Did Jesus know how to Write??

[everettf]

If Jesus was god, didn't he know how to write?

Is there anything available that was written by jesus. Was there at least a scribe that would take down what he said?

I tried reading the bible but found it boring.

[Hyndis]

While trying to do a bit of research for my other thread I was reading over parts of it again.

The Bible SUCKS. It is not the greatest story ever told. Your average cheap sci-fi book involving time travel, aliens, nazis, and spaceships has a more coherent plot. The prose is also just horrendous.

And I don't think its just a translation issue, either. For proof that works that old can also be good reading, I point to a linky.

http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Plato.html


If he was supposed to be a deity, why was Jesus illiterate? And why is his message, if one even exists, so garbled that there's umpteen million sects of Christianity out there?

Wouldn't this whole how-to guide to salvation thing be rather important? Wouldn't such an important thing be given a high priority? If the whole heaven and hell thing was true and God really is a loving deity, then why is the only guide towards getting into heaven so garbled as to be useless? And its incoherent and boring, too.

[yalla]

Eusebius H.E 1.13 has the text of a letter, personally translated from Syriac by Eusebius, written by Jesus to Abgar, toparch of Edessa.
Believe it if you wish.

[everettf]

Eusebius H.E 1.13 has the text of a letter, personally translated from Syriac by Eusebius, written by Jesus to Abgar, toparch of Edessa.
Believe it if you wish.
It looks like mythology
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?sm1=TG9jYXRpb246IG96IEV1c2ViaXVzLCB3cml0dGVuIGJ5IEplc3VzIHRvIEFiZ2FyLCB0b3BhcmNoIG9mIEVkZXNzYS4g&fw=7&fc=0&ss=-1&es=-1&gwp=11&ver=1.0.7.177&method=1

[yalla]

Sure does.
There is supposed to be another example of JC writing.

The pericope ''The Woman Taken in Adultery'' which floats around various mss and ends up in "John" 7.6 in some versions or "Luke" 21.
Here JC bends down and writes with his finger in the ground.

Again, believe it if you wish.

[everettf]

Sure does.
There is supposed to be another example of JC writing.

The pericope ''The Woman Taken in Adultery'' which floats around various mss and ends up in "John" 7.6 in some versions or "Luke" 21.
Here JC bends down and writes with his finger in the ground.

Again, believe it if you wish.

I meant, does anything remain on stone or papyrus. Or anything that is proof of his writing ability.

[jonesg]

I tried reading the bible but found it boring.


Its too complicated for you, try something simpler like a science book.

[yalla]

"anything that is proof of his writing ability"
Nope
Of course not.
Fictional characters have no reality outside their literary creators. I'm a mythicist.

But I just remembered an example from the gospel of "Luke'' 4.16.
JC reads an extract from Isaiah ''found the place and read .....''.
Trouble is that which he reads is not from a place [singular], it starts at one spot, jumps ahead and then comes back.
So the author has his character doing something absurd [and incorrectly described] in front of people who would know better but who make no comment on that aspect.

It's fiction.

[everettf]

Its too complicated for you, try something simpler like a science book.
Not complicated, just boring. Do you need the bible to explain science?

[Voice of reason]

There is little evidence this Jesus even existed let alone wrote anything. The historian of the time have spoked or really their lack of it, is what is amazing.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct04/Salisbury1012.htm

I doubt this godman existed or prophet whichever someone asserts, the lack of evidence of his existence is astounding.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

"anything that is proof of his writing ability"
Nope
Of course not.
Fictional characters have no reality outside their literary creators. I'm a mythicist.

But I just remembered an example from the gospel of "Luke'' 4.16.
JC reads an extract from Isaiah ''found the place and read .....''.
Trouble is that which he reads is not from a place [singular], it starts at one spot, jumps ahead and then comes back.
So the author has his character doing something absurd [and incorrectly described] in front of people who would know better but who make no comment on that aspect.

It's fiction.
It's also from the Greek Septuagint which would confuse them even more.

The adulterous woman story does not explicitly say that Jesus wrote any words, only that he "scratched" in the dirt with a stick. It doesn't say what he scratched.

Of course, that story is interpolated anyway.

According to John Crossan, 95-98% of the Palestinian state was illiterate at the time of Jesus. I can't see that anyone from a sub-peasant class in rural Galilee would have had any occasion to learn how to read and write.

[Notsri]

According to John Crossan, 95-98% of the Palestinian state was illiterate at the time of Jesus. I can't see that anyone from a sub-peasant class in rural Galilee would have had any occasion to learn how to read and write. Crossan's estimates notwithstanding, it's probably not altogether improbable that Jesus could read, though it's likely a different story with regard to writing.

Though it extends us somewhat beyond Jesus' own lifetime, Birger Gerhardsonsson comments in Manuscript & Memory: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity: "We may be quite sure that at the time of the fall of the Temple there were private elementary schools in all the Jewish towns of Palestine, and that the larger villages of Judaea also had such schools" (p. 59). He is quick to add, though: "This does not mean that school attendance was general at that time, though."

Rabbinic sources, to my knowledge, suggest that schools and elementary education (in the scriptures) were actually fairly widespread during Jesus' day and age. Though I'm sure scholars think it's not without some exaggeration, the Yerushalmi, Megillah 3:1, 73d, for example, suggests that late in the Second Temple period: "There were four hundred and eighty synagogues in Jerusalem, each of which had a Bible school for the study of Bible."

Perhaps the more relevant of excerpts comes from Harry Gamble, in Books and Readers in the Early Church: "Instruction in reading Hebrew was more widely given among Jews than instruction in Greek or Latin was among Gentiles and with less regard to social status." He goes on: "The aim of education in [the Jewish so-called "house of reading" and the "house of learning"] was not literacy as such but the ability to participate in Jewish life, so the capacity to read and understand scripture, especially the Torah, stood at the center of instruction." And still a little further on, he says: "the reason and opportunity to become literate in Jewish society did not exist, at least not to the same extent, in Greco-Roman society, and so there was a higher rate of literacy among Jews than among Gentiles" (p. 7).

Regards,
Notsri

[mindovermyth]

Its too complicated for you, try something simpler like a science book.

If it is more complicated than a science book, I suppose you would agree that children should hardly be introduced to it, right? :confused:

[Huon]

Eusebius H.E 1.13 has the text of a letter, personally translated from Syriac by Eusebius, written by Jesus to Abgar, toparch of Edessa.
Believe it if you wish.

This story of a letter written by Jesus to Abgar is a legend. Here is a quote from Catholic Encyclopedy :

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01042c.htm

The fact related in the correspondence has long since ceased to be of any historical value. The text is borrowed in two places from that of the Gospel, which of itself is sufficient to disprove the authenticity of the letter. Moreover, the quotations are made not from the Gospels proper, but from the famous concordance of Tatian, compiled in the second century, and known as the "Diatessaron", thus fixing the date of the legend as approximately the middle of the third century. In addition, however, to the importance which it attained in the apocryphal cycle, the correspondence of King Abgar also gained a place in liturgy. The decree, "De libris non recipiendis", of the pseudo-Gelasius, places the letter among the apocrypha,...

[yalla]

Huon.

Obviously JC to Abgar is male bovine excreta.
What I find interesting is the role of Eusebius.
So much of purported fact can be traced back to his sticky little fingers.

On the original OP re JC writing I find it significant that all fringe examples of such are clearly shonky one way or another...a nomadic pericope, a LXX Isaiah quote absurdity
and a forged legend.
It's almost as if someone was trying to set the scene for a positive answer to the op question. That is, it was realized that it would be cool for JC to be able to read and write so various persons set out to remedy the lack thereof.]

[Huon]

Huon.

Obviously JC to Abgar is male bovine excreta.
What I find interesting is the role of Eusebius.
So much of purported fact can be traced back to his sticky little fingers.

On the original OP re JC writing I find it significant that all fringe examples of such are clearly shonky one way or another...a nomadic pericope, a LXX Isaiah quote absurdity
and a forged legend.
It's almost as if someone was trying to set the scene for a positive answer to the op question. That is, it was realized that it would be cool for JC to be able to read and write so various persons set out to remedy the lack thereof.]

Everybody should know fairly well that Eusebius was never afraid of writing lies when he found it useful. Yes.

But Eusebius is not a true believer ! If JC does not want to show that he can read, write, and speak many languages, then JC is free, no ? The Son Of God, God Himself, has no explanation to give, especially to Eusebius, if He does'nt want. JC knew certainly that Bush would invade Iraq, some day. But JC did not speak of that. It was not relevant in the time of Eusebius.

Believe, and don't ask questions.

[Vorkosigan]

Perhaps the more relevant of excerpts comes from Harry Gamble, in Books and Readers in the Early Church: "Instruction in reading Hebrew was more widely given among Jews than instruction in Greek or Latin was among Gentiles and with less regard to social status." He goes on: "The aim of education in [the Jewish so-called "house of reading" and the "house of learning"] was not literacy as such but the ability to participate in Jewish life, so the capacity to read and understand scripture, especially the Torah, stood at the center of instruction." And still a little further on, he says: "the reason and opportunity to become literate in Jewish society did not exist, at least not to the same extent, in Greco-Roman society, and so there was a higher rate of literacy among Jews than among Gentiles" (p. 7).

Regards,
Notsri

Good post, Nostri.

Vorkosigan

[Notsri]

Good post, Nostri.

Vorkosigan Thanks, Vorkosigan.

And let's emend my... Gerhardsonsson ...to Gerhardsson. :)

Regards,
Notsri

[The Admiral]

If Jesus was god, didn't he know how to write?

Is there anything available that was written by jesus. Was there at least a scribe that would take down what he said?

I tried reading the bible but found it boring.

According to Paul Maier, Professor of Ancient History, at Western Michigan University, as I quote from his book, In the Fullness of Time, "Jesus could read and write both Aramaic and Hebrew, and he undoubtedly knew common Greek as well, for he seems to have had no trouble conversing with the Syrophoenician woman or with Pontius Pilate. A few Latin words are sprinkled in the vocabulary as well". Maier then proceeds breezily on his way offering no documention to support this assertion.

The Admiral