Lloyd Evans in the British weekly Spectator unequivocally asserts that Jesus could not read, a claim made by many books and Internet sites, glossed in Northrop Frye's The Great Code: The Bible and Literature by placing Christ in the oral tradition of Socrates and other early Greek philosophers who wrote nothing, their teachings preserved by loyal disciples.
Luke 4:16-20 describes Jesus giving a public reading from Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth. Some moderns evasively claim either that Luke has invented the scene or that the book was merely a stage prop, Christ actually reciting by heart. But Luke's scene, "There was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written … And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister and sat down," has the ring of authenticity.
This audience was impressed: "And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him." Unlike the Jewish Temple congregation which (John 7:15) exclaimed, "How knoweth this man letters (grammata), having never learned?" However, their clamour died away when Jesus continued his speech. It is hard to believe that the precocious boy who dazzled Jewish professional scholars at Jerusalem with his theological acumen (Luke 2:46-48) was illiterate.
Since the fisherman Peter was literate, as most scholars since Eusebius (Church History) agree, accepting that his first epistle is genuine (if not the second), there is no reason why a carpenter's son could not equally be so. Not to mention Paul, a tent maker, tricultural as a Hellenised Jew turned Christian, who could debate Epicurean and Stoic philosophers at Athens (Acts 17:18-38), quoting "certain of your own poets" against them, and also cite a verse from classical drama to other Hellenes (1 Corinthians 15:33): "Evil communications corrupt good manners."
Luke's lone mention of Christ reading is balanced by a single (John 8:6-8) reference to his writing: "But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground." Those who reject the Luke anecdote tend to avoid this passage. There is also his Letter to Abgar, quoted (in Greek) by Eusebius, allegedly found in the Syriac archives at Edessa. This usually overlooked item is not in all Eusebian manuscripts and some Syrian ones say it was actually penned by Ananias at Jesus' dictation. Hence, a Scottish verdict of Not Proven. It should be added that Christ, who never preached overseas and was constantly with his disciples, had little need to write letters.
Jesus' youthful education is a famous mystery. However, John twice (20 and 21) makes it clear that we do not know everything. His first such observation concerns the resurrected Christ. The second his temporal life: "And there are also many things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."
Against Northrop Frye and those (like, M. Bar-Ilan, Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries) who estimate that only three per cent of the population could read, there are references to Jesus' literacy in all four Gospels (Matthew 4, 12, 19, Mark 2, 11, 12, 14, 27, Luke 3, 4, 6, 7, 20, John 6, 8). Jesus constantly says, to audiences of all stripes, "It is written" (sometimes adding specific Old Testament titles) and "Have ye not read … ?"
While it is not, of course, surprising that Jewish priests were literate, Luke's (1:63) account of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, "asking for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His Name is John," is a striking anticipation of Marshall McLuhan's motto that the medium is the message.
Despite the doubting Thomases, then, Jesus could surely read and write. For believers, he is The Word. Let Matthew 24:35 have the final say: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."
