Jesus' Disciples Were Illiterate

By Leo Gura - October 16, 2026

Think about it, none of Jesus’ direct followers were educated or even literate. The literacy rate in Roman Palestine was less than 3%. Writing was much lower, and literary-quality writing was infinitesimal. And the Gospels were written in Greek, not Aramaic or Hebrew. Only children of rich urban elites went to school. There were no schools for adults or peasants. Synagogue schools did not exist in Jesus’ time. Jesus was from rural Palestine. Most of his followers were homeless peasants. Pause and appreciate how backwards they were relative to even a homeless man today.

Imagine if a guru today had an audience of adult followers with zero education, who did not even finish the 5th grade, could not read, could not write, never read a book in their life, no internet and no social media, and homeless. Never mind something like philosophy or epistemology. What would such people know? Would you trust their stories about Jesus? It’s laughable to think that such people could report on a guru accurately. You cannot trust such people to give you accurate directions to the nearest outhouse, never mind interpret mysticism correctly. Jesus’ direct disciples and apostles had the education level of cavemen, living in an era where everyone believed in magic, ghosts, demons, sea monsters, heroes, curses, spells, prophecies, witchcraft, voodoo, and many kinds of gods, spirits, and myths. These people did not distinguish myth from reality the way we take for granted today. These people had zero science, zero education, zero epistemology, zero real history, zero books, zero internet, zero pop-psychology, zero self-help, zero philosophy, zero rationality, zero awareness of cognitive biases, zero awareness of cult psychology, barely any morality, zero awareness of the evils of religion, zero international cross-cultural awareness, zero testing of their beliefs, and zero constructive criticism or feedback or fact-checking. Jesus was probably the only teacher they ever had. They did not have multiple points of view on anything. They did not have multiple gurus to cross-reference against.

Also, don’t forget that Jesus’ apostles believed that he would return from the dead in their lifetime! Imagine if I died and you guys believed I would return back from the dead in 20 years. What kind of cult would that be? Early Christians made all sorts of false predictions about the coming apocalypse and return of Christ. They’ve been doing that for 2000 years and they still keep doing it today because they haven’t learned any epistemic lessons. Blindly trusting that a handful of illiterate peasants got mysticism right 2000 years ago, is insane. It doesn’t get any more epistemically irresponsible than that.

People underestimate how much education matters. Today, we all just take for granted 12 years of modern education, as if everyone has always had it. Imagine how big of a fool you’d be if you never went to school at all! That’s a terrifying level of ignorance. And now imagine you gather 20 such people together and task them with explaining God. Imagine trying to explain Actualized.org to an illiterate peasant from 2000 years ago. You might as well be speaking Swahili.

The key thing to realize is that none of Jesus’ direct followers wrote the Gospels because Jesus did not have literate followers. Jesus’ followers were not scribes or authors. Being a scribe or author in that era was extremely rare and elitist. Maybe one of them could scribble his name in Hebrew, not compose a world-class work of literature in Greek. I have been writing for 20 years, but I would struggle to write a Gospel. The Bible was written by elites who never knew Jesus directly.

It’s just interesting to think about.

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