Disciples?

You can have 12 disciples or 50 your question is not really about one's education your question is one of VALIDITY ? WHO were these people and are they the Actual writers of the said individual writings WHO they said or described themselves to be Where they fisherman is it AUTHENTIC as described ? A individual never sat down and said I am going to write a Book called the BIBLE ( which actually translates to the word Book ) the Book that is called the Bible today , was never a book . A man name Constantine wanted a TOOL to Unite people whom he wished to Rule over , he decided that TOOL would be a religion of a God Authority with his Authority ,In 325 AD almost 300 years ( Imagine the whole history or time span equal to that of the USA later than the time of the said stories ) He gathered "scholars of the day mostly religious leaders and rabbi's) and took individual written pieces of paper and said this story is in this story is out . There was an INTENT , AGENDA and MOTIVE to compile something they could USE . What do we know about the said AUTHORS of the stories ? Only what they themselves describe ., are they actually Paul or Matthew ? Well can I myself say i have Hear a man named Jesus had a disciple named Matthew and i am going to sit down and write as if I am Matthew . How do you know who is writing it ? we do not it could have been written by a Rabbi in 200 AD . we have some dating of some scripts dated 60 years after so if Matthew was with Jesus at age 30 60 years later he would be 90 . why wait 60 years ? to write something so IMPORTANT . Your question is about are they VALID and what do we have as EVIDENCE to say they are valid .. Pretty much little accept those who wish to accept them as because they wish to . The Atheist definition of Faith . an excuse people give for Believing something , when they have no good reason for believing it , except believing it makes them FEEL better . It FITS what they WISH to believe and will desperately use any grain of or fragment to make the story the scenario fit what they want it to say .. If these stories were of EXTREME relevance and Importance You would think a man named JESUS would have written something Just to say I existed at the beginning of his preaching or to open the book of the NT . Because a book mentions the town Bethlehem and it still exist today does not therefore cause one to conclude well because a man named Jesus ( a particular man named Jesus) is validated . The only source for the information you are trying to validate the bible is the bible itself . Its called Circular Reasoning . The bible says Jesus existed therefore Jesus existed because the bible says so ? really do you have any proof other than the source you wish to validate , at this point NO nothing conclusive and its been 1, 982 years of . trying .There is a big difference between writing a documentation of an event and writing 60 to 300 years later and trying to call it a documentation .. facts and events can be distorted and manipulated and exaggerated to serve the writer INTENT AGENDA ans MOTIVE

Education is not as structured as modern society. Just because their education is different, do not mean they are dumb and stupid. Peter for example is a fisherman, yes there where no formal educational degree on how to be a good fisherman but that doesn't mean it stopped them from making fishing as a source of living. Education is based on the needs of society. What society do not know, do not matter because it is not part of their conscious need. Only when consciousness begins where one starts to wonder, to seek answers, hypothesize and find answers. Believing just answers without seeking is not learning, it is mimicry. Only when Believing is part of his seeking that answers become Personal Truth. If you read the Bible do not read for reading sake to prove what is wrong or right about it. Much must be accounted with sensibility and withdraw from seeking contention. You eat to have sustenance, we do not eat to critique and say out time and money was wasted. Who wrote it, how they wrote it, is trivial, compared to what understanding that those were written ensue the reader.

Paul had a PhD in theology, but was blinded by heresy.

Once he opened his eyes, he could help the Church out.

See this source for full treatment:

Were the traditional authors of the four NT gospels "illiterate" as many claim? Jones provides an in-depth look in hopes of answering that very question.

Matthew the Tax Collector

"In the book that bears his name, Matthew is presented as a "publican" or "tax collector." It is doubtful that any early Christian would have fabricated this bit of vocational trivia. After all, the very idea that Jesus asked a tax collector to follow him must have been a bit embarrassing. When the Gospels were written, Roman governors expected tax collectors to stockpile personal wealth by cheating people- and most tax collectors apparently complied with this expectation. Not surprisingly, tax collectors rarely make it to the top of anyone's list of most-loved citizens.

In Roman rhetoric, to refer to someone as a tax collector was to call that person's honor into question. In the writings of Josephus, the Jewish historian told how a Judean tax collector bribed the corrupt governor Florus not long before Florus incited the Jewish rebellion against Rome. And, according to the Gospels, folk in Judea and Galilee grouped tax collectors with drunkards, gluttons, pagans and adulterers (Matt. 11:19; 18:17; Luke 18:11). Simply put, answering the classified ad that read "Become a Roman tax collector! Make millions fleecing your friends!" was not the most promising pathway to personal popularity in the ancient world.

But there was one skill that tax collectors did possess. They could read and write.

Tax collectors were, in fact, know to carry pinakes, hinged wooden tablets with a think wax coating on each panel. Tax collectors used styluses of metal or bone to etch notes in the wax- notes that, in most cases, were later translated and rewritten on papyrus. Papyri from Egypt prove that tax collectors also wrote receipts and registers for citizens in their villages.

Despite Ehrman's disdainful description of the first disciples as "uneducated, lower-class, illiterate," a tax collector such as Matthew could not have fit such a description. The daily tasks of a Galilean tax collector required him to collect, copy and record information, probably in multiple languages." [3]

Doctor Luke

Jones continues by describing the skills that a physician in the ancient world would have most likely possessed:

"...a physician would seem to have possessed, at the very least, the capacity to read the summaries of medical knowledge that flourished in the first century. What's more, papyri from Egypt prove that ancient physicians and their scribes frequently wrote reports for law-enforcement officials regarding suspicious injuries and possible causes of death, as well as statements for slave masters certifying the health of slaves. So- if indeed Luke was a physician, as the letter to the Colossians suggests-it's unlikely that he was "illiterate" or "uneducated." And many physicians were capable of pulling together various eyewitness accounts into a coherent report, just as the preface of Luke's Gospel implies that the author has done." [4]

Mark and John

"That leaves Mark and John. When it comes to these two witnesses, Ehrman may be correct: Though it is by no means certain, either or both of these men may have been illiterate. Yet even this doesn't preclude the possibility that eyewitness sources stand behind the NT Gospels.

In the first century A.D., professional scribes were readily available to render messages from other languages, including Aramaic, into polished Greek. Complex legal titles, eloquent epistles to family members and simple commercial receipts all required secretarial skills- and provided livelihoods for a multitude of scribes not only in urban areas such as Ephesus and Rome but also in Galilee and Judea. And prosperous patrons weren't the only people that used professional scribes; persons from poorer classes employed scribes too. Even though Paul was completely capable of writing Greek (Galatians 6:11; Philemon 1:19-21), scribes penned Paul's letters for him (Romans 16:22; see also 1 Peter 5:12).

It's entirely possible that Mark and John employed professional scribes to render their oral accounts of Jesus' life into the Greek documents that centuries of copyists have passed down to us. If so, they would still have been the sources of these Gospels, even if they didn't pen the actual words.

I do find it intriguing that the simplest Greek in the New Testament is found in the Gospel According to John and the Gospel According to Mark, the two Gospels whose traditional authors might have been less than literate. In fact-after translating hundreds of Greek epigraphs, papyri and writings from prominent second-and-third-century Christians-I still haven't found a document written as simply as the Gospel According to John."

http://truthbomb.blogspot.com/2010/12/common-objec...

disciples were educated ... only islam came from an illiterate !