The Ehrman Project

[David Bokovoy]

Here's something I wrote on the topic of literacy among the disciples.

My link

It is germane to Ehrman, since Ehrman is Hitchens' main (only?) source on this claim.

This is good, Bill. I appreciate your point on the issue that illiteracy does not mean a person was "dumb," especially in the ancient world where very few people experienced a scribal education.

[volgadon]

As an OT guy, I don't have a dog in this fight. I believe the texts are inspired regardless who wrote them. I do agree with him, however, that ancient people were not nearly as literate as most of us have assumed. It is a fact that preindustrial societies had neither the incentive nor the means to provide mass education in literacy for their children.[

Yet there is evidence that Jewish children in the first few centuries CE were provided at least a rudimentary education. The bulk of education for them though would have beeen commiting to memory large portions of sacred texts. One need not be highly literate to internalise such.

I do find it interesting that whoever the author of Matthew was that he does not understand Semitic parallelism and therefore places Jesus on both a donkey and a colt in order to fulfill Zech 9:9. I have a hard time imagining a Jewish author making this mistake, but even Ehrman acknowledges that it is a possibility.

I would need to look into this subject in greater depth, but I think that in the religious climate of 'Matthew's' time poetic parallelism played second fiddle to midrashic activity. IE fidelity to artistic and literary form was not as important to them as filling every verse with theological meaning.

[volgadon]

David, OT or no, I appreciate your insights in any topic. Makes for great conversations.

[Bill Hamblin]

I was thinking of the lower slopes, they are still fairly steep and rugged. You most probably would break your neck jumping off them. Between them and the shore is a flat plain of two or three km's. Either way, one of the elements is missing. If you accept that this occured on the slopes, then the sea becomes an extremely unlikely element. If you accept that the swine drowned themselves, then it wasn't on the slopes that Legion entered into them. Either way, to combine both shows a disregard for the topography.

You've been to the area, I mean the BYU students stay at Ein-Gev for several day.

The traditional site is Kursi, on the NE side of Galilee. Here is a map of the area

The first thing to note is that it is only 500m from the sea. Second, the sea was higher then, probably 20-30 meters further inland, as you can see by the rough gray area along the southern part of the coast. This is rough beach rubble. Third, the topography of the coast has shifted since ancient times. This is most clear along the Jordan delta, where Bethsaida was once a coastal fishing town, its now a kilometer or two inland because the expansion of the delta of the Jordan. Here is a map

Bethsaida is the small gray area on the ridge south of the 888 route marker. You can see that the Jordan and the other wadi converge there and have created a delta which is now mostly farm land. In the first century the lake would have been near Bethsaida, since archaeology had demonstrated it was a fishing town.

Likewise, there is a clear, though much smaller delta built up around Kursi from the wadi flowing to the north of the site. Remove much of that delta, and the sea was probably only a couple hundred meters from the site of Kursi. This is how the site would have been anciently. If viewed in this way, the text does make sense.

[Kiviuq]

The level of literacy in Greek is only one clue in this puzzle. Let

[Bill Hamblin]

The level of literacy in Greek is only one clue in this puzzle. Let