You argue the other side of consensus when you're talking about biblical archaeology. Consensus is bunk. I admire your skepticism there and do not admire your appeal to authority / crowds here. We should be skeptical of all of it.

Jabin said:

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Also, there is/was a consensus of historians that the Bible and its translations drove literacy in northwestern Europe. The King James translation was referred to as the "People's Bible", for example. Sweden passed a law mandating the teaching of reading and writing specifically so that people could read their Bibles.

If that consensus of the academy does not exist today, it is most likely due to the blinders of the "woke" scholars that today have taken over the academy, rather than any new information that contradicts the previous consensus.

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The IR is considered to have started in 1760 on the early end, 1840 on the late end. So hitting high literacy rates in 1800 falls in line with that.

For example, the Swedish law mandating teaching the Bible came in 1686, which was decades after a prior mandate to create schools to educate kids in general. Rates go up 23% over the next 100 years. Not bad. But it goes up 27% as the economy booms over the next 50. Bigger increase in half the time that coincides with political and economic overhaul.

The king James comes out in 1611. Literacy rates are around 40%. Almost 150 years later in 1750: 53%. 1820 (200 years later): 53%. They finally tick up again over the next 50 years as the economy booms.

I'm not saying that there was zero increase due to biblical incentives. But to say the Bible is the sole reason for literacy increase doesn't look at the whole picture.

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The IR is considered to have started in 1760 on the early end, 1840 on the late end. So hitting high literacy rates in 1800 falls in line with that.

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The high literacy rates were already in place at the start of the IR, so the IR cannot have been their cause. In fact, it's more likely the other way around - the high literacy rates were likely a substantial cause of the IR.

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For example, the Swedish law mandating teaching the Bible came in 1686, which was decades after a prior mandate to create schools to educate kids in general. Rates go up 23% over the next 100 years. Not bad. But it goes up 27% as the economy booms over the next 50. Bigger increase in half the time that coincides with political and economic overhaul.

The king James comes out in 1611. Literacy rates are around 40%. Almost 150 years later in 1750: 53%. 1820 (200 years later): 53%. They finally tick up again over the next 50 years as the economy booms.

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Did the booming economy cause the increasing literary, did the increasing literacy cause the booming economy, or were both caused in whole or in part by something else?

I suspect that the growth of Protestantism resulted in the growth of many things, not only literacy but also the idea of individual liberty, which in turn led to the economic boom.

Zobel said:

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You argue the other side of consensus when you're talking about biblical archaeology. Consensus is bunk. I admire your skepticism there and do not admire your appeal to authority / crowds here. We should be skeptical of all of it.

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Ha ha, turning my own skepticism against me. That's a very valid point. We should all be skeptical of everything, particularly "experts".

I raised the fact of "consensus" not to convince you, but mainly in an attempt (most likely vain) to head off Sapper who invariably appeals to the "consensus of scholars" to resolve all discussions. I also raise it to attempt to show that it's not a point being made by one anonymous and seemingly nutty poster on an internet board.

You are right that the data is weak. But your criticism goes to the precision of the data, not the conclusion. All of the numerical data aligns and is supported by soft data from culture and society. For example, the Roundheads who chopped off Charlie I's head were predominately from the middle class and were almost entirely literate. Shakespeare himself came from a middle class family. Whether or not the correct literacy rate was 65% or 75%, there is no evidence against the conclusion that the overall literacy rate in the Protestant countries rapidly expanded after the translation of the Bible and the invention of the printing press.

In fact, if you view those two events together as a single event, that may have been the single most transforming cultural even in world history, perhaps second only to the historical reality of Jesus Christ.

Finally, I'm skeptical of those numbers from the U.S. I'd like to see more refined data. To the extent that the US data has validity, my guess is that there were isolated pockets of illiteracy (e.g., African Americans, some poverty-stricken urban communities of immigrants, and so forth) that may have driven the overall literacy numbers down.

Yeah but what proportion of society was "middle class"?

The other thing is this under-defined idea of literacy. What would be called "functionally illiterate" today would probably suffice for literacy in the ancient world. I suspect that a very high percentage of the population in, for example, Republican Rome, could read basic block letters and short sentences. Why? Because signs and inscriptions were everywhere. Ancient laws were posted publicly, businesses had signs, inscriptions were left on roadside monuments, there were public calendars, amphorae were inscribed with their contents - these things make no sense if 1% of the population was able to read them. There's a big difference between being able to write one's name, being able to read block letters, being able to read script, being able to read long sentences, being able to read a book, etc.

The other issue is ascribing causation. Yes, it's clear that literacy rates increased - but 'ware the post hoc fallacy. The big source from that literacy in Europe chart is talking mostly about economic factors - how many books were made, what was the elasticity of the demand. But that also has to do with disposable income and economic class makeup, trade, local production capacity, and so on.

The last thing is this kind of modernist tendency to stand at our current place, with our current personal understanding of what is best (where we are, what we believe, of course) and then view history backwards as an inevitable continuous chain of events leading precisely to us, now, here. This enables all kinds of fantastic ideas about "Western Civilization" that imposes an external framework and storyline onto widely disparate events - all depending on the viewpoint of the historian. 19th century German Protestants thought, of course, that the entirety of the development of history lead to its culmination in 19th century German Protestantism. Many Americans feel the same way about 20th century America. And so there's this big temptation to say - all the things that align with me must be incredibly important to produce me.

For example - in fact, the "Dark Ages" were a time of incredible economic, architectural, and technological advancement. The idea that the world went into darkness and chaos and was saved by the "Enlightenment" was an intentionally anti-Christian story that yearned for an imagined pre-Christian paganism and denigrated the post-pagan time as backwards and stupid. Protestantism picked up this premise but instead of saying Christianity was to blame, said Roman Christianity was to blame, and rather than yearning for an imagined noble paganism yearned for an imagined noble early Christianity - which, shockingly, looked exactly like what they wanted to practice. This kind of motivated reasoning causes you and Sapper to look at the exact same time period and come up with wildly disparate explanations as to cause. Both look to me like motivated reasoning.

Regarding the US literacy - if we take the most basic view I described about Republican-era Rome - can you read or write at all - it seems US self-reported illiteracy among whites was around 6% based on census data.

https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

But the Army used an actual literacy test and found that 25% of draftees in WWI were illiterate.

https://www.tradoc.army.mil/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Literacy-Training-in-the-Army.pdf

Summarizing the first few pages of above:

The Census determined literacy by asking them if they could read or write before 1940, and after that changed to how many years of school. A study showed that four years of school produced 95% literacy - so anyone with four years of school was listed as literate, and less than 5 were considered functionally illiterate. It seems the ratio in Army draftees between illiterate (<4 years of school) and functionally illiterate (<5 years of school) was approximately 1:10 (6,000 who could not read and write vs 60,000 functionally illiterate). Note that this is draftees, so may not be completely applicable.

So, fudging a bit (a lot?) perhaps at the turn of the 20th century some 5% of whites were illiterate (<4 years of school) but it seems possibly that many more - perhaps 30-50% of the population? - would be functionally illiterate - less than 5th grade reading level.

And I'm pretty sure a functionally illiterate person is not reading the scriptures.

The high literacy rates were there at the start for two, maybe three, countries depending on what we count as high. But after the IR kicks off, they spike everywhere.

No doubt there were pockets where fundamental Protestantism had a stronger affect on literacy, work and the economy. The problem with your theory as a whole is that there are too many outliers.

Take the US. All Protestant but Maryland. All more literate on average than their home countries. Yet literacy rates and educational infrastructure was much higher in the north. Why? Economic incentives.

I won't deny that the Protestant work ethic wasn't a major contributor to economic success. If you want to say that Protestantism led to economic growth that led to literacy increases, i can get on board with that. But I don't see a case for "everyone could get a Bible and started learning to read asap". Especially when those numbers are weighted against the data Zobel shared.

With re your quibbling about the rise of literacy in NW Europe after the translation of the Bible and the invention of the printing press, you're quibbling about the precision of the data. You cannot contest that literacy rose, and rose dramatically. There is plenty of evidence that it did and none that it did not.

You also seem to assume that being able to sign one's name is not a very good indicator of literacy, but haven't explained why. It seems to me that it is an excellent indicator of literacy. It either indicates that one is literate or that one is expected to be literate (and that it's shameful not to be able to sign one's name). One wouldn't be expected to be literate unless literacy was widespread.

The Banned said:

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The high literacy rates were there at the start for two, maybe three, countries depending on what we count as high. But after the IR kicks off, they spike everywhere.

No doubt there were pockets where fundamental Protestantism had a stronger affect on literacy, work and the economy. The problem with your theory as a whole is that there are too many outliers.

Take the US. All Protestant but Maryland. All more literate on average than their home countries. Yet literacy rates and educational infrastructure was much higher in the north. Why? Economic incentives.

I won't deny that the Protestant work ethic wasn't a major contributor to economic success. If you want to say that Protestantism led to economic growth that led to literacy increases, i can get on board with that. But I don't see a case for "everyone could get a Bible and started learning to read asap". Especially when those numbers are weighted against the data Zobel shared.

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You're arguing that economics drove literacy. I'd suggest that Protestantism drove both economics and literacy.

The higher literacy in the North may actually be further evidence of that fact. The North was much more heavily influenced by Puritanism, with its concomitant literacy, than was the South. In fact, until the advent of the Baptists and the Methodists, the South was influenced most heavily by the Anglicans who were the closest version of Protestantism to the RCC. The Anglicans had little desire to educate the masses or to allow the unwashed to read the Bible for themselves. In fact, studies have shown that until the advent of the Baptists and Methodists, most Southerners were unchurched and unbelievers. The requirement of the Anglicans for a seminary degree in order to be ordained meant that they couldn't keep up with the population growth and explosion of the frontier westward. The Anglicans were simply unable to build new churches and keep them staffed with ordained ministers; the Baptists and Methodists filled that vacuum.

Of course I can.

As far as I can tell, the stuff on that page comes from two sources - economic data about books, and documents signed vs witnessed/marked with X. The former could and should change dramatically with the invention of the printing press without any regard for the overall literacy rate in the population. The latter makes a big assumption as to the definition of literacy. So - the "evidence" is pretty poor.

Further we don't have a good baseline rate. For example, what if literacy was much higher in the past, went lower, then went higher again? You'd need to explain the drop, and show that the rise was not related to whatever caused it the first time.

And again, even if we had perfect data and it corresponded perfectly to the invention of the printing press and translation of the bible (which you should note was always available in the local vernacular in the East...) it still wouldn't show causation unless you also control for other things that produce literacy - economic, educational shifts, etc.

This form of argument is a bit like me saying that every morning I drive to work the sun is in my eyes. So we have a lot of evidence that me driving to work makes the sun rise, and no evidence that it doesn't.

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The Anglicans had no desire to educate the masses or to allow the unwashed to read the Bible for themselves.

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And yet the UK in general had higher literacy rates than continental Europe.

When you're starting with the premise that Protestantism is the end product of Western Civ and all of human history lead up to it, you start tying yourself up in knots like this.

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it still wouldn't show causation unless you also control for other things that produce literacy - economic, educational shifts, etc.

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History cannot "control" for other factors in an engineering or statistical sense. There's simply not enough data nor is the quality of the data high enough. But that doesn't mean that it should be ignored.

And you list other factors as independent variables, when they may not be. For example, literacy and educational shifts are synonymous, aren't they? One cannot have educational improvement without literacy. In fact, the advent and growth of widespread education is a major piece of evidence supporting the growth of literacy.

And as I pointed out, economics was also an outgrowth of the increased literacy and other cultural changes marked by the Protestant revolution. Economic growth trailed the growth in literacy, not vice versa. The Reformation also changed the cultures of the Protestant countries, permitting individual freedom, both political and economic. It's no coincidence that free markets first developed in Protestant countries.

And for countries dominated by the EOC and its vernacular Bibles, I assume that until the printing press reached the east, such Bibles were relatively rare, correct? I am not that familiar with the history of the EOC countries, but weren't many of them under the oppressive rule of the Ottomans for many centuries? It would be interesting to trace the impact of the printing press and the widespread availability of Bibles in the East. If there is such a study, I'm not aware of it.

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And yet the UK in general had higher literacy rates than continental Europe.

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Because of the influence of Puritanism in the UK. The more "Protestant", the higher the literacy.

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When you're starting with the premise that Protestantism is the end product of Western Civ and all of human history lead up to it, you start tying yourself up in knots like this.

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What knots? You're trying to create them where they don't exist.

And I do believe that Protestantism, while not the "end product", brought to people the infinitely valuable gift of free and ready access to God's word. That access resulted in not just spiritual benefits, but also societal benefits. The more that society and organized churches attempt to restrict people from free access to God's word, the more that society suffers.

Zobel said:

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The Anglicans had no desire to educate the masses or to allow the unwashed to read the Bible for themselves.

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And yet the UK in general had higher literacy rates than continental Europe.

When you're starting with the premise that Protestantism is the end product of Western Civ and all of human history lead up to it, you start tying yourself up in knots like this.

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Exactly. Anglican didn't care to educate their people but the UK (along with the Netherlands) is the first country to crack 50%? And they didn't care to make their populace biblically literate but, as you said yourself, the King James was "the people's Bible", sourced right there in the UK. And despite being the most accessible Bible, they make no appreciable literacy gains until the 1800s. You're not making sense here.

Like most places in the modern world, reading is a luxury when you're living hand to mouth. As you start to see economic opportunities revolve around your ability to read and write, the desire to teach your children to read and write goes up.
You would agree you can love God and get to Heaven without being able to read, yes? And you would also agree that you cannot expect upward economic mobility if you cannot read, yes? Reading the scriptures for yourself is a luxury. Being able to feed yourself is not.

Focusing on individualism certainly had beneficial results for the economy. But it shouldn't be lost on you that countries that first thrived on trade became literate first. You can draw conclusions that Bible production = literacy, but you have to ignore places like Germany that didn't increase literacy until they industrialized or Sweden that didn't see significant growth until 200 years after the reformation, that just so happened to grow with their economy.

I can draw a 1:1 ratio between literacy and economy. We can say literacy came first or economic opportunity came first. Doesn't much matter to me. What I cannot do is draw a 1:1 ratio between Protestantism and literacy without making excuses for outliers. None of this should be seen as a dunk on Protestantism. I just disagree that Bible printing is the true cause of literacy increase.

If history can't control for factors with statistics you should then throw away the study that began this discussion, because statistical analysis is the only way they produced those literacy estimates in the first place.

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The Reformation also changed the cultures of the Protestant countries, permitting individual freedom, both political and economic. It's no coincidence that free markets first developed in Protestant countries.

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The problem with your story is that it just doesn't match the facts. For one thing, the first free markets were in places like Venice and Genoa in the 1300s. Bruge had the first stock exchange in 1309! By your method of post hoc analysis we should say that stock exchanges cause Protestantism, not the other way around.



Holland's GDP per capita trend is basically unchanged before and after the printing press in 1440 and the posting of the 95 theses. Italy seems to suffer on a post-hoc basis from the press. England cared for neither, and their run began in 1650.

You're beginning with a premise and forcing the facts into it. It's a bias. For example, this statement "I suspect that the growth of Protestantism resulted in the growth of many things, not only literacy but also the idea of individual liberty, which in turn led to the economic boom" is just absolutely bonkers wrong for anyone with any kind of classical education at all. The philosophical ideals of individual liberty preceded Protestantism by millennia, and the explicitly anti-Christian Enlightenment movement is what resurrected and re-popularized these ancient ideals - not Protestantism.

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And for countries dominated by the EOC and its vernacular Bibles, I assume that until the printing press reached the east, such Bibles were relatively rare, correct? I am not that familiar with the history of the EOC countries, but weren't many of them under the oppressive rule of the Ottomans for many centuries? It would be interesting to trace the impact of the printing press and the widespread availability of Bibles in the East. If there is such a study, I'm not aware of it.

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Now now, you're not being consistent. Before you said "the translation of the Bible into the vernacular contributed (or caused) the growing literacy in Europe." If we take this as premise - the availability of the scriptures in vernacular is a cause of higher literacy rates - we can absolutely test this in the East and Russia where the scriptures were always available in the vernacular. And, for what its worth, the scriptures were in at least the same language (if not the same quality) in the West for a period of time.

And yes, "bibles" didn't exist, printing presses were generally not legal (much political shenanigans in Byzantium over presses between the Ottomans, Orthodox, and Catholics over the centuries). But we need to make a distinction in the Ottoman empire about literacy between being able to read Arabic vs Greek (no data available).

But how about Russia, then? The Slavic languages were fairly consistent until the Middle Russian Period. Sts Cyril and Methodius invented an alphabet (Cyrillic) to translate the scriptures for the Slavs in the 800s. So we have centuries years of scriptures in the vernacular. Yet Russian literacy did not dramatically rise until the educational reforms of Peter the Great in the mid 1700s.

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And I do believe that Protestantism, while not the "end product", brought to people the infinitely valuable gift of free and ready access to God's word. That access resulted in not just spiritual benefits, but also societal benefits. The more that society and organized churches attempt to restrict people from free access to God's word, the more that society suffers.

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Again, this is historically ignorant in the technical sense of the word. The scriptures were taught in the local language as a rule from before the Incarnation of Christ. Medieval Europe was the exception to that.

I've enjoyed reading this thread, it's like a soap opera.
Now, does Jabin have another come back?

Now, now Zobel. Pasting a picture of a chart without any link to it? How can anyone verify its credibility?

That chart is also small enough to be difficult to read. My read on it is different than yours, i.e., Holland's rise of GDP seems to accelerate after the printing press. That rise stops in later centuries, but of course you know that Holland was ravaged by wars during those years. England's sudden rise of GDP starts in the early 17th century. What could have happened then? Wow, that was the time of the translation of the King James Bible, a/k/a the People's Bible. Your reference to Italy is puzzling since it was and continues to be completely a Catholic country.

You also seem to claim that capitalism was alive and well in Venice, Genoa, and Bruge in the 1300s. You're going to have to provide at least some evidence or support for your claim other than your mere assertion! I don't think that the existence of a mere "market", whatever that might be, is evidence of widespread capitalism.

You also assert that places subject to EOC dominance had the Bible taught in the vernacular. Typical Zobel - you're not being honest with the facts. How many people had their own individual copies of the Bible? How long did it take for printed copies of the Bible to reach Russia and other Orthodox countries?

Finally, I've been pondering your comments about my appeal to authorities. While it is always valid to be skeptical of any appeal to authority, one should give experts in a field some deference when there is absolutely no evidence to contradict them. And that is the case with the impact of the Protestant Reformation on literacy and even democracy in northwest Europe. All experts I am aware of (Sapper excepted) agree with that conclusion. Here are some examples:

A Jewish Scholar's take:

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And then came the real revolution. Undergraduates, to whom Renaissance humanism had begun to feel outdated, were among the first to take Luther at his word and read the text straight through. Ordinary men and women also began forming groups to read the Bible, in secret where necessary.

Was it mere coincidence that, within a half-century, Bible-reading Netherlandish Christians had successfully rebelled against the Hapsburgs and founded a Dutch Republic? Although it took them another half-century decisively to defeat the imperial Hapsburg army, in that half-century the Dutch Republic became the wonder of the world. A marshy backwater governed by rebellious, Bible-reading commoners had suddenly become the richest, most tolerant, freest country in the world; it boasted clean, safe streets and careers open to talent, and was governed by an elected council. The Dutch Republic was far from egalitarian, far from perfectly democratica wealthy elite rapidly tightened its grip on powerbut its very existence was a miracle of biblical proportions.

England, for its part, would soon wrest power from its kings, beheading one in the process. Even before the English secured government by parliament, an astonishing series of Bible-reading republics was created across the Atlantic in New England. They were built by a mass migration of 30,000 like-minded Puritans who left England between 1630 and 1640, settling on a coastline where the relatively sparse native population had been decimated by European diseases inadvertently introduced by fishermen.

The New England colonieseffectively self-governing until the 1760swere the most democratic, egalitarian, and prosperous countries the world had seen since the invention of farming. Only Athens in its golden age and the early Roman republic are comparable.

I recount all of this by way of returning us to Peter Wehner's well-taken assertion that "the Bible changed lives, and changed the world, for the better."

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A Harvard professor of anthropology pointing out how Protestantism spread literacy and the "downstream consequences" of that on multiple facets of society, including capitalism:

How Protestantism (Unintentionally) Spread Literacy Literary Hub (lithub.com)

See also Protestantism Raised Literacy Novel Learning and Martin Luther Rewired Your Brain - Nautilus

Although not written by a scholar with advanced degrees, I attach the following article because it was, ironically, written by a Greek:

How Protestant Reformation Shaped Modern Education (thecollector.com)

And a scholarly article that is, unfortunately, behind a pay wall. Its abstract does provide a good sense of the author's conclusions:

The Protestant Reading Ethic and Variation in Its Effects - Mosher - 2016 - Sociological Forum - Wiley Online Library

A great book that awakened me to these ideas is "The Book that Made Your World" by Vishal Mangalwadi, an Indian academic and scholar.

I identify as Gary...but not as Mike Gendron.