Was Jesus a carpenter?
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Was Jesus a carpenter?
Likely to some degree.
Typical for centuries that a son would learn his dads trade and spent time working with his dad.
Carpenter broadly denotes works with wood / builds with wood.
However as an adult Jesus was revealed as a Master builder of transforming natural human lives into spiritual lives.
Glory to God,
Taken
Likely to some degree.
Typical for centuries that a son would learn his dads trade and spent time working with his dad.
Carpenter broadly denotes works with wood / builds with wood.
However as an adult Jesus was revealed as a Master builder of transforming natural human lives into spiritual lives.
Glory to God,
Taken
Tekon is a term for general construction labor. It meant no specialized skills. Just a laborer that would do anything and everything that grunt labor can perform. Not a rock carver or a wood worker which needed specialized tools and knowledge.
When the Bible was translated into English by Erasmus and Tyndale there was no single word that was equivalent (same as today). So the Word "carpenter" was used in English because literally everyone involved in construction in England was a wood worker of some form and a stone mason was a high skill trade. So the translators tried their best. Tradition has carried the term forward.
Nazareth was a suburb of Sapphoris (Roman City) and people today pour over the stone ruins of that city looking for a rock that might have Jesus name carved into it because often workers would carve their name into a stone they cut and fitted to prove the labor they had done. So...
All this to say that Jesus had a daily commute to work....a foreman to give him grief, coworkers trying to take credit for his work and all the rest of the daily grind we go through.
Jesus was not really a carpenter but he did do honest labor. And there are no forests in Israel or Lebanon.
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There is every evidence from Scripture that, before He began His ministry, Jesus was employed as a carpenter. His earthly father, Joseph, was also a carpenter, which means that Jesus was likely His father’s apprentice until he started his ministry.
Mark 6:3
Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph,[a] Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”
Carpenter or builder, he was a manual labourer with a certain amount t of skill.
That he was born into a working class family, in an unknown town, in a troublesome province with no claim to distinction makes the spread of Christianity remarkable.
See The Impossible Faith
For 17 reason why Christianity should have failed.
Nazareth is a "blink town". If you blink you miss it....has been for thousands of years.
Nazareth also has NO Trees...also been absent for thousands of years BEFORE Joseph and Mary moved there.
Joseph never worked with wood....as carpenters require wood/lumber to work with AND a customer base to sell to. Also iron tools which would be extremely expensive. Peter's two swords would have been a year's salary for anybody...as much as a Torah scroll.
However,
Sapphoris was a huge Roman/Greek city that would have people. It had a theater, public baths, gymnasium, shopping malls, and apartments. Even restaurants (shady parts of town had restaurants) There was always construction work in Sapphoris. Enough for Joseph and his sons. And Sapphoris was built out of stone as it was the only material in abundance that the town could be made from. The ruins of the town are available for viewing to this day while Nazareth is still a "blink town". Not even a red light.
In England a stone mason was a high skill trade. Carpenter a no skill trade. That's why they translated it as such.
I'm not in high school anymore....and I really never studied to share my findings with anyone. There's only ONE person I need to prove my knowledge to and He is Omniscient anyway.
I provide accurate answers to encourage people to look and study for themselves. I can't do it for them.
The Halaak is all about finding those answers to your own questions and finding new questions to find answers for. You are either on the path or not.
Ronald David Bruno
Well-Known Member
Oh for Pete's sake, a carpenter is a builder/ craftsman. Homes, furniture, wood, bricks, stones, whatever was common and required to build anything in those days in Nazareth 2000 years ago.
Houses in ancient Nazareth were made with a rough stone foundation and mud-bricks made on site. A minimum of wood was used in the roof structure: wood was expensive. The houses in Nazareth were probably single storey, simple and small.
Benches, chairs, tables, shelving ...
It also makes all those "Rock" euphemisms and explanations even more pithy eh?
The Rock the builders rejected
The Capstone...
The cornerstone
The Rock not cut by human hands
Upon this Rock....
You are "stone"
The Rocks will cry out....
Turn these rocks into bread
...lest He dash his foot upon a stone
And many many more.....
I very much believe the scriptures...I don't believe cutting parts out or going beyond what was written. The Bible is a miracle...not something to play games with.
It's the translators, who did the best they could, that let us down on this one.
Ronald David Bruno
Well-Known Member
Why do people split hairs and discuss insignificant things. Jesus' life before his ministry was almost entirely absent from the Bible for a reason. We see him at 12 years old "being about his Father's business" in the Temple and then a reference about being a carpenter. Why? Because His main purpose was His ministry, to deliver a New Covenant, to die for our sins, rise from the dead and be our Savior, Lord, King, Son of God. Buts let's add your list, CREATOR.
We take communion regularly to remind us of what He did for us, not his carpentry skills.
My bible says carpenter and that's what I choose to believe, but it doesn't really matter it's not vital to my salvation or my understanding of who Jesus is. Whatever you would call him he was from humble (earthly) origins and followed his (earthly) father into his trade until he reached thirty and began his ministry.
Because what I'm trying to relate to you is that where the translators did the best that they could...
They couldn't do a perfect job.
And to this day traditions seem to trump perfection.
And that's where I draw the line. I REALLY REALLY want to know God's word exactly and precisely...excruciatingly precisely. To let the Word marinate me over Long periods of time.
Joshua 1:8 "Do not let this book of Torah depart from your mouth, meditate upon it day and night..."
Psalms/David: God's word is like silver refined seven times.
2Timothy 3:16 ALL Scriptures are God Breathed and useful for....
So I study the scriptures using very in depth hermeneutics. I often look at original language. It is just part of it. I also look at archeology and anthropology in depth. And I've even gone to Israel just to breathe the air. I take scriptures to be a miracle...a bona fide miracle and so it calms me to marinate in the very words of God and the Holy Spirit.
He gave it to us to know....doing the best I can with what we have been given.
Because small errors lead to large ones.
1⁰ off is nothing if you are traveling 12 feet...might not notice even.
But when you travel thousands of miles you won't even be able to find your destination if 1⁰ off.
So I'm very very careful....
YMMV
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