Zechariah the priest's literacy, and the name of John the Baptist

There has been some interest in recent years over literacy in ancient Judaism. Some advocate the view that the ability to read or write was incredibly rare; others advocate the view that the ability to read at least short passages was fairly common for men. In general, though, both sides agree that certain people in ancient Judaism were certainly literate, such as the priestly class.

In Luke's gospel we are told of a priest named Zechariah, father of John the Baptist. For those not familiar with Luke's account: when his son was named, Zechariah had been unable to speak for some months. His wife Elizabeth had said the son's name would be John (Luke 1:60), but the others present for the circumcision expected the child to be named Zechariah like his father. So Zechariah motioned for a writing tablet and wrote "His name is John," and the people present for the circumcision marveled at that. Luke does not record whether this was a home circumcision or took place in a synagogue; the information I've found so far would indicate those were common places for a circumcision in that era.

So much for the account we have. Based on it, it's reasonably certain that Zechariah could read and write. Based on his membership in the priesthood, we would expect that Zechariah was literate. There are a few implications to consider: When he motioned for a writing tablet and there was one handy, it stands to reason that it was not too uncommon for someone literate to be present. When he wrote on the tablet and someone else read it, it follows that there was at least one other person present who could read. Zechariah was not the only literate person present at the circumcision. We do not have information on specifically how many people gathered for the circumcision of Zechariah's son or how many of them were able to read it for themselves, so the presence of at least one more literate person does not necessarily help us to estimate the percentage of people who were literate.

Next, consider the fact that Elizabeth already knew Zechariah's wishes on naming their son. How would Zechariah have passed this information to Elizabeth since he could not speak? We can consider the possibility that he might have written his wishes and had someone else read it to Elizabeth -- and yet the other people present at the circumcision, including any literate ones, had not previously known Zechariah's wishes in the way that his wife Elizabeth had. We must at least consider the possibility that Elizabeth could read. She had been the wife of a priest for long years, married to a man engaged in studying the Jewish Scriptures. And it is not the first time we'd have known of Jewish women who were literate; there were various mentions of literate women in the Talmud, such as in the discussions of whether women and minors were eligible to read the Torah portion of the Scripture readings at public worship services.

When we look at ancient literacy, there is a tendency to all-or-nothing thinking. It is common for people to assume that if someone was not literate by modern industrial standards, then instead they were so wholly illiterate that they could not decipher even a short phrase such as "His name is John". That kind of all-or-nothing thinking is, most of all, inaccurate in its disregard for what is practical. Literacy is a spectrum starting from knowing the letters of their alphabet, building up to being able to recognize some words and sound out others, all the way to more fluent literacy that involved both reading longer passages and writing.

We know Zechariah, as a priest, was literate. Based on a brief glimpse into the life of this literate man in ancient times, we know that among his everyday companions he was not alone in his literacy.