Thanks, Becky. I’d like to point out a couple of things, though.
Going back to sociological studies of literacy:
The literacy rate of the area around Jerusalem was about 3%, and limited mostly to the upper class. Christians were mostly recruited from the lower class and therefore the literate Christian was very rare.
Also, with the production rate of labourious copying out any of the writings (some of which were later declared Scripture, and others not) by the very few Christian literate, it is very unlikely that Bibles were available. Remember that the Bible wasn’t put together for nearly 4 centuries. And what would the unlettered do with them once they had them? This is why the icons were developed in the first place.
The literacy rate didn’t improve for many centuries - even 16th Century England had about a 20% literacy rate for men, and 5% for women. If you consider that the upper class and merchant class constituted about 15% of the population, it still doesn’t indicate the requirement of mass quantities of Bibles. Not until Gutenberg got going and mass production of Bibles stirred the interest and therefore literacy in general, were Bibles available to the general public that was able to read them.
I should have been a bit more clear. When I was speaking of people having access to the bible, and there being one or at least some of it in each household, I was thinking more of the Jews.
Of course the early gentile Christians probably didn’t have one. But I still believe there was a lot more written copies of scripture then we give credit for. JMO tho, I have no proof, other then how much people were admonished to study scripture, which would have been the OT. Why would the bible tell them too, if they couldn’t??? Doesn’t make sense. And then think of Paul praising Timothy’s mother and grandmother for teaching him scripture....
Becky