Jewish Literacy in Roman PalestineSince Judaism has always been seen as the quintessential 'religion of the book', a high literacy rate amongst ancient Jews has usually been taken for granted. Catherine Hezser presents the first critical analysis of the various aspects of ancient Jewish literacy on the basis of all of the literary, epigraphic, and papyrological material published so far. Thereby she takes into consideration the analogies in Graeco-Roman culture and models and theories developed in the social sciences. Rather than trying to determine the exact literacy rate amongst ancient Jews, she examines the various types, social contexts, and functions of writing and the relationship between writing and oral forms of discourse. Following recent social-anthropological approaches to literacy, the guiding question is: who used what type of writing for which purpose? First Catherine Hezser examines the conditions which would enable or prevent the spread of literacy, such as education and schools, the availability and costs of writing materials, religious interest in writing and books, the existence of archives and libraries, and the question of multilingualism. Afterwards she looks at the different types of writing, such as letters, documents, miscellaneous notes, inscriptions and graffiti, and literary and magical texts until she finally draws conclusions about the ways in which the various sectors of the populace were able to participate in a literate society. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Occurrence of Writing | 9 |
The Conditions for the Development of Literacy | 37 |
The Costs and Distribution of Texts | 110 |
The SocioEconomic Functions of Literacy | 169 |
Religion and Literacy | 190 |
Language Usage | 227 |
A LetterWriting in Antiquity | 253 |
Inscriptions | 356 |
Literary Writing | 422 |
Participation in a Literate Society | 449 |
The Writers of the Texts | 474 |
Degrees and Distribution of Literacy | 496 |
331 | 499 |
Bibliography | 505 |
| 537 | |
B Letters in Josephus Writings | 259 |
Letters in Rabbinic Literature | 267 |
The Material Evidence of Letters | 275 |
E Summary | 288 |
Miscellaneous Notes | 331 |
| 540 | |
| 550 | |
| 551 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
able to read According allegedly alphabet already amongst amoraic amulets antiquity Aramaic archives assume Babatha Bar Kokhba Bar-Ilan basis biblical burial Caesarea century C.E. Christian cities codex considered context culture discussion divorce documents epitaphs evidence existed Graeco-Roman society Greek inscriptions Haran Hebr Hebrew Hellenistic Herodian Hezser ibid idem illiterate Jerusalem Jewish Jews Josephus Judaism knowledge language letters Lifshitz literacy literary texts literate magic mentioned mezuzah mezuzot Mishnah Naveh oral Oral Torah ossuary ostraca ostracon Palestinian papyrus parchment person phenomenon practice probably Qumran rabbinic sources rabbis read and write reference regard religious Roman Palestine Salome Komaise scholars schools scribal scribes script Scripture seems Sepphoris Shab She'arim Shimon signatures social statement attributed story study houses suggests synagogue tablets Talmud tannaitic teachers teaching tefillin Temple Tiberias tion Torah scrolls Torah study Torah-reading Tosefta tradition usage wealthy witnesses written Yadin Yerushalmi