Three Percent

In Judea and Galilee around the time of Jesus, as in the rest of the Roman empire, literacy was concentrated in the political and cultural elite. Officials in the Herodian administrations in Jerusalem and the Galilean cities were presumably literate in Greek, though probably not in Hebrew and Aramaic. Working primarily in the latter languages, the scribes and Pharisees constituted the professional literate stratum of the Jerusalem temple-state.
The vast majority of the people, the Galilean, Judean and other villagers, were largely illiterate. One recent study places the literacy rate in Roman Palestine as low as 3 precent. Richard Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story 55.