MrMacSon

Parts of the canonical gospels say Jesus could read and write. Luke 4 tells us of an incident where Jesus read [from the prophet Isaiah 58:6].


There is a passage in John 8 that refers to Jesus writing:

* This is considered by some to be reference to Jeremiah 17:13

13 O Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.

One might have expected Jesus to have written something of his thoughts or teachings.
There is reference to Jesus not needing to write anything because there were plenty of scribes to do that for him, so one might expect some records or copies of transcriptions from the time?
.

MrMacSon

Why the NT narrative might have Jesus writing in the dirt on the ground is discussed here (though as a proposal that Jesus was fulfilling an OT prophecy about what He would do when He came; rather than as a proposition that the NT had been written to retrospectively address the OT prophecy) -

Garon

Or he may have just been doodling like people do today when talking on the phone or contemplating an answer to a question.

As for him asking the accusers without sin to cast the first stone, I've been told that they were committing adultery with her and knew they were wrong accusing her. So they left.

I also think the whole story is made up to show that Jesus was not an accuser but a wise man who told her, don't do that anymore because the next time no one will be able to get you out of trouble.

Grog

Well...current thinking is that Jesus was an illiterate laborer from a backwater suburb of Sepphoris. He might have known some Greek but would not have been proficient and the likelihood that he would have access to learning writing and reading would have been limited. I find it improbable that such a character would have been followed all the way Jerusalem and create any movement of any size or credibility.

outhouse

Who says he was followed by any decent sized crowd, mythology?

He wasnt remembered or written about prior to his death, because before his death in my opinion, he was a nobody from a small poor village.

He was however remembered for his actions in the temple in front of hundreds of thousands of attendants who generated oral tradition that grew from legend to mythology.


Reading and writing abilities are guessed at due to lack of reliable information regarding these details. If I had to guess, Id say he was illiterate as common as it was for the poor.

Diogenes the Cynic

The story in John is not original to the Gospel and was a medieval insertion, so it indicates nothing.

Luke's pericope about Jesus reading in the synagogue is identifiable as fictive because it has Jesus reading from the LXX, not the Hebrew, and has him reading two passages that are not close together on the scroll. It's also anachronistic because there were no synagogues in Galilee in the 1st Century.

Grog

Josephus does not record any such event. He does record an eerily similar event that would have happened during his lifetime concerning a different Jesus disrupting the Temple, getting interrogated, then flogged by the Roman governor. That one was recorded.

Minimalist

The same book claims he walked on water, drove out demons, cursed trees, fed a multitude and came back from the dead? Why believe anything written in that silly book?

Grog

In pre-70s Galilee. Aren't there late first century synagogues? Anyway...Yes, concerning Luke's story, which should help us date that Gospel, right?

Grog

outhouse, you cherry pick the evidence. Your source says Jesus attracted a sizeable following, which you reject. Your source says Jesus created a disturbance in the Temple, which you accept. Why one and not the other? What methodology, other than your own preference, do you select one truth from the other?