Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (68 page)

Other nicknames for Rome exist, however (Kittim, Edom). Why has the author chosen “Babylon”? As Hunzinger notes, the reasons for the identification become clear in light of Jewish apocalyptic texts. Passages such as 4 Ezra 3.1–2, 28, 31, and Syr. Baruch 11.1 probably show that Rome was thought of as (the new)
Babylon because it too destroyed Jerusalem and, especially, the Temple. In other words, it is the catastrophe of 70
CE,
in comparison with 586
BCE,
that makes the identification both obvious and palpable. So too we find in the Sybilline oracles that Nero flees “from Babylon” (5.143), and later in the same oracle we find Babylon directly connected to the land of Italy, again because of the destruction of the Temple in 70
CE.
⁷
And so Hunzinger’s conclusion: “The unanimity of the Jewish supporting data forces the conclusion that
the designation of Rome as Babylon came about under the impression of the renewed destruction of the Jerusalem temple
.”
⁸
1 Peter, therefore, could not have been written prior to 70
CE
and, as a result, could not have been written by Peter, who apparently died years earlier.
⁹

There is an even more compelling reason for thinking that Peter did not write this letter. In all likelihood, Peter could not write.

In his now-classic study of ancient literacy, William Harris gave compelling reasons for thinking that at the best of times in antiquity only 10 percent or so of the population was able to read.
¹⁰
By far the highest portion of readers was located in urban settings. Widespread literacy like that enjoyed throughout modern societies requires certain cultural and historical forces to enact policies of near universal, or at least extensive, education of the masses. Prior to the industrial revolution, such a thing was neither imagined nor desired. As Meir Bar Ilan notes: “Literacy does not emerge in a vacuum but rather from social and historical circumstances.”
¹¹

Moreover, far fewer people in antiquity could compose a writing than could read, as shown by the investigations of Raffaella Cribiore, who stresses that reading and composition were taught as two distinct skills and at different points of the ancient curriculum. Learning even the basics of reading was a slow and arduous process, typically taking some three years and involving repeating “endless drills” over “long hours”: “In sum, a student became accustomed to an incessant
gymnastics of the mind.”
¹²
These kinds of “gymnastics” obviously required extensive leisure and money, neither of which could be afforded by any but the wealthy classes. Most students did not progress beyond learning the basics of reading, to the second level of grammar. Training in composition came only after these early stages, and most students did not get to that point:
¹³
“the ability to articulate one’s thoughts in writing was achieved only when much literature had been digested.”
¹⁴
Especially difficult, and requiring additional training, was acquiring literacy in a second language. Indeed, as, Cribiore points out, “bilingualism did not correspond to biliteracy.”
¹⁵

All of these points bear closely on the question of whether an Aramaic-speaking fisherman from rural Galilee could produce a refined Greek composition such as 1 Peter. But before pressing that question, we should consider the issue of literacy specifically in Roman Palestine, a matter pursued most convincingly in studies by Bar-Ilan and Catherine Hezser.
¹⁶

Bar-Ilan begins his analysis by referring to cross-cultural studies that have demonstrated that literacy rates are closely tied to broader social and cultural factors. Urban societies are always more literate than rural. Moreover, low birth rates, low population growth, and low life expectancy all relate to low literacy rates, and for good reason. With respect to life expectancy, for example: the use of the written word positively affects a society’s hygiene, infant care, agricultural practices, and so on, all of which play a vital role in longevity. And so, for example, the more illiterate societies always suffer the highest rates of infant mortality.

Turning to hard historical evidence for ancient Israel, Bar-Ilan notes that the Talmud allows for towns where only one person could read in the synagogue (
Soferim
11:2). Since all synagogues that have been discovered can accommodate more than fifty people, we are probably looking at literacy rates, in these places, at about 1 percent. When this figure is tied to the fact that the land of Israel was 70 percent rural, and only 10 percent was “highly” urban, one can take into account all the sundry factors and crunch the numbers: “it is no exaggeration to say that the total literacy rate in the Land of Israel … was probably less than 3%.” Most of this 3 percent would have been wealthy Jews living in the major cities.

Hezser has devoted the only full-length study to this question in her monograph
Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine
.
¹⁷
She agrees with Bar-Ilan on his statistical
claims: total literacy in Palestine was probably around 3 percent; those who were literate were largely located in urban areas; some villages and towns had a literacy rate of lower than 1 percent. In this connection Hezser makes the striking historical observation that “the only literary works which can with certainty be attributed to Palestinian Jews of the first century
C.E.
are the writings of Josephus and the no longer extant works of his opponent Justus of Tiberias” (both of whom “received a Greek education and were influenced by Graeco-Roman writing”).
¹⁸
Moreover, Hezser argues that “writing seems to have mostly—and perhaps almost exclusively—been used by the political, economic, and religious-intellectual elites in late Roman Palestine.” Was the fisherman Simon-Peter in this august group?

Before pursuing that question, we should look at the related issue of the use of Greek in first-century Palestine. Hezser evaluates the extent to which Palestinian Jews may have been able to converse in Greek more generously than other more recent studies devoted to the question, as we will see in a moment. But even she points out that Josephus is the only Jew of Roman Palestine to indicate that he learned Greek, and she notes that Josephus himself indicates that he could not write literary Greek without assistance from Greek speakers (
Contra Apionem
1.9). Moreover, Hezser admits that we do not know whether Josephus studied Greek before coming to Rome.
¹⁹
She later acknowledges that most Jews in Palestine would have had only “a rudimentary knowledge of Greek,” which involved knowing “a few phrases to lead to a simple conversation.”
²⁰
That is a long way from being able to write a high-level Greek composition, especially in light of the fact that simple conversational Greek took no special training, whereas learning to read (even in one’s own language) took years of hard work, and composition took years more. Louis Feldman notes that “Josephus’s admission (
Contra Apionem
1.50 [= 1.9]) that he needed assistance in composing the version in Greek of the Jewish War illustrates that few attained the competence in the language necessary for reading and understanding Greek literature.”
²¹

The most persuasive studies of the use of Greek in Galilee in particular have been produced by Mark Chancey, who shows that scholars who maintain that Greek was widely spoken in the first century have based their views on very slim evidence, in which Palestinian data from over a number of centuries have been generalized into claims about the use of Greek in Galilee in the first half of the first century.
²²
There is, in fact, scant evidence that Greek was widely used outside of the major urban areas. People living in rural areas spoke almost exclusively Aramaic.

These and other studies have made it clear that there were few educated people in Palestine in the days of Peter. Those who did have the benefits of education would have been taught Hebrew to enable them to read the Torah, unless they came from a fabulously wealthy aristocratic family in a major city. These fortunate few would have made up the bulk of the 3 percent of Palestine who could read. Moreover, most of the 3 percent who could read could not compose a sentence or a paragraph. Most of those who could compose a paragraph could not compose an entire book. Most of those who could compose a book could not do so in a foreign language, Greek. Most of those who could do so, could not compose it in elegant Greek. Was Peter, a lower-class fisherman from rural Galilee, among that minuscule fraction of the Palestinian population who could compose books in elegant Greek? He was not wealthy. He would have had no time or resources for an education. Let alone an education in reading a foreign language. Let alone education in Greek composition. Acts 4:13 is probably right: Peter was illiterate.
²³

In pursuing this line of inquiry, we might ask what we can know about Peter as a person, prior to his becoming a disciple of Jesus. The answer is that we do not know much at all. The Gospels are consistent only in portraying him as a fisherman from the village of Capernaum in rural Galilee. We can assume that since he was a common laborer, he was not from the landed aristocracy; and since he was from rural Galilee, he would have spoken Aramaic. What can we say about his home “town” of Capernaum?

The historical and social insignificance of the place can be seen by the fact that it is not mentioned in any source, including the Hebrew Bible, prior to the writings of the New Testament. In the Gospels it is portrayed as a fishing village on the “sea” of Galilee (Matt. 4:13; 8:5; 11:23; 17:24; Mark 1:21; 2:1; 9:33; Luke 4:23, 31; 7:1; 10:15; John 2:12; 4:46; 6:17, 24, 59). It is sometimes called a
, although, as we will see, that designation is certainly wrong. Josephus mentions it only because he fell off his horse nearby and was taken there (
Life
72); he calls it, more accurately, a “village”
The rabbinic literature mentions it as a place of the minim (
Midr. Qoh
. 1.8.4; 7.26.3). There is no other literary evidence about the first-century town.

Most archaeologists associate it with Tel Hum, the ruins of which were discovered in 1838 by the American biblical archaeologist Edward Robbins, and identified as Capernaum in 1866 by the British engineer Charles Wilson. Based on the archaeological evidence, the best estimates place the population at around a thousand in the first century.
²⁴
There is no suggestion from the material remains
that it was a center of high intellectual activity. In fact, there is no evidence of intellectual life at all. As Jonathan Reed has pointed out, archaeologists have turned up no evidence of public buildings, such as shops or storage facilities. The local market must have been held in tents or booths in open unpaved public areas. The town was not built on any major international trade route; the Roman roads in the area are from the second century. There are no structures or materials associated with social elites (e.g., plaster surfaces, decorative frescoes, marble, mosaics, red ceramic roof tiles). The houses were constructed of rough stone basalt built without “the benefit of a skilled craftsman’s techniques or tools,” with insulation provided by mud or clay and smaller stones packed in the interstices, and thatched roofs.
²⁵
There are no material remains of anything pagan; there are no inscriptions from the first century. Reed concludes that the population was “predominantly illiterate.”

In short, Capernaum was a rather isolated and relatively unknown Jewish village in the backwaters of rural Galilee, with no evidence of any gentile presence. Its inhabitants were very poor. It was certainly not a polis, just an impoverished village.
²⁶
If Bar-Ilan and Hezser are right that villages in rural Galilee could well have had literacy rates lower than 1 percent, maybe eight to ten persons in town would have been able to read in Peter’s day. Or is this too generous? In any event, the handful of literate persons would have been the wealthiest and best-connected persons in the village. Simon Peter, on the other hand, was simply one of the local fishermen. Those in town who could read would be able to read Hebrew and would have spoken Aramaic. Could any of these handful compose a sentence? It is possible—but an entire book? It seems unlikely. Could they have composed a book in Greek? Almost certainly not. In highly literate Greek? It completely strains credibility.