So, how would a preliterate person attain such deep biblical literacy in a way that a literate person today, even a person of faith, typically can’t?

I suspect the conventional answer would be something like, “they were more religious than we are.” Which isn’t wrong, per se, but also doesn’t identify a specific mechanism. Instead, let’s go back to the idea of names-as-mnemonic-devices and reframe the question this way: what if a preliterate person could remember Psalm 22, and in fact vast quantities of scripture, precisely because they couldn’t read? Because memorization, or being “off-book,” was the only option?

Excellent post from @jordanellishall. I want to come back to it, but I can I confirm a version of this every single day. My 2 1/2-year-old son, Will, is “preliterate” — he swims in his own little oral culture, lives in it all day every day in a way that I do not and never will again. And it shows precisely in “reading” books. My wife and I have memorized more of his books than I’m sure we ever thought we would. But Will knows them. And he can recite them so well while we’re reading to him that I often have to remind myself that he actually can’t read. Just this morning I had to “read” him back to sleep in his room… at 4 am, in the dark, with a book we got last week. Which amounted to me misquoting every page and him correcting me until he fell asleep. Correcting me is actually just part of reading books to him now. And he’s never wrong. And I love it.