Before the printing press

[SuperUnknown]

The invention of the printing press in the sixteenth century...at least I think it was the sixteenth century...helped in the church reformation...and since there was a high rate of illiteracy in Europe, there was much printed in the form of pictures for understanding. I was wondering what the people of Jesus's time read...or looked at....aside from the religious scrolls. I was reading "the odyssey" by Homer, today...and there was a part where someone "shook the dust from his sandles."...and of course, Homer was way before Jesus's time. Just wondering if any of the disciples were avid readers...and what they may have read.

 

[ZiSunka]

There ain't no way to know what they read. The Jews have always been a literate people, women as well as men, so they could read and apply God's word to their lives. Education has always been important to Jews. So it is largely undisputed that they were able to read.

The saying about shaking hte dust from your sandals is an old, old adage, pretty universal around the Roman empire. Rome copied mostly everything from religion to literature from the Greeks, and since the empire spread into Palestine, it isn't curious that Jesus would know the expression.

As to what they read, there's no way to know. It wasn't recorded what they read...