Ignorance and the Bible

gmark77 said:
God damn, Cy. Domer didn't call them that.
Click to expand...
As far as I can tell he didn't like me comparing his claim about literacy in Galilee to literacy in the wider Mediterranean world.

I've seen no sound reasoning that literacy rates in Galilee would be unique and utterly different from the rest of the Roman Empire, which like Galilee was largely rural.

So if we're going to hold out Galilee as this particularly illiterate place, then that standard should apply to most of the Roman Empire at large.
 
Cypress said:
As far as I can tell he didn't like me comparing his claim about literacy in Galilee to literacy in the wider Mediterranean world.

I've seen no sound reasoning that literacy rates in Galilee would be unique and utterly different from the rest of the Roman Empire, which like Galilee was largely rural.
Click to expand...
His mother should wash his mouth out with soap.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
His mother should wash his mouth out with soap.
Click to expand...
This is a message board.

I am allowed to read their claims, and push them to their logical conclusion, make related tangential points, add additional commentary.

If the claim is that Galilee was extremely illiterate, and there's nothing utterly unique or special about Galilee, let's just say the Roman Empire mostly was extremely illiterate.
 
gmark77 said:
Why don't you find some data for Roman Palestine about 1CE?
Click to expand...
You're insinuating literacy dropped from 600 BCE to the first century AD, even though in the intervening years the biblical lands of Israel had been highly Hellenized and Romanized with classical Greek and Roman culture?
 
Cypress said:
This is a message board.

I am allowed to read their claims, and push them to their logical conclusion, make related tangential points, add additional commentary.

If the claim is that Galilee was extremely illiterate, and there's nothing utterly unique or special about Galilee, let's just say the Roman Empire mostly was extremely illiterate.
Click to expand...
Agreed. No need to read in the days when scribes were able to do the work. In the US 19th century, it was illegal in some states to teach slaves to read. Literacy is a powerful tool.

www.history.com

How Literacy Became a Powerful Weapon in the Fight to End Slavery | HISTORY

Following Nat Turner's rebellion of 1831, legislation to limit Black people's access to education intensified. But en...
www.history.com www.history.com
Ultimately, however, Virginia and other southern states opted to keep slavery in place and tighten control of African Americans’ lives, including their literacy. In the antebellum South, it's estimated that only 10 percent of enslaved people were literate. For many enslavers, even this rate was too high. As Clarence Lusane, a professor of political science at Howard University notes, there was a growing belief that “an educated enslaved person was a dangerous person.”


Kinda puts a new spin on the Republican efforts to defund public education. Sad.
 
Cypress said:
Galilee is part of the Mediterranean, and on average should be expected to be about the same as the rest of the Roman Empire, which was largely rural.

You can't hold out Galilee as this utterly unique and wondrous land of illiterate morons and mouth breathing yokels. On average, if should be expected to be about the same as most of the Mediterranean world in literacy.

You haven't investigated this closely enough.

Early bishops the the late first and second centuries identified the authors of the gospels as evangelist Mark, the physician Luke, and the apostles Matthew and John.

Maybe they were wrong. But falling back on the "everybody's lying!" argument is not very convincing.

No one can prove anything about the authors.
But we're not talking about proof are we? Proof is only achievable in mathematics.

What we can do is infer based on sound logic and reasoning.

The fact you had to rapidly Google this means you did not have a prior background on the scholarship of New Testament authorship.

Is that your standard? I don't think it is. I think you selectively apply that standard based on an agenda. We don't have any surviving accounts of Alexander the Great until four centuries after his death.

Pappias lived in the first century.

You're dangerously close to crossing the line into arguing "everybody is lying and confused!"
That's not a strong or convincing argument.
Click to expand...
Nope, they didn’t “identify” anyone. The gospels were anonymous. The names were assigned by someone.

Galilee was more rural than Judah and places where Roman garrisons were placed.

I didn’t have to rapidly google anything. I knew the anonymity of the gospels, the order, who copied who copied who and the literacy of Galilee long ago.

People wrote about Alexander contemporaneously. Not with Jesus. None. If his disciples were so fucking literate, why didn’t they write anything about him?

We can’t continue if you twist my posts again. I never said anyone lied, but you’re coming damn close when referencing my words.

Pappias lived in the first century. Nothing of his texts survives. Only 4th century muddled references. Try to fucking read.
 
Cypress said:
You're insinuating literacy dropped from 600 BCE to the first century AD, even though in the intervening years the biblical lands of Israel had been highly Hellenized and Romanized with classical Greek and Roman culture?
Click to expand...

I don't know what it did. I'm just pointing out that your reference isn't related to the same time frame.
 
Cypress said:
As far as I can tell he didn't like me comparing his claim about literacy in Galilee
Click to expand...

Yeah but Cy, you are literally the only person on this thread who is calling Christians "morons" and other pejorative names. Sure you claim others are saying it but no one else has as consistently hurled insulting names at Christians and Jews on this thread that you.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Agreed. No need to read in the days when scribes were able to do the work. In the US 19th century, it was illegal in some states to teach slaves to read. Literacy is a powerful tool.

www.history.com

How Literacy Became a Powerful Weapon in the Fight to End Slavery | HISTORY

Following Nat Turner's rebellion of 1831, legislation to limit Black people's access to education intensified. But en...
www.history.com www.history.com
Ultimately, however, Virginia and other southern states opted to keep slavery in place and tighten control of African Americans’ lives, including their literacy. In the antebellum South, it's estimated that only 10 percent of enslaved people were literate. For many enslavers, even this rate was too high. As Clarence Lusane, a professor of political science at Howard University notes, there was a growing belief that “an educated enslaved person was a dangerous person.”


Kinda puts a new spin on the Republican efforts to defund public education. Sad.
Click to expand...
Slaves, women, low skill workers were definitely prohibited or discouraged from reading.

You're right, information is power.

What we found in the remains of ancient Mesopotamia were hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets, mostly with business, inventory, and administrative records. That suggests to me that a lot of merchants, skilled laborers, people involved in commerce, law, and administration had some limited level of literacy. It couldn't be limited to a few hundred scribes and priests.
 
Cypress said:
Slaves, women, low skill workers were definitely prohibited or discouraged from reading.

You're right, information is power.

What we found in the remains of ancient Mesopotamia were hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets, mostly with business, inventory, and administrative records. That suggests to me that a lot of merchants, skilled laborers, people involved in commerce, law, and administration had some limited level of literacy. It couldn't be limited to a few hundred scribes and priests.
Click to expand...
Can't tax people if the King doesn't know what they have. :)

In his now-classic study of ancient literacy, William Harris gave compelling reasons for thinking that at the best of times in antiquity only 10% or so of the population was able to read [Ancient Literacy; Harvard University Press, 1989]. By far the highest portion of readers was located in urban settings. Widespread literacy like that enjoyed throughout modern societies requires certain cultural and historical forces to enact policies of near universal, or at least extensive, education of the masses. Prior to the industrial revolution, such a thing was neither imagined nor desired. As Meir Bar Ilan notes: “literacy does not emerge in a vacuum but rather from social and historical circumstances.”

Moreover, far fewer people in antiquity could compose a writing than could read, as shown by the investigations of Raffaella Cribiore, who stresses that reading and composition were taught as two different skills and at different points of the ancient curriculum. Learning even the basics of reading was a slow and arduous process, typically taking some three years and involving repeating “endless drills” over “long hours.” “In sum, a student became accustomed to an incessant gymnastics of the mind.” These kinds of “gymnastics” obviously required extensive leisure and money, neither of which could be afforded by any but the wealthy classes.
 
Margot said:
Atheists can't comprehend the Holy Spirit!
Click to expand...

I'm not an atheist...so talk to them about that. It has nothing whatever to do with any question I have asked you.
Margot said:
So they ASSUME Blind Faith, because they are Spiritually blind and have no Faith!
Click to expand...
I do not agree with that, but take that up with them. It has nothing to do with the questions I have asked you.

Why not go to one of those posts I gave you...and actually make a comment on something I wrote.
 
gmark77 said:
Yeah but Cy, you are literally the only person on this thread who is calling Christians "morons" and other pejorative names!
Click to expand...
This thread's title:

"Ignorance and the Bible"​


I haven't called Christians morons. There weren't any Christians in 6th century BCE (the time period the study looked at), nor were there any Christians in Galilee during Jesus' life
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top