![]() ![]() One finds the same thing in the Book of Mormon as well. ![]() 6 Nehemiah 8:1–3 states that all the people gathered together and Ezra “read the Law of Moses to the men and the women, and those that could understand and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law.” Deuteronomy 31:11, similarly notes that all Israel (men, women, and children) were commanded to come once every seven years to the house of the Lord to hear the whole book of Deuteronomy "read. 4Īs Schaper observed, “written texts … provided the basis on which literate Israelites ‘performed’ texts on significant occasions.” 5 Schaper has suggested that Nehemiah 8 is a good illustration of this principle. This explains why people would gather around to hear a book read, rather than reading silently like we often do today. 3 Therefore, even if many people in a society were literate, not many people would have had access to books. ![]() But in the ancient world, when books had to be created one letter at a time by scribes, books were much more expensive. Today, it is easy to print off multiple pages of text or to buy a mass-market paperback. 2 One possible reason for this is simply the cost of creating books. But an examination of literacy in the ancient world shows that this was actually a common practice during Book of Mormon times.īiblical scholar Joachim Schaper has argued that in ancient Israel, “just like in any other ancient culture,” people read books out loud to a gathered audience rather than reading quietly to themselves. 1 Today, people rarely read long blocks of text out loud to an audience during a speech. Abinadi quoted much of Isaiah 52 and all of Isaiah 53, Nephi read Isaiah 48– 49 from the Plates of Brass (see 1 Nephi 20– 21), most of Jacob 5 is a quotation from Zenos, and Jesus quoted large sections from Isaiah, Malachi, and Micah. The speeches in the Book of Mormon sometimes contain long quotations from the Old Testament. ![]()
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