Education was then at the lowest ebb among the people, hardly a score of men being intelligent readers, while only one woman, the sister of Mar.

Shimon, was able to read at all.

They had no printed books, and but very few manuscripts of even portions of the Bible, and these were in the ancient Syriac, which was an unknown tongue to almost all of them.

Their spoken language was an unwritten dialect of the Syriac.

Still deeper was their moral degradation, almost every command of the decalogue being transgressed without compunction, or even shame when detected.