Was Jesus Well-Educated? Yes!
As we finish our on-going series about the tremendous explosion of new archeological insight into the world of the New Testament with Professor David Fiensy, we talk about how the life of Galilee was characterized both by contact with gentiles through trade and a concern about ritual impurity as indicated by the proliferation of stone water jars (as described in the Wedding at Cana), and also the avoidance of pagan coinage. We also look at the question of education, how rare it was and how special Jesus seems to have been compared to other laborers in the ancient world in being highly educated and sophisticated. Professor Fiensy is the author of The Archaeology of Daily Life: Ordinary Persons in Late Second Temple Israel.