Too Long for a Tweet, Too Short for a Blog Post XXI

Here's an excerpt from a book I just completed, "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth," by Reza Aslan:


Whatever languages Jesus may have spoken, there is no reason to think he could read or write in any of them, not even Aramaic. Luke’s account of the twelve-year-old Jesus standing in the Temple of Jerusalem debating the finer points of the Hebrew Scriptures with rabbis and scribes (Luke 2: 42– 52), or his narrative of Jesus at the (nonexistent) synagogue in Nazareth reading from the Isaiah scroll to the astonishment of the Pharisees (Luke 4: 16– 22), are both fabulous concoctions of the evangelist’s own devising.

Jesus would not have had access to the kind of formal education necessary to make Luke’s account even remotely credible. There were no schools in Nazareth for peasant children to attend. What education Jesus did receive would have come directly from his family and, considering his status as an artisan and day laborer, it would have been almost exclusively focused on learning the trade of his father and his brothers.