Could Jesus Read and Write?

A primer on Jesus' literacy

‘A teacher named Zacchaeus (was) standing (there), hearing Jesus saying these things to his father Joseph, and he was very amazed. And he said to Joseph, “Come, give him (to me), brother, so that he may be taught letters, and so that he may know all knowledge…’

(The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, 6.1-2)

How was Jesus’ first day at school?

According to our apocryphal story, it went about as well as his father had hoped: terribly! The recalcitrant child shows up, schools his teacher by explaining the real meaning of the alphabet – himself – and is smacked on the head for his insolence.

Although the Infancy Gospel is perhaps better seen as fan-fiction or a bedtime story than a realistic attempt to imagine Jesus’ background,¹ the questions it raises about Jesus’ childhood remain deeply interesting. Did Jesus go school? Did he learn his ‘letters’? Or was his knowledge of the Torah only oral, set apart from formal paideia?

Historical Jesus scholars are torn on these issues. One expert on the subject confidently states that “Jesus himself almost certainly knew how to read and write,”² while others assume that his education would have been “extremely basic.”³

As I hope to show, the question of Jesus’ literacy is not a peripheral one. It extends far beyond whether a man could read or write and cuts to the heart of Jesus’ identity. Was Jesus a proto-rabbi and scribal teacher, akin to the Scribes whom he so frequently debated? Or was he an uneducated peasant, challenging the status quo from below?