The Literate Education of Early Christians, and Some of Its Unintended Consequences for Christian Exegesis

Abstract

The landscape of education under the early Roman principate was very diverse, but the teaching of literacy was dominated by scribal training or Graeco-Roman enkyklios paideia, “literate education”. This essay asks what kind of education the earliest Christian writers had, and offers some neglected evidence, which, it suggests, may also be evidence for Hellenistic Jewish education. It considers the role of imitation in Christian education, and how early Christian imitation is distinctive. Finally, it illustrates how the increasingly sophisticated education of some Christians influenced the way they read and interpreted their own earliest and most authoritative texts.

Keywords

• literate education
• enkyklios paideia
• scribal education
• apostolic fathers
• imitation
• canon