The Builder
Page 7 of 7
Author’s Note
As I wrote this I was supremely conscious of the fact that what I was typing into my computer was quite different from what much of western tradition has dictated about the person of Joseph, the birth of Jesus Christ, and Joseph and Mary’s relationship after the Child’s birth. I have endeavored to make this as close to what we know to be true about Judean culture around the turn of the Age. I tried to keep the names as close to their Hebrew/Aramaic pronunciation and spelling as I could. Hence Joseph would have been called Yosef, Mary would have been called Miriam, and Jesus would have been known as Yehoshua or Yeshua (depending on the preference of a person).
There are many things that western traditions have added into the story of Christ’s birth, such as the search for a place to stay in many inns, that Jesus was born the night they arrived, that Joseph and Mary never had sexual relations, that there were three wise men. Most of these are tradition. Tradition is not bad, but it is often flawed, and therefore should be scrutinized carefully.
Being well-acquainted with middle eastern culture myself, I know that Mary and Joseph would never in their wildest dreams have stayed in an inn when they had relatives nearby. The relatives would have made room. It was their sacred duty. Being a relative in the Middle East does not only mean you share the same grandfather or grandmother. It goes so far as to being the cousin of your wife’s sister’s husband’s uncle and sometimes farther still.
Also, it must be pointed out that inns were not exactly common in the times of Christ and used almost only by foreigners. Mary and Joseph wouldn’t be caught dead in an inn. Inns were only found on major routes. Bethlehem was way off of the major routes, a little po-dunk village six miles from civilization — and six miles back then is what thirty miles is today.
So what do we make if the word “inn” in our Bibles? Tradition states it should be translated this way. But let’s do a quick word study to see if tradition is warranted.
This word — kataluma — is used only three times in Scripture (Mk. 14:4; Lk 2:7; 22:11). Of those three times it is translated twice as “guest room” (Mk 14:4 and Lk 22:11), and only once as “inn” (Lk 2:7). It would be strange that Luke would imbibe the same word with two separate meanings, especially when he uses a different word in 10:34 (pandocheion) to describe an inn in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I do not think that the argument that we should look at the Hebrew cognates[24] here bears any weight (and I’m an Old Testament scholar), because Luke is the one writer in the New Testament who is of purely Gentile background. He does have many Hebraisms in his writings, but these are mainly theological in nature.[25]
We, as westerners, tend to disavow Jesus’ “middle-easternness.” We believe that he was western — albeit a westerner from the middle ages. Jesus was a Jew and he lived in a society very much like the middle eastern societies today. Family was immensely important, as was hospitality. Families would live together in large compounds and take care of each other. It was normal for three or more generations to live under one roof, in one compound. This also applied to cousins and more distant relations.
Some may question why I opted for the word “builder” rather than the more traditional “carpenter.” Joseph may have been a carpenter, as I do suggest, but the Greek word used for him is tekton, which designates a builder or a craftsman, regardless of whether he worked in wood, metal or stone.[26] We don’t have any direct indication that Joseph was a builder, but the fact that Jesus is designated so in Mark 6:3 strongly suggests that his human father was one, too, owing to the fact that the son almost always took up the same vocation as the father.
I also don’t give too much credence to the idea that Joseph was dirt-poor. Being a builder back then was a well-respected job, something like being a manager today. And there was plenty of building to do. Herod the Great was notorious for commissioning buildings, as was his son Herod Antipas. A man would have enough to do all year as a builder and he would enjoy a settled, steady income. Joseph would easily be able to support a growing family with his trade. I believe that the reason they brought the less expensive offering at Christ’s birth was the lack of liquid means at the time and also the fact that prices in the Jerusalem Temple Market are known to have been way out of proportion. I daresay that a lower-middle-class family that could normally afford a lamb would be lucky to get away with a pair of turtledoves from the Court of Gentiles Market for the same price. No wonder Jesus would want to clear out the Temple!
One other idea that many people hold was that Joseph was an old man and that he never had relations with Mary, making her a perpetual virgin, hence Christ’s “brothers” and “sisters” were never related to him or else they were his cousins. The text of Scripture suggests nothing of this. Matthew states that, “But he [Joseph] had no union with her [Mary] until she gave birth to a son.”[27] This does not suggest that he never “had union” with her. To my mind it even suggests that he did — after Jesus was born.
Joseph was most probably older than his wife, but only by a few years, perhaps six or seven. It was normal practice then for a man in his twenties to wed a girl in her teens. We westerners may gag at that thought, but that is still the way it is done in many middle eastern countries.
One question I have often mulled over in my mind was, did Joseph and Mary know that Jesus was the Christ? My answer to that — from Scripture — is an unquestionable “yes.” What they thought was meant by Messiah was probably different than what it turned out to be. Mary’s heart was pierced by a proverbial sword when her first-born was crucified for the sins of the world and it is quite certain that Joseph never lived to see his wife’s son’s death.
Some people might balk at the suggestion that Joseph would have been crown prince if the Davidic dynasty had remained on the throne. That must be a given, as Matthew goes to great lengths to establish a direct lineage from David to Joseph Bar Jacob. There may be some missing generations in there, but there is little doubt in my mind that he would have been heir to the throne if there had been a throne. Otherwise Christ’s legal claim would have been rather difficult to substantiate.
Now, many of these things are my personal views. I do not like to knock tradition too much, but we should do it every once in a while, if only to make sure that it isn’t rotting away from the inside out. It is important to be on the side of Truth and sometimes tradition and Truth will butt heads, as they did in the Reformation. I will not go to my death for many of the things suggested in this piece, but I do believe that understanding the culture at the time of the Gospels will bring greater clarity to our understanding and application of Scripture today. Many thanks to Dr. Terry Hulbert of Columbia International University for these insights.
J.M. Diener
January 3, 2003
Sources
Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1973. Hulbert, Terry. Gospels / Life of Christ Course Notes. Columbia, SC: Columbia International University, 1999. New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. CD-ROM. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999. Thomas, Robert L. and Stanley N. Gundry. A Harmony of the Gospels. San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1991. Scripture quotations marked (NIV) taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978,1984 by International Bible Society. Used by Permission of the International Bible Society.
“NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark office by International Bible Society. Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
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