I WONDER...?

Jesus was no dummy.  But I wonder if he could read and write?

When I searched Google, what I found wasn't convincing to me.  There's that passage from John 8 when Jesus intervenes to stop the stoning of the adulteress and utters his famous words, "whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her."  Just prior to that, the scripture says that he bent over and wrote in the sand with his finger.  As far as being able to read, there are several passages that refer to him reading passages from scrolls...but I wonder.

Jesus was known as rabbi - teacher - and we know without doubt he was a great one.  He was a supreme story teller with an amazing grasp of Hebrew scripture.  He was raised in that tradition and we know he was drawn to learning.  He knew how to connect people and their lives to God through imagery and the spoken word.  My guess is that most of his learning would have been listening to stories, lectures, discussions and debates; I doubt that he would have been allowed to handle the religious scrolls that made up the Tanakh (the Hebrew bible) - certainly not as a child, and by the time his ministry began, he wasn't exactly on the best of terms with the ruling order of priests and lawyers...those that controlled access to the scrolls.

For most of the people, the whole process of learning was based on oral communication (story telling).  To be a teacher, you didn't need to read or write.  More likely, a teacher trained to listen and memorize, then repeat to pass that information on to others.  Writing itself was a very specialized skill - those that could write were called scribes.  They earned their keep by writing or copying text, but they were seldom teachers.

So, what was Jesus writing in the sand as he contemplated a response to the Pharisees who brought the woman accused of adultery before him?  Maybe he wasn't writing but drawing, tracing out something that he had seen before.  Perhaps he wasn't writing but doodling to gain time in formulating his response.   

Think about that!