The area of Jerusalem and Bethlehem is not in Europe nor Asia...The Church started here...it was the Headquarters " of judism it is here that the scriptures are...it is here that they begin to spread throughout the area. I agree that there were advanced people elsewhere in the world, but they were not spreading the bible....they didn't have it.
The temple in Jerusalem certainly had all the books of the Old Testament within its walls as did Jewish synagogues throughout the world where Jews resided. It was not at all uncommon for Jewish families to have copies of certain scrolls of the Law/Torah (books of Moses). That's why we have so many fragments available today of those books as well as those of the New Testament. You seem to be forgetting that the epistles the Apostles wrote to the churches established throughout the continent were hand delivered and copies made so that these local churches had the same teachings available to them. There was no need for elaborate gold-edged pages and fancy scroll work - the writings were copied by hand and passed around. The original "autographs" disappeared (probably by God's design) but the abundance of copies that rarely varied from each other were the norm even for small churches.
What many discount is that people wrote about their lives and what they learned from the disciples and Apostles of Jesus. Their leaders were responsible for continuing the teachings they learned and ensuring those who came after them were seated in Scriptural truth. Just because there wasn't a collection of all the books bound up in a "bible" until centuries after the Apostles all died, doesn't mean there was no recognized canon of Scripture available to those who wanted to read them. Some local churches may have only had partial collections and others more, but they all recognized the authority of the written word because the Apostles imposed them on the early churches. This is a good treatise on the formation of the canon of the New Testament by B. B. Warfield http://www.the-highway.com/ntcanon_Warfield.html. In it he speaks of the example the early Christians had of the Old Testament and the new books being given to them from the Apostles as a continuation of divine revelation.
They most certainly WERE spreading the good news of the gospel and setting up new churches hungry for the word of God. From the above link:
What needs emphasis at present about these facts is that they obviously are not evidences of a gradually-heightening estimate of the New Testament books, originally received on a lower level and just beginning to be tentatively accounted Scripture; they are conclusive evidences rather of the estimation of the New Testament books from the very beginning as Scripture, and of their attachment as Scripture to the other Scriptures already in hand. The early Christians did not, then, first form a rival “canon” of “new books” which came only gradually to be accounted as of equal divinity and authority with the “old books”; they received new book after new book from the apostolical circle, as equally” Scripture “ with the old books, and added them one by one to the collection of old books as additional Scriptures, until at length the new books thus added were numerous enough to be looked upon as another section of the Scriptures.
Another argument that doesn't fly.
They had the OT Law, the book of the OT that WE have today and there's no indication that copies of it were ONLY at Jerusalem. The Dead Sea Scrolls had to have come from somewhere.
Dead Sea Scrolls
< a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls
" They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus and bronze.[2] These manuscripts have been dated to various ranges between 408 BCE and 318 CE.[3] Bronze coins found on the site form a series beginning with Hyrcanus 1 (135-104 BCE) and continue without a gap until the first Jewish revolt (66–73 CE).[4] The scrolls are traditionally identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and argue that the scrolls were penned by priests in Jerusalem, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups.[5][6]"
Also:
History of education in ancient Israel and Judah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_ancient_Israel_and_Judah
House of the teacher
"The institution known as the "be rav" or "bet rabban" (house of the teacher), or as the "be safra" or "bet sefer" (house of the book), is said to have been originated by Ezra' (459 BCE) and his Great Assembly, who provided a public school in Jerusalem to secure the education of fatherless boys of the age of sixteen years and upward. However, the school system did not develop until Joshua ben Gamla (64 CE) the high priest caused public schools to be opened in every town and hamlet for all children above six or seven years of age (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 21a).[1] Education began at the age of six or seven[1] and continued throughout life; full-time basic education was completed before marriage at the age of about 18 years old."
Hey, ampu, how's the popcorn holding out?
John the fisherman was educated enough to write the Book of Revelation and the Gospel of John.
If a fisherman could read and write, then it stands to reason that others who were tradesmen could also.