On the Eighth and Ninth Days of Meier...

On the ninth day of Meier, his Marginal Jew brought to me, 9) a long stretch of endnotes, 8) Jesus' language, education, and social status, 7) origins of Jesus of Nazareth, 6) part 2 criteria for the historical Jesus, 5) part 1 criteria for the historical Jesus, 4) agrapha and Nag Hammadi, 3) Tacitus and other Jewish sources; 2) Josephus and the books of the canon; and 1) and an introduction to the historical Jesus.

Because I'm just now doing yesterday's summary--and since the ninth day is a rather large stretch of endnotes, I'm just going to post under today's date and pronounce myself caught up. I'll try to do two days worth on Monday to finish before Epiphany, January 6.

Language
Meier looks at four languages spoken in Palestine at the time of Christ and asks which one Jesus is most likely to have used in his life and ministry. He rules Latin out fairly quickly. There are Latin inscriptions in Palestine, but they were mainly statements of power. The Romans wrote them for themselves and couldn't care less whether anyone else understood their specific meaning other than to say, "We're in control and you aren't."

Greek is more difficult to say. Meier concludes with those who think Jesus probably knew enough Greek to conduct business transactions and such. About a third of the funeral inscriptions in Jerusalem are in Greek. Nevertheless, Meier draws on some statements in Josephus indicating that Greek was a challenge for him to indicate that even for him Greek was a second language. The Roman general Titus had Josephus deliver his message to the revolutionaries walled up in Jerusalem "in the language of their forefathers," which wasn't Greek.

Hebrew is also a possibility. The greater portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls is in Hebrew, indicating that Hebrew never stopped being spoken in Palestine, perhaps especially by those who were reacting in a conservative direction against Hellenization and such. But Meier concludes in the end that Aramaic is the most likely, especially given Aramaic words and phrases in the gospels (like Abba, Talitha Cum, Eloi, Eloi, Lama...). Some Aramaic targums found at Qumran are fairly wooden translations of Scripture, meaning that they were to help people understand rather than interpret. This fact indicates that enough people only knew Aramaic rather than Hebrew and thus needed translation.

Education
In this section Meier asks whether or not it is likely that Jesus could read. Here we must remember ourselves. We tend in Western culture to assume that if a person is illiterate, he or she is not intelligent. This is false enough in our own culture, but it is especially true when we are talking about oral cultures like the ancient world. The vast majority of the ancients could not read or write.

By the end of this section, Meier concludes that Jesus' "literacy probably extended beyond the mere ability to sign one's name or to conduct basic business transactions ('tradesman's literacy') to the ability to read sophisticated theological and literary works and comment on them ('scribal literacy')" (278). I must confess that I didn't find Meier's arguments very convincing. I'm not even sure that he made any real arguments.

In the first part he mentions three possible passages that would support Jesus being literate, including Luke 4 where Jesus reads in the synagogue gathering of Nazareth. But Meier does not consider any of these passages certain indicators, especially if Luke 4 is Luke's expansion of Mark 6. Meier discounts later Talmudic traditions about standardized Jewish education as much later than Jesus' day and quite possibly legendary.

Then he pulls Jesus' literacy out of a hat. He thinks there was a "strong conservative streak" in Galilee. He hasn't convinced me of this--the names of Jesus' family seem a pretty thin basis for this claim. I'm open to it but not convinced. Then he talks about Jesus' debates with religious leaders. Again, I can believe that Jesus had the entire Old Testament memorized and it wouldn't mean that he could read.

Was Jesus literate? He certainly could have been. The historical data is not conclusive. I will resist going off on a tangent discussing whether or not it would be important for faith for him to be literate. I can't think of any reason why it would be. Our prejudices about literacy are wrongheaded, as are any understandings of Jesus' humanity that would not allow for such.

Carpenter?
This is a very helpful section. Meier indicates that a tekton was a woodworker who made things like furniture or, according to Justin Martyr, plows and yokes. Meier finds no evidence that Jesus or Joseph helped build Sepphoris.