Religion
In reply to the discussion: Was Jesus even born? [View all]Moonwalk
(2,322 posts)...or beads rather than using actual symbols. And even if they did use symbols to indicate who was who and how much they owed, that's not the same as knowing how to write. I could teach an illiterate symbols for all his friends, and teach him the symbols for numbers. If he's any good at math, he can now write down how much he collects from each of his friends. But he still can't write up a story because I haven't taught him how to write words.
HOWEVER....
As I've never seen ancient hebraic tax collector records, I can't say for sure if this is the case with Matthew. Maybe he did learn how to write so he could jot down "five goats from Joseph the carpenter...." My point is, we moderns take being taught to read and write for granted. Being an actual scholar and learning how to write was it's own rarified profession back then, and not everyone learned it. So if your target audience was working class folk, then you were going to have to tell them the story whether you read it aloud or recited it from memoryand they were going to pass it on to others that way as well.