Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (2001 Hezser), book

Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (2001) is a book by Catherine Hezser.

Abstract

"Since Judaism has always been seen as the quintessential 'religion of the book', a high literacy rate amongst ancient Jews has usually been taken for granted. Catherine Hezser presents the first critical analysis of the various aspects of ancient Jewish literacy on the basis of all of the literary, epigraphic, and papyrological material published so far. Thereby she takes into consideration the analogies in Graeco-Roman culture and models and theories developed in the social sciences. Rather than trying to determine the exact literacy rate amongst ancient Jews, she examines the various types, social contexts, and functions of writing and the relationship between writing and oral forms of discourse. Following recent social-anthropological approaches to literacy, the guiding question is: who used what type of writing for which purpose? First Catherine Hezser examines the conditions which would enable or prevent the spread of literacy, such as education and schools, the availability and costs of writing materials, religious interest in writing and books, the existence of archives and libraries, and the question of multilingualism. Afterwards she looks at the different types of writing, such as letters, documents, miscellaneous notes, inscriptions and graffiti, and literary and magical texts until she finally draws conclusions about the ways in which the various sectors of the populace were able to participate in a literate society."--Publisher description.

"Catherine Hezser untersucht die Art und Weise, wie die Schrift in unterschiedlichen sozialen Kontexten verwendet wurde, wie diese mit mündlichen Kommunikationsformen konkurrierte, und welche Funktion die Tätigkeit des Schreibens in den jeweiligen Zusammehängen hatte. Ausgehend von einer Untersuchung der Bedingungen, die für die Verbreitung der Schreibfähigkeit eine wichtige Rolle spielten (Erziehung und Schule, Schreibmaterialien, Bibliotheken und Archive), stellt Catherine Hezser die verschiedenen Arten von Texten (Briefe, Dokumente, Inschriften, literarische und magische Texte) vor und zieht daraus Rückschlüsse auf die vielfältigen Formen der jüdischen Teilnahme an der 'des Lesens und Schreibens kundigen Gesellschaft'."--Publisher description (German).

Editions and translations

Published in Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2001 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 81).

External links

• [ Google Books]