What was the general education level of the masses in the time of Jesus?

Alakazam: What was the general education level of the masses in the time of Jesus?
Hi I am writing an article and did not know how to determine the education level of individuals during the time of Jesus. I am assuming their intellect potential was/is the same of individuals today. What I am curious about is there a way to compare the two extreme educational levels. As an example: Most individuals had no education. Most individuals had the equivalent education of a second grader in our time. Or most could not read or write but could perform basic math. I would appreciate your insight. Thanks

Answers and Views:

Answer by Dana
pre school

Answer by Fireball
home schooling….so what? GOD CAN SAVE anyone. He did with the disciples…

Answer by Allergic to Bullsh!t
im pretty sure at that time everyone knew the earth was flat

Answer by iampretty
Depends on the continent too. I would assume it’s vastly different in parts of china

Answer by ?
They were a little more advanced than cavemen.

Answer by One eyed midget…
Well, considering that the Romans used lead pipes… Pretty low…

Answer by The fifth ape
The masses most likely didn’t know much beyond the basics of survival and their particular trade.

Answer by tax_senior2002
That’s generally correct, although the few that were educated were pretty smart, considering they were building the base of knowledge that has been built on ever since.

I’d say a well educated first century person would have been equal to a college grad today, would have spoken three or more languages, would have known more about the stars and heavenly bodies, would have been versed in logic and rhetoric, and would have been as up to date in math as possible at that time.

Answer by Santo Calibre
Although they had not many schools it is believed that they used a greater amount of their brain than we do today. Imagine as far back as Adam who named all the animals in the world.

Answer by Arch
All Hebrew children in Israel were taught to read and write in classical Hebrew. Many people knew Greek as well. And most could do basic arithmetic. Contrary to popular belief, the masses were not uneducated or ignorant.

Answer by idlenessss
I think you are not correct about your assumption…
I think the average intellectual ability of people living in that time was far superior to ours.
They wouldnt be able to pass tests in our schools, sure…but we would probably look quite ignorant to them as well, especially about agriculture. The difference is what information they are being taught, not the volume of it.

Answer by D Mud
Lightning and thunder and earthquakes would have freaked them out.

Answer by Tim
The answer to this question is actually quite difficult because it varied a lot.

First of all though, if you are talking about Israel, where Jesus spent most of his time then you can know that most people were able to understand, and in many cases speak, three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, each used in different settings (Worship, the Home and Commerce). However, fewer people would have been able to write than are today. That said, literacy was relatively high in this area of the world and was taught in connection with religious teaching.

Furthermore, you will find that most people had a good understanding of some or other trade which would have required a great degree of skill and understanding in some area. Performing calculations and such would have been done on a practical level more than as a study but it would have still been something most people would have been able to do.

In effect, you cannot simply say that the education would be “like a second grader” – what you can say is that people were, in most respects, less educated, that there was a greater range, some people being highly educated, and some being lowly educated, but you can also say that most people, in most areas (with the possible exception of literacy) would have had an understanding at least approaching high school level.

Answer by BartSimson123
You really have to be specific. Which culture are you talking about? The Romans, Greeks, Jews, other surrounding cultures? Most people were peasant and were taught within their communities. Jews had their own religious teachings and were also influenced by Greek thought and Roman thought.

Answer by Existentialist Absurd Hero
Judas was the most educated one.
Having had a higher education with the ruling class priests.
Which qualified him to be the groups treasurer.
Where as most of the others were fishermen / tax gatherer.
And were skilled in using their hands, as was their leader the carpenter.

The word rabbi means scholar or teacher, so if any had got instruction
in reading and writing it would have been from a religious source.

Answer by Cindy
You need to do further research, but it’s my understanding that most Jewish males would have memorized the first 5 books of the Old Testament by the time they were 12. (Called the Pentateuch). Females were not encouraged to learn — the times were very misogynistic. Nevertheless, there were women who rose above this to positions of importance, even occasionally leading synagogues.

Books were, of course, exceedingly rare and costly, but Jewish males were frequently invited to read at the synagogues. This may only have been those recognized as Rabbonical class, but I think most males would have known how to read. I suspect it was the same among the Greeks.

As for assigning a grade level, this would be like assigning a level of “appleness” to a pomegranate. Grade levels are hard to determine even in our system which uses them. They would probably be masters level in their own trades and in other studies it would vary. Naturally, many subjects we cover today would not have existed then. (What do you mean little Hosea failed keyboarding AGAIN!?) They would have believed in things (like the evil eye) that we would find comical and might have even had extensive knowledge in magical arts. Conversely, they may have blown you out of the water in mathematics and logic.

Remember that Palestine of Jesus’ day had been under Greek rule for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Romans, so most of the people would speak both Greek and Hebrew and many would have spoken Latin as well. Many of them would have been well-versed in Greek philosophy and most of them would have known Greek mythology, having many theaters (including a large one in Nazareth — in my mind’s eye, it’s a very odd picture for me to see Jesus and the disciples taking in a play, but it’s not improbable — certainly not impossible).

Like I said, you’ll need to do some more research. You should enjoy it; it’s a fascinating subject.

Answer by Liam
Here’s what we do know about the region in the time of Jesus. It is known that throughout the ancient world, the typical literacy rate was 15%. Jerusalem was a center of learning at the time and it is generally believed by most scholars that the literacy rate at that time was somewhere between 20%-25%.

Equivocal education is a hard call to make. While the mass of the population was illiterate, they weren’t necessarily equivalent to second graders. Rudimentary mathematics would be certain as would a gamut of complex skill sets that where acquired through kinesthetical and repetitious learning.

Their greatest lacking would have been in concrete logic. The ancient world only had so much to work with in their perceptions. They had a very limited understanding of cause and effect, beyond what was direct, and they lacked scientific method.

So, they were ignorant, but not necessarily stupid. They simply used what they had to work with at the time. Generations from now, our lineages will look the same at us.

Answer by Song
What masses? It was a pretty multicultural society. Where Jesus lived, there were Israelites, who had one kind of education. But it was ruled by Romans, who had another kind of education altogether; they had a Greek education, because it was a world in which Greek culture dominated. There were many other peoples who had fallen under the influence of Greek culture and were subjects of the Romans. They had their own traditions, and types of education, and they were integrated into the larger society as a whole in different ways. There were also different classes of citizens, who had different levels of education.

There were farmers and landowners, who would have either had a classical education or would have been educated in the synagogues. There were merchants, who didn’t always need much formal education, but would have known numbers, and how to keep ledgers, and had more opportunities to travel and see the world than most other people. There were priests and scribes, who would have access to all kinds of different knowledge and education. There were rulers and nobles, who had time and money to educate their children in whatever way they saw fit, often with private teachers. There were soldiers, who came from all levels of society, and from all over the empire, and would have had a huge range of types of education. And there were slaves, who in some cases were not educated at all, and only performed manual labor, but in other cases would have bee very educated and worked as bureaucrats and officials.

It’s hard to say that a second grader in our day and age is comparable to anyone in Biblical times. Second graders today know how to navigate the web, but they don’t know when to plant their corn. And second graders in our day are trained in very different kinds of games and sports than children in antiquity. The requirements for knowledge and education are very different.

Answer by JAMES K
You would learn how to do the job you had to do. You would, of course, learn the Scriptures to memory. You would learn to read the seasons and know what to do to survive. Basically, your education would be termed ‘practical’ rather than ‘formal’.