Skeptics of the historical accuracy of the Gospels sometimes claim that people in the Roman Empire were overwhelmingly illiterate, and therefore the account of Jesus’ life and ministry would have been passed on only by word of mouth in fragmentary form. Under such circumstances, it would have been easy for the vague memories of the historical Jesus that remained after four to six decades (approximately the time that scholars agree that the synoptics were written) to be combined into a largely mythological account that bore little relationship to the real facts about Jesus.
One of the many serious problems with this perspective is that while first-century culture in Palestine and throughout the Roman Empire was primarily oral, literacy was much more widespread than some popular recent scholars have maintained. Some of the main reasons given for low literacy rates (lack of need for writing, lack of public education, prohibitive cost of writing materials) have been brought into serious question. There were actually quite a few important reasons to be literate in first-century society, including the ability to read publicly posted documents and deal with legal matters. Many surviving examples of “personal letters, legal deeds, divorce certificates, writing on coins, and ossuary inscriptions that were clearly not written by scribes strongly suggests that literacy levels were relatively high and widespread” (The Jesus Legend, p. 244).
There is considerable evidence that members of the lower classes were literate to some degree, and that writing materials could be improvised from less expensive materials than papyrus and parchment.
We must not overestimate the importance of formal education or underestimate the motivation to achieve literacy. Just as parents would pass along other skills to children, they doubtlessly would pass along knowledge of reading and writing. Someone who wanted to learn how to read could certainly find ways of doing so, and even rudimentary skills in reading and writing would have been useful.
It is especially hard to imagine a culture of overwhelming illiteracy among the Palestinian Jews who were the primary witnesses to Jesus’ life and ministry. Jewish culture, unlike any other ancient culture, was founded on familiarity with a written document, the Mosaic Law.1 Every synagogue in every small community, no matter how rudimentary and humble, was a center for religious teaching—including the literacy needed to read and discuss the Scriptures. The great volume of writings found at Qumran testifies to a high degree of Jewish literacy. Jesus’ followers “were not all illiterate peasant laborers and craftsmen, as the form critics supposed, but evidently included people who studied the Scriptures with current exegetical skills and could write works with the literary quality of the letter of James. Leaders who were not themselves literate could employ the services of other believers who were” (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p. 287).
Recently, biblical scholars have begun taking into account the fact that notebooks of various sorts were often used in the ancient Hellenistic world, not to replace oral transmission of information but to enhance its reliability. Internal evidence within the New Testament reinforces the view that written records were made of Jesus’ teaching long before the Gospels were written.2
Recent studies of how historical narratives and data are transmitted within primarily oral cultures have dispelled the mistaken idea that only written records are reliable and capable of recording history accurately.3 In addition to this new evidence supporting the accuracy of group oral tradition, we have good reasons for supposing that the Jesus narrative was supported by written as well as oral sources from the very beginning.
