Jesus is well-known as the founder of Christianity, the largest religion in the world, and therefore some consider him one of the most influential people who ever lived. He shared something in common with a number of other founders of religious or philosophical institutions.
(In chronological order)
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, may have lived circa 624 – 544 BCE (estimates vary widely). Although some see his teachings more as a philosophy than a religion, Buddhism is cited as the fourth largest religion today, with 500 million adherents.
Confucius (also known as Master Kong, but not King Kong or Donkey Kong), lived around 551 – 479 BCE. His teachings focused on personal and governmental morality rather than religion, but he had a tremendous influence on eastern philosophy.
Socrates, c. 470 – 399 BC, was a Greek philosopher who was so influential he is considered the founder of Western philosophy.
Jesus, c. 6 to 4 BC – AD 30 or 33, was of course the origin of Christianity, the largest religion in the world, with over 2 billion followers.
Muhammad, c. 570 – 632 CE, was the founder of Islam, the second largest religion in the world today, with almost 2 billion adherents.
The School of Athens by Raphael
Now, one can find commonalities in their teachings, such as basics like being kind to one another and having integrity and truthfulness. But there is a characteristic they share in common that I find interesting, considering how influential their teachings became: None of them left any writings of their own. All we know of their teachings is what later disciples recorded for us. This raises an obvious question: how do we know they got it all right?
There are a number of possible reasons why these men did not leave any writings of their own. Their focus may have been teaching, imparting their knowledge to others, perhaps because they believed that was the most effective method. They may have seen teaching others as a better use of their time than writing documents. Considering how influential they each became maybe they were right about that!
Another factor may have been illiteracy. Scholars who study such things estimate that in the ancient world only about 3% of the people were literate, to the point of being able to read and write.[1] And that was almost exclusively among the elite of society (one exception being slaves who were trained to help their masters write documents). So, one possibility is that these men were themselves illiterate, and therefore unable to write down their teachings. But another possibility, perhaps more likely, is that they recognized that most people in their world were illiterate, and thus would be unable to read their writings. So they concentrated on teaching their students/disciples, as a better system of disseminating their ideas. And it seemed to work, considering the results.
It is possible that the Buddha, Socrates and Confucius were educated and therefore literate, but that is not so clear for Jesus and Muhammad. In the Quran there is a verse referring to the Prophet as being “unlettered” (7:157), which some interpret as meaning illiterate, while others argue differently. We don’t have such a clear statement about Jesus in the Gospels, although his disciples Peter and John are specifically referred to as “unlettered” (Gr: agrammatos, in Acts 4:13), meaning illiterate.
Let’s focus specifically on Jesus. It is estimated that he started his ministry around age 30. If he was literate, he had plenty of time to write down his teachings before he began his public ministry. This prompts various questions: Why didn’t he? Why leave it to later disciples? Why expect people to trust what his disciples wrote rather than having Jesus’ teachings directly from his own hand?
The Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as being able to read. In Luke 4:16f Jesus enters the synagogue in Nazareth and reads from the scroll of Isaiah. Of course many churches teach that in Jesus’ day all the good Jewish children attended synagogue school and learned to read and write, so they could be good Jews. Studies of ancient Israel do not bear this out.[2] In fact, Nazareth has been excavated, and no public buildings including no synagogue have been found there. It was a small, poor town. Even if they had a synagogue of some type how could they afford a very expensive scroll of the book of Isaiah? This story does not seem probable.
There is a story of Jesus writing, found in John 8:3f, in the famous story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery (“He who is without sin cast the first stone…”). In the story he stoops down and writes on the ground (Gr: grapho, meaning writing). So, Jesus must have been literate! However, we don’t know what he wrote. Some have suggested he was writing down the names of the men with whom the woman had been involved. Regardless, writing down words is not the same as being able to compose and write documents. Some years ago I studied Russian and I learned to recognize and write quite a few words, but ask me to write out a full paragraph and I was quite lost. Real literacy goes beyond writing down words. The other problem with this story is that it is not found in the earliest and best copies of that Gospel and appears to be a later addition (which is why some editions of the New Testament put it in brackets). But it’s such a good story we all want to include it!
The odds are that Jesus, growing up in a humble family in a small rural town was not likely to be literate, just like Peter and John. But I think there is another compelling reason that Jesus did not write down his teachings. The end of the age was at hand.
Jesus is first portrayed in the Gospels as being baptized by John the Baptizer (perhaps was a disciple of John?). John’s message was clear: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” (or “come near,” Matthew 3:2), and “even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees” (Matthew 3:10). This is the exact same message Jesus began to preach a chapter later (Matthew 4:17). When Jesus preached that the kingdom was at hand, he did not mean maybe 2,000 years or more later. When telling his disciples about the end of the age he told them, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Mark 13:30).[3] Then at his trial he specifically told the high priest, “you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). If you still question the immediacy of Jesus’ message, consider that the apostle Paul likewise believed that the end was coming in his generation: “Then we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Paul was expecting it in his lifetime.
So, if the end was at hand, why write things down? The important thing was to get the message out quickly, and word of mouth was much faster than writing out documents, then having them copied many times to be sent out, which is a time-consuming process, and not an error-free one, either. Writing materials were not cheap, and good copyists, known as librarii, were not common. So, word of mouth may have been the most expeditious way to get the word out quickly, before the end of the age.
Well, the end did not come in that generation. So, by the second (or third) generation of disciples some decided it was necessary to start writing down the story and teachings of Jesus, to record and preserve them for the church. Scholars generally date the Gospel of Mark to the early 70s, Matthew and Luke to the 80s, and John in the 90s, so 40 to 60 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. I find the intro to the Gospel of Luke most instructive:
Since many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting to me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in an orderly sequence, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.
Luke 1:1-4
So, many accounts were floating around, but this author made an effort to investigate these various stories and write them down in proper order, so that his account would be more exact. It makes you wonder what he thought of the other gospels, particularly Mark, which he sometimes quotes word-for-word and other times changes. Did he think Mark wasn’t quite right and needed to be corrected? Likewise with other accounts?
So, some of the great (or at least influential, if you don’t agree they are great) philosophies and religions were founded by men who did not write down their teachings, but left that to their later disciples. I wonder if they got it all right. On the other hand, maybe the teachings were actually improved by this process, as the disciples edited and cleaned up the teachings, perhaps tossing out some of the more obscure teachings. For example, examine the Gospel of Thomas and its strange aphorisms: are these real but confusing teachings of Jesus that were edited out for the New Testament Gospels? Perhaps the disciples even supplemented the teachings from other sources of wisdom. For example, if some of the parables of Jesus actually originated from John the Baptizer or some other sage how would we know? What if Plato imparted his own thoughts into those he attributed to Socrates? How would we know? We are essentially captive to those who recorded these teachings.
Why do you think these great thinkers did not write down their own teachings? And does it matter? Some people say, “All truth is God’s truth.” So, regardless of who said it or wrote it, isn’t it worth reading, thinking and meditating on some of the most influential ideas in history? Maybe it will expand your thinking. Maybe it will confirm what you already believe. But thinking is always a good thing, in my humble opinion.
(Speaking of Muhammad, I may start adding some articles on the Quran, so even we infidels can know what he was teaching. Hopefully his followers got it right!)
[1] “Ancient Literacy” by William V. Harris, 1991, for example.
[2] “Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism)” by Catherine Hezser, 2001, for example.
[3] When the end did not come, the church tried to nuance this to mean “this race,” but in context of Jesus’ teachings on the subject he clearly meant the generation of people in his time.