unthinkable, and literacy rates could not have exceeded 10-15%. This seems to be the general consensus. In this article I am going to argue that literacy in Israel during the Biblical time period was much higher than is generally believed.

Trying to make the case for any rate of ancient literacy is trickier than one might think. If any measurements of such a thing were taken, they are lost to us today. If you use texts of ancient historians like Josephus, you may notice accounts of people reading and writing, but the problem is that Josephus and most other ancient historians wrote about the elites: kings, priests, etc. Everybody agrees that those elite classes could read and write, so these kind of records don’t prove anything either way. A much better source to use to argue for literacy is the Bible itself, because the Bible talks about all kinds of ordinary people and not just the elite classes.

Now when we use the Bible to make a case for a high degree of literacy during Biblical times, it’s not the same as using the Bible to make, say, a case for Christianity. The New Testament authors of course were trying to make a case for Christianity. But they were not trying to manipulate literacy percentages - they were not trying to fool 21^st century readers into thinking more of them could read and write than really could. Therefore, the Bible ought to be considered a reliable source for this area of study even by those who are not believers.

Let’s consider some of the things the Bible says about literacy. Pontius Pilate wrote an inscription for a sign placed above Jesus’ head on the cross (Matthew 27:37). Why would someone write words on a sign? Probably because he figured that people would read it! We know the priests did, because they complained about what the sign said. John says many of the Jews read this inscription (John 19:20).

What about Jesus and his disciples? Jesus the carpenter could read (Luke 4:16). Among his disciples, Matthew could read and write, which would not be surprising for a tax collector. Matthew wrote the first gospel. The fishermen, Peter and John, also wrote New Testament books. Peter and John both had brothers, Andrew and James, and one figures that if one brother could read probably both learned to read. So that makes Jesus and five of the twelve disciples, giving us six out of thirteen readers in a group not taken from the upper echelons of society. This is not to say that the other seven disciples couldn’t read too; we just don’t have any information on them one way or the other.

Luke begins his gospel by saying that many before him had written down accounts of what Jesus did (Luke 1:1).

Jesus repeatedly asked the Pharisees, “Have you not read…” (Matthew 12:3, 12:5, 19:4, 21:16, 21:42). The implication was that of course the Pharisees had read these things. He also asked this of the Sadducees (Matthew 22:31). In Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14, the gospels contain the parenthetical statement “let the reader understand.”

So it sure sounds like we have a lot of literate people: Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, governors, tax collectors, doctors, fishermen and carpenters, plus a random captive, a bunch of folks who happened to walk past the cross, and whoever happens to read the gospels. We could add Paul, who wrote letters to Timothy and Titus, who could read, and the other New Testament authors James, Jude and the anonymous author of Hebrews.

Perhaps we should look at some evidence from outside the Bible too.

Inscriptions from a fort in Arad, Israel around 600 B.C. show writing by at least six different individuals in the army there, from the commander down to the deputy quartermaster (http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/210694). This is long before the New Testament period, but it should be assumed that Jewish literacy increased over time, as Judaism came to depend less on the Davidic monarchy and national state and more on the Law and the Prophets being read in synagogues. The teaching of reading in the synagogues eventually became codified in Judaism through the tradition of the Barmitzvah, in which, among other things, a 13 year old boy would read the Torah.

I suspect that the belief in a low level of literacy for New Testament Jews may be based on an analogy to agrarian people in third world countries in more recent times. There the literacy rates were low indeed. But the analogy is arbitrary. Written texts were important to the Jewish people, and the Greco-Roman period overall had a fairly rich development of intellectual life – things not true in most more recent third world agrarian societies. Also, I suspect there is a little of what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery,” which is the wrong-headed idea that we modern people are intelligent while those who lived before us were dumb.

By coincidence, at the time of this writing I am attempting to learn a new foreign language (to be named later) in which the alphabet consists of 33 symbols that are completely foreign to me. I started trying to learn the alphabet in earnest today. This will take me some number of hours, but less than ten, I think. After I learn the alphabet, I will still be no good in this foreign language because I’ve never spoken it and I don’t know any of the words or grammar. However, in Jesus time, to read Hebrew, the Jews needed to learn an alphabet with 22 symbols. After that, the Hebrew language was phonetic and unlike me with my new foreign language, they already spoke it. So that’s all it would take to be literate – several hours of concentrated study. It wouldn’t be that hard. I suspect most of them could read.

Hebrew in the New Testament Period

In May 2014, Pope Francis conducted a three day visit to the holy land. During his visit, he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the two had an interesting disagreement. Speaking through a Spanish-Hebrew interpreter, Netanyahu told the Pope, "Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew." "Aramaic," Francis said, disagreeing. "He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew," replied Netanyahu. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/05/27/what-language-did-jesus-speak-the-pope-and-israels-prime-minister-disagree/?utm_term=.f5b8260e34d8] The two did not pursue the subject further, so it’s not clear how wide the disagreement between the two was. However, the Pope’s statement reflects an idea that developed in the 19^th century: that Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic as their first language, and that Hebrew was not widely used as a spoken language in the land of Israel during the New Testament time period. This view developed within the Christian academic environment and has grown to be almost universally accepted, but it is not a view shared by the Israeli Jewish community [https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-why-jesus-was-a-hebrew-speaker-1.5250513]. This chapter will attempt to show that Netanyahu was correct; that Jesus and the disciples spoke Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek all three, but that Hebrew was their first language. This understanding can improve the analysis of the development of the New Testament.

The prevailing idea that Aramic was ascendant during Jesus time is expressed by Bruce Metzger in his classic textbook The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content. Metzger says “For the ordinary Jewish populace, Hebrew was approaching the status of a dead language.” Metzger was one of the preeminent New Testament scholars of the 20^th century, and his view represents the consensus among both secular and Christian scholars. It is safe to say that Pope Francis and Bruce Metzger would be in agreement. The Passion of the Christ was an enormously successful movie produced by Mel Gibson in 2004 in which Jewish characters all spoke Aramaic.

Contrary to the Pope, Metzger and Gibson, I assert that Jesus and his disciples were essentially trilingual, speaking Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. There is nothing inherently unusual about individuals being trilingual if they are raised in an appropriate setting – many western Europeans today speak three or more languages nearly fluently. We will address each of these languages individually.

Aramaic

Essentially everyone agrees on this point: Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic. Aramaic was the main language used throughout the Middle East at this time. The books of Daniel and Ezra in the Old Testament contain lengthy Aramaic sections, and those would be familiar to Jews in Israel. A number of Aramaic words and phrases are retained in the gospels, especially in Mark. When Jesus spoke to local gentiles, such as the Syro-Phoenicean woman, Aramaic would probably be the only language choice available. It should not be necessary to argue the point in more detail, as I am aware of no general objection to stipulating that Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic.

Greek

Jesus and his disciples also spoke Greek. This may be a more problematic idea but it really shouldn’t be. The New Testament authors Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, Jude and whoever wrote Hebrews were all Jews (except maybe Luke) and they all wrote in Greek. Judea had been a Greek province from 333 B.C. through about 167 B.C., and Hellenistic influences still abounded. Some of Jesus’ speech includes words like “hypocrite,” which is pungently descriptive in Greek but doesn’t have a good equivalent in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic. When Jesus spoke to Romans, especially Pontius Pilate, Greek would be the most likely language choice. The same applies to Peter and Paul in their interactions with Roman soldiers and authorities. None of these interactions have any mention of translators or difficulties in understanding. Greek was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire. Paul and other early Christian missionaries in Europe would need to speak Greek. Of course, it is not out of the question that some of the disciples also learned Latin, but Greek would still be the first language choice throughout most of the Christian church once the number of gentile converts became significant.

Hebrew

Jesus and his disciples spoke Hebrew, and did so as their primary language. Because this is a more controversial assertion, I will develop multiple lines of evidence.

First, major literary works in the land of Israel were written in Hebrew before, during and after the New Testament period. The books of Ecclesiasticus (Ben Sirach), written 180-175 B.C., and Tobit, written 225-175 B.C, are in Hebrew. Jubilees was written in Hebrew between 175 B.C and 100 B.C. All the major works of the Essenes written during the New Testament period and preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as the Temple scroll, the Community Rule scroll and The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, are written in Hebrew. The Mishna is a collection of Jewish oral traditions completed by the beginning of the third century A.D. The Mishna codifies oral traditions from the time period before, during and slightly after the New Testament period. It is also written in Hebrew.

The Dead Sea Scrolls overall provide an additional argument for the prevalence of Hebrew during the New Testament time. The Dead Sea Scrolls were written between 250 B.C. and 68 A.D., with most of them in the range 100 B.C. to 68 A.D. There are more than 1200 Dead Sea Scrolls identified here (https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive, retrieved 12/18/2018) and more than 70% of the scrolls are in Hebrew. If scriptural texts are subtracted, the margin shrinks some, but there are still many Hebrew scrolls, including scrolls with no religious connections (such as the Copper Scroll, which is basically a treasure map). Also, a number of scrolls not found in Qumran (and so not associated with the Essene community, lest some should suggest that the Essenes were unusual in their selection of Hebrew) are written in Hebrew, like the Nahal Hever Lease of Land scroll fragments (132-135 A.D.), and letters found in Wadi Muraba’at (before 135 A.D.).

Second, coins minted by Jews in the land of Israel at this time used Hebrew. Many examples are present here: [https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ancient-jewish-coins]. Shekels from the first Jewish revolt of 66-70 A.D. contain Hebrew inscriptions that read “Shekel of Israel” on one side and “Jerusalem the Holy” on the other. Maccabean coins and coins from the Bar Kochba rebellion of 132-135 also have Hebrew inscriptions. 

Ossuaries, or burial boxes, were common in the Jerusalem area in the period 40 B.C. through 135 A.D. Many of these have inscriptions, and the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek languages are all generously represented in these inscriptions. (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ossuaries-and-sarcophagi, retrieved 12/18/2018)

So to summarize the archeological evidence: books, letters, coins and burial inscriptions all commonly used Hebrew. This should be sufficient to demonstrate that Hebrew was the language commonly used by Jews in the land of Israel during the New Testament period. In a subsequent post, I will develop some ideas as to how this can help our understanding of the New Testament.

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Three Poems in Ruth

     Old Testament narratives are typically written in prose, but one feature of these Biblical Hebrew narratives is that they often include a short poem at a moment of climax. For example, Genesis 1 is prose, but when the creation account reaches man, there is a short poem about man being created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Genesis 2 is prose, but when Adam meets his wife, he responds with a poem (Genesis 2:23). Genesis 3 is prose, but when God pronounces the curse, it is in poetry (Genesis 3:14-19). The book of Ruth follows the same practice of introducing three poems at climactic moments.

The first poem in the book of Ruth occurs with the first real twist in the story, as Ruth, the young Moabite widow, resolves to go to the land of Israel with her mother in law rather than remaining in Moab. This passage is not always written in verse in English, but it is a beautiful poem nevertheless, often quoted at weddings:

     “Do not urge me to leave you or to turn from following you.

      For where you go I will go

      And where you lodge I will lodge

      Your people my people

      And your God my God

      Where you die I will die

         And there I will be buried.

     May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

 (Ruth 1:16-17)[1]

The main feature of Hebrew poetry is parallelism, and in this poem the parallelism can be seen both within each line (your people / my people, etc.) and between lines (you / I, you / I, your / my, your / my). The poem ends, significantly, with Ruth invoking a common Israelite oath to enforce her vow.

The second poem in Ruth occurs at the moment of highest drama, when Boaz wakens to find Ruth lying at his feet, and Ruth delivers her unusual marriage proposal. This poem is in the structure of a chiasm, a structure in which the first item matches the last, the second item matches the second to last, and so on. (The entire book of Ruth actually shows several large chiasms as an overall outline, though that is outside the scope of this article.) This verse is a short chiasm not readily apparent in English, so I have placed the English words in the same order that they occur in Hebrew:

A       I

B         Ruth

C             your maidservant

D                and you will spread your garment over

C’            your maidservant

B’         Because redeemer

A’      you

  (Ruth 3:9)

In this chiasm, in the A  and A’ lines, “I” corresponds with “you.” In the B  and B’ lines “Ruth” corresponds with “redeemer” (Boaz). The C and C’ lines are identical. Sometimes when there is a chiasm, the central point occurs in the center of the chiasm. This is the case here, as the marriage proposal itself appears in the center. An additional interesting point is that the proposal (“and you will spread your garment over”) is stated in the Hebrew imperfect tense, reading more like a statement about the future than a request. Ruth was a native Moabite speaker. The Moabite language was similar to Hebrew but not identical. Ruth, formerly married to an Israelite, would have been easily conversant in Hebrew, but would certainly at least have carried an accent. Who knows if she also slightly boggled her proposal such that it became a future source of humor for the family? In any case, Boaz understood her request and responded with enthusiasm and love.

The third poem in the book of Ruth occurs when the Bethlehem elders pronounce to Boaz a blessing on his marriage to Ruth:

A       May the LORD give the woman

B          who is coming into your house like Rachel and like Leah, the two of which built the house of Israel

C                and may you do worthily in Ephrathah

C’               and be renowned in Bethlehem

B’            and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah   

A’      That the LORD will give you because of this woman

  (Ruth 4:11-12)

The poetic structure in this chiasm is not as obvious but can still be seen. The A and A’ lines both have the words for “LORD,” “give” and “woman.” The B and B’ lines both use the word for “house” twice, and reference early Israelite ancestors. The C and C’ lines have a blessing with the parallel words “Ephrathah” and “Bethlehem.”

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[1] Here and throughout the article I have generated a literal translation to closely match the Hebrew words and word order.

The Final Masorah

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The Masoretes were Jewish scribes who copied the Bible. The Masoretes developed a system of vocalization, adding vowel markings to the Hebrew language (in Hebrew, the letters are all consonants), and supplying other helps for reading the Bible. The Hebrew Bible called the Masoretic Text, produced by the Masoretes, is the primary source of English language Old Testament translations today.

This short note describes one additional thing they did which I always found interesting. At the end of each book in the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretes added a brief epilogue (called the "Final Masorah") with some statistics about the book. The following epilogue is found at the end of the book of Deuteronomy (the translation is mine).

“The sum of the verses that are in the book are 955.”

“The middle word is ‘al_pi’ and there are 31 lessons."

“The sum of the verses that are in the Torah are 5845.”

“The sum of the lessons that are in the Torah are 167.”

“The sum of the words that are in the Torah are 79,856.”

“The sum of the letters that are in the Torah are 400,945.”

So - they counted the letters. Why? They wanted to make sure they didn't leave one out, or add an extra one in, of course. It speaks to the care with which the Bible was copied.

Bible Translation Decisions - God's Name

One of the most influential Bible translation decisions in history is also one of the strangest. This was the decision to not translate or transliterate the name of God used in the Old Testament - Yahweh. "Yahweh" appears 6828 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, far more than any other name and nearly three times as much as "Elohim" (God). Since Yahweh is a name, one would normally expect to see it or something close to it in translations.  Instead, in most modern English Bibles, Yahweh is translated as "The LORD," with LORD in all capital letters.

This translation decision did not originate in English translations. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament made before the time of Christ, rendered Yahweh with the Greek word "Kurios," meaning Lord. Kurios does not always refer to a divine being, but can also be an earthly lord or master. The Septuagint was a translation made by Jews, and perhaps the Jewish custom of not speaking the name of Yahweh out loud figured into this translation decision. The Greek New Testament continued the tradition, as did the Latin Vulgate, which uses "Dominus." More recently, the Holmann Christian Standard Bible chose to use "Yahweh" in some places (such as Exodus 6:3), yet it retains the usage of "The LORD" in most places.

This translation decision is too nearly unanimous and has too much church tradition behind it to call it seriously into question. Still, it has some disadvantages. Some passages have a confusing sound: "The LORD said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool" (Psalm 110:1, quoted also in Luke 20:42). Who is speaking, who is listening and who are they talking about? It would be easier to understand if the translation was "Yahweh said to my master..."

Also, in English, the words "Lord" and "God" are completely interchangeable - most any sentence that uses one of those words could use the other instead. However, the usage of the Hebrew originals "Yahweh" (The LORD) and "Elohim" (God) are very different. We tend to lose this distinction, possibly due to the translation decision. For example, Yahweh is used in an Israelite context (Daniel 9) and Elohim is used in a Gentile context (Daniel 1-8, 10-12). Elohim is used in a creation context (Genesis 1, Psalms 19:1) and Yahweh is used in a lawgiver/judge context (Genesis 2 and 3, Psalms 19:7). Because Yahweh is a personal name and Elohim is a title, the use of Yahweh is usually more personal than Elohim.

The best thing a non-Hebrew reader of the Bible can do is look for and notice the distinction between "The LORD" and "lord." The first is the translation of the name, Yahweh, while the second is a translation of "adonai," a word which can mean either a divine or an earthly master.

Bible Translation Decisions - Names

This is the first on what I hope will be several blog entries related to English Bible Translation Decisions. I hold a high view of the authority of scripture and hope that these entries are taken in a way that honors the Bible. This entry deals with names.

In English translations of the New Testament, names of cities match the names given in the Old Testament. Jerusalem is still Jerusalem, Bethlehem is still Bethlehem, etc. I am glad about this. I wish that the same thing had been done with names of people, but it was not. I do also think it is understandable that we use English pronunciations rather than Hebrew originals (Jerusalem is from the Hebrew Yerushalayim), as this is standard practice in the English language when dealing with foreign names.

Because the New Testament comes to us in Greek and the Old Testament in Hebrew, the New Testament (NT) names are often Greek transliterations of a Hebrew name, so they end up sounding different, even though they are really the exact same name. For example, Simon (NT) is Simeon (OT). Judas (NT) is Judah (OT). Also, Judas is the same name as Jude, the book before Revelation. Mary (NT) is Miriam (OT). A few names have carried over: Joseph is still Joseph. A strange one is that James (NT) = Jacob (OT). That switch seems different from the others, because James is not a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Jacob. This not due to the influence of King James, as both Tyndale and Wycliffe translated using James before King James was born. I've read that it is due to a roundabout Latin and French influence.

When the New Testament references Old Testament characters, the English Bible translations keep the Old Testament names, which is good because if it didn't it would really be confusing. Jacob is still Jacob in the New Testament, as long as the Jacob in question is Isaac's son/Abraham's grandson.

The name of Jesus is a special case, since Jesus is the Hebrew "Yeshua," which is a short form of Joshua, the son of Nun. The longer form "Yehoshua" is used throughout the Old Testament, except for one entry in Chronicles, which shortens it to "Yeshua." So I do think it is understandable that Jesus is not translated as Joshua, since the New Testament name is not the same name as the one usually used in the Old Testament.

If we understand that the New Testament uses many of the same names as Old Testament characters, it may increase our understanding of the unity of all scripture, both Old and New Testament.

Biblical Hebrew Weak Verbs

I teach a Biblical Hebrew class. Most Biblical Hebrew textbooks devote multiple chapters to the study of "weak" verbs, that is verbs that have one or more guttural letters, the letters vav or he, or a second letter doubled. I believe for most English speakers who are learning to read Biblical Hebrew (not to speak it), this is unnecessarily complex. Usually, all a reader needs to do is find the three letter lexical form of the verb. Once the three letters are known, the student will either know the verb due to earlier memorization, or the student can look it up in a lexicon.

The following method for finding the three letter lexical verb form was recommended to me by my Hebrew professor at Baylor University, Dr. Edward Dalglish. Follow the flow chart, and the three letters can be identified for more than 95% of Hebrew verbs that appear in the Bible. The exceptions (several of which are identified on the chart) are well known verbs which are usually recognizable without the aid of the chart. If the chart looks a bit complex, remember that it takes the place of multiple chapters in a textbook. Also remember that this chart is for identifying verbs so they can be read - I wouldn't recommend this approach for people who are attempting to become conversational in Hebrew.

Click on the chart to see the whole thing.