To ancient believers, the notion that they should read the Scriptures silently while at home alone would have seemed absurd because so few people had access to manuscripts and most of them couldn’t read. Instead, manuscripts of the Scriptures should be read aloud for all to hear.

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.
1 Timothy 4:13

The most popular trend in Scripture engagement in this digital age is the production of multimedia content that provides individuals with an immersive experience of the Bible, whether distributed online or through smartphone apps. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with that, at Bibles International (BI) our Scripture engagement work prioritizes what God has revealed in His ancient Word about how God’s people should encounter and use Scripture.

In some of our project languages, using technology to encourage Scripture engagement has its limits. In Chad, Africa, for example, most villagers outside the major cities can’t afford a smartphone, and they don’t have reliable electricity or internet access.

Another obstacle to Scripture engagement in Chad is its literacy rate, the lowest in Africa despite the efforts of French colonialists and American missionaries for over 130 years. And the majority of literate Chadians can read in French or Arabic but not their mother tongue. BI has Bible translation projects in eight vernacular languages in Chad, and teaching literacy plays a vital role in each one. But our reach is limited, and few people have the opportunity to join our literacy classes.

So how can the thousands of Chadian believers who cannot read or afford smartphones have access to God’s Word? We find the answer in the ancient pages of Scripture, not in modern technology.

Brief Look at the History of Literacy

Throughout human history up until the last few centuries, most people did not read—they heard writing read aloud. In the first century, when the New Testament was written, the use of writing flourished, and scholars estimate that the literacy rate in the Roman empire soared to an astonishing 10–15%, about half that of modern-day Chad. This was a remarkable achievement considering that ancient manuscripts had to be copied by hand and were very expensive and difficult to read. And as in modern-day Chad, in the Roman period literacy was concentrated in cities. But everyone knew about writing and had heard it read, though the vast majority of people couldn’t read it for themselves. This was the situation of the whole world before the invention of the Gutenberg press, which sparked a cultural revolution of literacy in the modern West a mere 585 years ago.

Though hard for us to imagine, before the widespread print distribution of the Bible, no one read God’s Word while sipping a cup of coffee before going to work in the morning. In ancient times, believers listened to the Bible read aloud at church on Sunday, and they had to retain what they’d heard because they couldn’t take a copy of it home. Some modern cultures outside the West, including Chad, remain in this situation to this day.

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