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  • From: "Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>
  • To: "'Biblical Hebrew'" <b-hebrew AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: alliteration
  • Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 01:05:54 +0100


Thank you, Jack, for answering my question.

I must say that, reading this Bar-Ilan paper as a non-specialist in this
field (but I have done some reading recently connected with another list
on literacy rates in the Hellenistic and Roman world), that this seems
to be an astonishingly speculative and badly argued paper. There seem to
be two pieces of data involved:

1) There is an attempt to decide the literacy rate by comparison with
allegedly similar modern societies. This is an extreme example of
extrapolation way beyond safe limits, and one which totally ignores the
special place of study of the Torah in traditional Jewish society, and
the probability that this tradition goes back to the 1st century CE.

2) The appeal to the passage "A town in which there is only one who
reads..." as evidence that this was the normal situation seems quite
extraordinary. A rule about a situation does not prove that that
situation was the norm, though it does suggest that it occurred
occasionally. The argument here is about as convincing as arguing for
example that Deuteronomy 24:1-3 implies a norm for a woman to be
divorced twice. Of course there might have been exceptional situations
in which there was only one Hebrew reader among the ten Jewish men
making up a synagogue in a mixed town (if that rule is not too
anachronistic!), but there is certainly no evidence that that was the
norm. Indeed I would be almost certain that each synagogue made sure as
far as possible that it had at least two readers so that one person
didn't have to read everything (as the rule specifies) and in case one
fell sick or died.

Anyway, all of this data for the 1st century CE is rather irrelevant to
the original question which referred to the composition of biblical
poetry a number of centuries earlier.

Peter Kirk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jack Kilmon [mailto:jkilmon AT historian.net]
> Sent: 25 August 2002 15:36
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: Re: alliteration
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>
> To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2002 5:48 PM
> Subject: RE: alliteration
>
>
> > Jack, what period are you referring to with your "3% literate" and
"the
> > oral "common tongue" of the am ha'aretz (Aramaic) or in the written,
> > lterate vehicle of the educated (Hebrew)"?
>
> The second temple period.
>
> > What is your evidence for
> > this figure and this characterisation of language use? And what is
their
> > relevance to the composition (rather than the later memorisation) or
> > biblical poetry, and based on what unexpressed assumptions about the
> > dating of this poetry?
>
> Bar-Ilan's paper at:
>
> http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~barilm/illitera.html
>
> a quote:
> "It may be argued that the Tanna ruled in a unique case, but it seems
that
> usually the Tannaim did not speak of rare cases. On the contrary, most
if
> not all, of the cases studied show that the rules of the Tannaim
played
> their role in people's lives.27 Of course, it does not mean that in
all
> rural places there was such literacy, but, on the other hand, if there
> were
> towns with 1% literacy, then the literacy of all the towns was not
higher
> than 5% (at most). Therefore, taking into consideration the above
rule,
> together with the fact that there are rules that reflect a zero
literacy
> rate in the rural areas lead to the assumption of a low rate of
literacy
> in
> the whole population. Even if we assume that in cities (as happens all
> over
> the world in urban areas in comparison to rural areas), such as
Tiberias,
> for example, the literacy rate was double and even triple in
comparison
> with
> the towns, still the figures of literacy are around 2-15%. With the
> assumption that the rural population was around 70% (with 0%
literacy),
> 20%
> of urban population (with 1-5% literacy), and 10% of highly urban
> population
> (with 2-15% literacy), the total population literacy is still very
low.
> Thus, it is no exaggeration to say that the total literacy rate in the
> Land
> of Israel at that time (of Jews only, of course), was probably less
than
> 3%."
>
>
>
> And my reading of most of the papers referenced in:
>
> http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~barilm/bibliter.html
>
>
>
> And I used this period merely as an extension of the use of these
tools in
> the earlier Biblical period.
>
>
>
> I just did a bad job of sorting my thoughts and communicating them.
>
>
>
> Jack
>
>
>
> ---
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