Board index ‹ Jesus

[Labrador]

Just as a random thought - most early European settlers in the US came as pilgrims and I can't help but notice the similarities in the puritan lifestyle. Black clothes, simple life and variations of Christianity as major social liason. Couldn't help but wonder how did the concept of Jesus got passed through Christianity as him being a carpenter ( Zimmerman, Schreiner variations)? Why not any other particular builder skill/craft? Stonemason/Structural engineer/ project manager etc.

[jimwalton]

It's just possible it "got passed through Christianity" because that's what Jesus was. In John 7.15, we find out Jesus had not been formally trained in rabbinic ways. Matthew 13.55 ( = par. Mk. 6.3) identifies him as the son of a carpenter. This is the only place we hear such a notion; Jesus Himself never mentions it. Klaus Issler, (in "Exploring the Pervasive Reference to Work in Jesus's Parables," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 57/2 [June, 2014] pp. 326-328), tells us,

"He was most likely a general craftsman who worked with stone, wood, and sometimes metal in large and small building projects. Most references of the word tekton refer to stone construction. Wood as a building material was mainly associated with construction of the tabernacle, the temple, palaces, and with idol making. In a land of omnipresent stone and few trees, a craftsman of Jesus’ day worked primarily in stone, and much less in wood or metal. Such a craftsman is called 'a builder,' and he worked on all the structures mentioned by Jesus in his parables, as well as wine-presses, millstones, olive press stones, tomb stones, cisterns, farm terraces, vineyards, watch toward, house extensions, etc.

"We can infer that Jesus devoted about 20 years of his life working as a builder, if he was apprenticed to his father at the age of 12 or 13 and began his public ministry around age 30.

"Regarding the family’s socio-economic status, suggestions have been made that Joseph and Mary were likely in ES6 since they made an offering allowed for those who could not afford a lamb (Lev. 12.8; Lk. 2.24). During the time of Jesus’s career as a builder, working along with his brothers to provide family income, they may have inched into the lower end of ES5. The poor to whom Jesus ministered were likely at levels of ES6 and ES7: subsistence-level existence, either precariously above it or teetering below it.

"Jesus and other laborers from Nazareth probably worked on the major building projects in the city of Sepphoris about an hour’s walk from Nazareth (4 miles). After Herod the Great’s death, Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, chose Sepphoris as his capital, a city that had been burned in 4 BC by Varus, and rebuilt by Antipas."

Craig Keener, (in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, p. 85), agrees:

"When Jesus was growing up in Nazareth, the demand for carpenters there was great (to rebuild nearby Sepphoris, which had been burned and its surviving inhabitants enslaved); thus it is not surprising that this was Joseph’s occupation. Carpenters engaged in woodwork, such as wooden plows, chairs, and the woodwork on roofs. They also engaged in masonry where buildings were made of stone."