Jesus the Carpenter?

[00:00:01] Jesus the Carpenter by Bart Ehrman it seems to be virtually impossible for modern people to imagine what it was like for someone to live in radically different contexts, say, for example, Jesus in rural Galilee 2,000 years ago. It's very difficult, even for scholars who know a bit about his world. [00:00:21] Lots of things never occur to us, though, at least not to me. [00:00:26] Since I was roughly nine years old, I knew that Jesus was a carpenter. It never occurred to me until roughly three months ago to ask what that actually may have entailed. And I've been reading scholarship on Jesus for over 50 years. [00:00:40] My reflections will take two posts, and this one focuses on the key passage Mark 6:6:3. [00:00:47] Mark 6 indicates that after engaging in his public ministry for a while, Jesus returns to Nazareth and teaches in the synagogue, which did not have to be a building in most places like that. It simply meant what the word literally signifies a gathering. Technically, a synagogue was when a group of adult Jewish men came together for religious worship and instruction. [00:01:11] When he's finished teaching, his fellow townsfolk are amazed. How did he learn all this? And how does he do such amazing deeds? Is it either Tecton usually translated as carpenter? And aren't his mother and brothers and sisters here with us? That's Mark 6:3 There are several peculiarities about this verse. [00:01:31] The first is not peculiar to most Protestant readers, but Roman Catholics have always found it hard to accept, or at least to figure out. The verse explicitly names four of Jesus brothers James, Joses, Jude, and Simon, and it speaks of his sisters in the plural in connection with his mother Mary. But in the Catholic tradition, Mary did not have other children. [00:01:54] She was a perpetual virgin. [00:01:56] Okay then, but here it sure seems clear that she wasn't. I will devote a separate post to what that's all about Mary's perpetual virginity, her own immaculate conception, and so on, and explain the traditional Catholic way of explaining this verse. [00:02:11] It seems a bit odd that the townsfolk of Nazareth ask a question about Jesus identity. Isn't this the carpenter? He presumably grew up with them, and he had done jobs for a number of them and had just left town a short time before now. This is early in the ministry in Mark, probably just a few months after Jesus left home. So why are they wondering if it's the carpenter? [00:02:34] It's also odd, or possibly unexpected, that these townsfolk also express great wonder at the miraculous deeds that he has done since, at least in this account. He hasn't done any since he came to town. [00:02:45] One might think that Mark simply chose not to tell of any Jesus miracles on Jesus own home turf, but it's hard to figure out why he would do so. [00:02:54] Or possibly that the townsfolk had heard about the miracles in other places, but Mark gives no indications of that. And if they didn't know if this person is actually Jesus, what would make them think that he, this unknown person, had done miracles? [00:03:09] Particularly interesting is that this is the only verse in the entire New Testament that indicates that Jesus was a carpenter. [00:03:16] The other gospels never say so. [00:03:19] Luke leaves out the verse and John has a completely different story. But do see John chapter 6, verses 41 to 43. [00:03:26] More intriguing is that Matthew does have this verse, but changes it in a seemingly minor way that's actually kind of significant. [00:03:33] Now the crowd asks, is this not the son of the carpenter and of Mary and then the brother of. And they name some of them. It's striking that Joseph is not named here or anywhere in Mark's Gospel. But even more striking that anyone who read only the Gospel of Matthew, which for what it's worth, was read far more than Mark in antiquity, would not know that Jesus himself was a carpenter. His father was the carpenter. [00:04:00] So why would Matthew want to change it? [00:04:03] Some background would help for figuring it out. [00:04:06] The word tecton can mean carpenter, but it doesn't have to mean that it comes from a word that literally means something like to bring into existence. [00:04:15] And so when used with respect to a worker, it means someone who makes things. [00:04:20] It commonly does refer to someone who makes things with wood, either a carpenter or a joiner or someone who does both. [00:04:27] But it can also refer to those who work with stone and so a mason or someone who works with metal and so a smith and so on. That is in the ancient rural or village context, a lower class day labourer. [00:04:42] Being a tecton was seen as common labour by the elites of the time. [00:04:47] This would not be a middle class person who makes fine wares for wealthy households, like a nice set of cabinets for the kitchen or a vanity for the second bathroom. For one thing, there wasn't really much of a middle class in the Roman world generally. And in a rural village like Nazareth it would all have been working class. [00:05:07] Apart from the socioeconomic setting of Nazareth, about which I'll be saying more in the next post, there is the class issue with being a tecton itself. [00:05:17] The great Roman orator Cicero listed it among the despised reputations that were below the dignity of any self respecting man. Now he is of course writing for the upper echelon of wealthy aristocrats. [00:05:29] From early on, Christians had to defend Jesus against charges of being a rural nobody. [00:05:35] The second century pagan opponent of Christianity, Celsus, used Mark 6:3 to argue that Jesus could not be the son of God. He was a lowly carpenter. [00:05:45] When Matthew changed the verse so that Jesus was no longer himself a tecton, possibly it was for apologetic reasons to keep that taint off Jesus own character. [00:05:56] You might think that he's still tainted since he comes from a working class family. [00:06:01] But another way to look at it is as a rags to riches story. [00:06:05] Matthew could be saying that yes, he did have humble beginnings. His father was just a tecton, but look what he made of himself. [00:06:14] The change did however create a problem. Now Matthew explicitly says that Joseph was Jesus father, but in the birth narrative he indicates that Mary was a virgin. So how does that work? [00:06:26] One reasonably good solution to that problem is to say that his fellow villagers didn't actually know that Mary had been a virgin. [00:06:33] And so their understanding and under appreciation of Jesus goes very deep. [00:06:37] All this is a preface to the following post. [00:06:42] Why would it be important for understanding Jesus and his teachings if Mark is right that he was in fact a tecton? [00:06:48] So that's what I'm going to tackle next.