SHE'S STARING AT US

She lay buried for 1,750 years, but there she was, big as life, in Pompeii, that city buried in volcanic ash and debris measured by the megaton. The results of the explosion which blew half of Mt. Vesuvius to kingdom come had hidden and preserved the wall painting of a young Pompeian woman  for a long, long time. 

She stares at you with a pensive look; she's thinking about something and we wonder as we look at her, "What's on your mind?" but we'll never know. We note that she's like 90% of the world, right-handed. She's holding a stylus (a writing instrument) in her right hand; it's poised delicately on her lips, tip downward. In her left hand is a tablet on which she'll write. Dangling from the top of the tablet, there appears to be a ribbon, perhaps a bookmark. 

Her clothing is green with what appears to be a purple shawl draped over her shoulders. Her hair is fashionable; her earrings are gold. She looks like she just stepped out of a bandbox, i. e. perfect. From that fresco, we know that she was both educated and rich.

It's from Pompeii, the city sealed in time, sealed in 79 AD to be exact. It's from that sealing by volcanic debris that we know most of what we know about the day-to-day life in the 1st century, back then in the ancient days, the days of the Apostles. And that's where the New Testament enters the picture. When the Apostles wrote their books, who were they writing for? Illiterate bumpkins? A small group of literate people? Let's go to Pompeii and find out. 

Archaeological discoveries reinforce the impression that literacy was more widespread than we once believed. Hundreds of texts written in ink on postcard-sized slips of native wood, such as ash — as opposed to engraved with a stylus on the kind of tablets we see in the fresco — have been found at a military base, in the area of Pompeii, mostly dating from the period just after the destruction of the sealedand now silent city.  

The texts cover a wide range of subjects--from Claudia Severa inviting a friend to a birthday celebration to personal messages and orders for food and other military supplies. Some may have been written by scribes, but with many, the writing shows that the authors weren't professionals. The military was more literate than might have been expected — indeed, material from Egypt from around 79 AD shows that about a third of the members of the camel corps could write their names.

In addition, graffiti is all over Pompeian walls as the tourists see while walking the streets of Pompeii. There are political slogans, a list of the prices of wines, the typical "Marcellus loves Cornelia" messages, and advertisements. Such mundane writings for and by the common man indicate a fairly good literacy rate.

When we turn to the New Testament, Pilate has written on the cross, "Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews" in three languages. This would indicate literacy. When Jesus confronts a hostile crowd concerning the woman taken in adultery, He stoops to write something in the ground. Fishermen like Peter, James, and John were literate, very much so.

This was the world of the New Testament, a more literate world than you might think. A world prepped for the written Word of God.
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