For a while I’ve been interested in how Paul and Josephus, and people like them, would have learned Scripture. When and how would they have learned to read Hebrew and Greek, particularly at the level required to engage the Tanakh? How well did they learn it? How typical would would their knowledge have been?I discussed these issues briefly in my book, How the Bible Became Holy. Later, I published a short piece in which I sketch out the argument for Paul, which can be found here. I recently published a fuller, academic version of this argument in the volume Strength to Strength: Essays in Honor of Shaye J. D. Cohen.
My argument, in short, is that Paul shows all the signs of having been educated in Jerusalem in a fashion typical of other upper-class Jews. Growing up, he knew Scripture mainly through stories and perhaps oral readings in Aramaic translation; he most likely did not read it, especially not in Hebrew. Only later, as he went to more Greek speaking areas, did he begin to read to Scripture more intensively, and then in its Greek translation. This is a reconstruction that is obviously at odds with that of Acts, and I attempt to explain that discrepancy as well.
In a future piece, I hope to deal with Josephus.