Miniature Ancient Library (from my original Nativity Scene



Library Miniature by Ralph Yeager Roberts 2010









 My favorite element in the Nativity Scene I recently completed is easy to miss.  In my effort to stay close to the Biblical narrative the manger and stable are replaced with a stylized representation of an ancient Palestinian home.  The home I seek to show is neither squalid nor opulent and is meant to present this family as somewhere closer to the economic middle in society at the time than we have tended to suppose of the fairly in which Jesus was raised.  The library is found in the home along the back wall near the little window opening.  It is one of the hidden delights available when a viewer pours over the piece a bit.  That viewer will see built into the wall this classically designed built in storage piece loaded with papers and scrolls.


 Pride in the quality of the miniature book case and its contents is largely why it is my favorite single element in the whole scene.  The cabinetry is made entirely out of wood except the circular molding embellishments which are plastic disks which came from some beads I had.  For the scrolls I simply rolled strips of paper.  Some of the scrolls are meant to have the wood rods with tooled caps on either end as would be used to unroll and maintain ones place while reading a given volume.  For these I used a combination of beads and wooden pieces, hats and heads, in fact, popped off of the figures in a broken German nativity scene.  I just enjoy the fact that my scrolls look realistic thanks to the little decapitated shepherds and wise men from a discarded ornament.  If you look at the pictures you will also see that I have included little bottles of ink, a cup of styluses and quills, some cloth for blotting wet sections, and loose papers.


Library Miniature by Ralph Yeager Roberts 2010



Beyond the quality of the final piece it is also one I like because it touches on the role of writing and literacy in the world at this time and among the Jews.  While there has been some difficulty determining the literacy of Palestine at this time.  Not only are we uncertain just how many people could read but what they could read and of that what they could understand is hard to know.  Hebrew would have been used but many believe it was largely ceremonial as today with Hebrew in American synagogue or Latin in the catholic church.  It is likely that at least boys would have been able to read but not understand Hebrew.  Though there are a significant number of Aramaic retelling of the scriptures which suggest that in the synagogue they would often rely on the vernacular of the people.  But could the average person read these Aramaic texts.  Alexander the great starts a campaign that did rocket literacy rates but how much.  Furthermore Greek seems to have been the international language as was french in the 1700's.




There is much that could be said but in including the bookshelf I was seeking to weigh in on the side of a broad number of people being literate.  At the very least I am suggesting that Jesus would have been literate and as his teachings suggest more than mere literacy but a familiarity with not just the scriptures but the teachings and debates engaged by figures such as Hillel and Philo not to mention the suggestions of his ideas having ties to works and writings from the pagan world.  With this kind of education I am imagining that the family is already one that values and uses written documents in their work and leisure.  While it is a modest sized collection by today's standards if we think of the costly nature of any manuscript and of paper itself then this small collection of literature and official documentation and practical notes and records would represent a significant investment.



Miniature household items for Nativity Scene
 by Ralph Yeager Roberts 2010



Beyond the library I included a few other items which where meant to suggest that the family could read and write and did so in their daily lives.  In the detail picture of some household items I included in the finished Nativity Scene there is a portable laptop or tabletop writing desk and a reusable writing tablet common to this period.  The tablet had wax surfaces that you could write notes on by scratching the wax and then melt the wax and smooth it out once you no longer needed the notes and have a clean surface for the next time you needed to write something down.