“and before many scholars believe the major part of the biblical texts, including the five books of Moses”
Joseph, who predated Moses by 400 years, was Prime Minister of Egypt. And Moses was raised as a prince, a member of Pharaoh’s household.
Are we to be told those people couldn’t write, or that they couldn’t have had set down all the records that they wished?
From Judges Judges 8:13-14.
“Then Gideon the son of Joash returned from the battle by the ascent of Heres. And he captured a youth from Succoth and questioned him. Then the youth wrote down for him the princes of Succoth and its elders, seventy-seven men.”
Which would argue that Gideon was able to read and the boy from Succoth could both read and write.
It is my belief that God deliberately chose the time to send His Son for several reasons, all due to the Roman Empire. At the time of Jesus, the Empire was beginning the period of the Pax Romana. The civil wars that created the unified Empire had ended a few years eralier. The Empire was at peace and prosperous. It also encompassed more of the known world than any other polity before or since. You could travel in relative safety from the cataracts of the Nile to the north of England without crossing a national border. Greek and Latin were universal languages in the western and eastern Empire. Literacy was, as this article notes, at a fairly high level. From our time, we don’t think it all that unusual that Jesus, the son of a simple tradesman, could rise in the synagogue and read from Isaiah, nor apparently was it unusual then, either. But in the history of the world, that is an uncommonly high level of literacy. And in such a time of peace and prosperity, add to it a high level of public health standards due to aqueducts and sewers.
So what better time for God to send His Son, to deliver his message of love and redemption, that all could hear and understand, and that it spread to the ends of the earth.
That is its own quiet and not generally appreciated miracle.
