New Research Suggests That Literacy Was Widespread in Biblical Judea

Using advanced image-processing technology as well as more traditional methods, a group of scholars and scientists have carefully examined eighteen potsherds bearing Hebrew inscriptions from around 600 BCE—a few decades before the destruction of the First Temple. The scholars concluded that the fragments, found at a Judean military post during the 1960s, contain the handwriting of twelve different individuals, from which they have concluded that a significant portion of Judean males were literate. Barak Sober, a mathematician involved in the research, explains: