Christ the Construction Worker?
Christ the Construction Worker?
Taking a closer look at Jesus' profession
It is often thought that before his ministry, Christ was a carpenter.
We gain this impression from the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus’ neighbours ask: ‘Is this not the carpenter [tektōn], the Son of Mary?’ (6:3). In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is called ‘the son of the carpenter,’ attributing the same profession to Joseph (13:55).
For the classical masters, these biblical passages inspired the image of the boy Jesus in Joseph’ workshop. We might think of Simone Barabino’s Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop (c. 1585-1620), in which Mary looks lovingly over Jesus’ labour:
Or perhaps John Everett Millais’s Christ in the House of his Parents (1849-50), in which Joseph works on the sidelines, while Mary sweetly kisses Jesus’ cheek:
The image of Jesus in his father’s workshop is not, however, the preserve of classical art. Already in the late second century Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus appears to have been rather handy to have had around. When his father cuts a piece of wood too short, Jesus exerts his miraculous powers to increase its length (8.1).
The idea that Joseph was a carpenter – as one of the few things known about him – has also been central to his memory. One sixth-century text, also concerned with Jesus’ childhood, is entitled The History of Joseph the Carpenter. Even today, in the Catholic tradition, Joseph is the Patron Saint of workers – especially carpenters.
Is ‘Carpenter’ an Accurate Translation?
How accurate, however, is the idea that Jesus was a carpenter? Does the Greek word tektōn refer to a carpenter, as we might think one today – someone who builds, crafts or repairs wooden structures?
It is certainly true that the Greek word typically refers to a labourer who works with wood. However, to limit a tektōn to wood-work may be mistaken.
As the prolific Jesus historian, John P. Meier, writes, “the term tekton could be applied to any worker who plied his trade 'with a hard material that retains its hardness throughout the operation, e.g. wood and stone or even horn or ivory.’”1
Since the work of a tektōn could involve other materials, James Tabor translates it with the generic term, “builder.”2 While Jesus is never characterised as an oikodomos – a builder of houses or edifices – this is apparently how the Protoevangelium of James conceived of Joseph’s role, when it describes him as a builder of buildings (9).
What Kind of Work?
With this broader understanding of tektōn, what sort of work might Jesus have had?
One possibility, to which I have alluded, is that Jesus was involved in construction. As James Tabor notes, most houses in first-century Galilee were built of stone, with wood being used mostly for doors and the beams of roofs. It is possible, then, that Jesus worked with stone from the quarries surrounding Nazareth.3
In his recent archaeological study of Jesus’ hometown, Ken Dark gives some indication of the kind of structure Jesus may have built. When he was teaching his disciples to build their house on the rock, he may have had such a structure in mind:
The modesty of such structures also reminds us of the disciples’ comment to Jesus about the Temple: ‘Teacher, look at these magnificent buildings! Look at the impressive stones in the walls’ (Mk. 13:1). In making this remark, might they been appealing to Jesus’ familiar judgement as a builder?
Another recent suggestion, by Helen Bond and Joan Taylor, is that Jesus may have built boats.4 In the Gospels, Jesus seems to have had an intimate connection with fishermen. Could this be because his work already took him by the Sea of Galilee?
The Ginosaur boat pictured below was found on the Sea of Galilee in 1986, and dates to around the time of Jesus. It therefore gives us an impression of the type of boat Jesus may have built if he worked in the fishing trade.
An even more popular notion is that Jesus worked in construction at Sepphoris, the booming Greek-style town just four miles north of Nazareth. Among its many building projects which may have been available to Jesus and his co-workers, some have dated the city’s theatre to the early first century. Many have therefore been unable to resist the notion that Jesus was involved in its construction.
Running with this idea, some scholars have even proposed that Jesus’ common accusation of the Pharisees as hypocrites – ‘actors’ – was inspired by his work or familiarity with the theatre. This relies upon a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word hypokrites (and its counterparts) in the period of the Gospels.5
Even if we assume, however, that the theatre was built at the time of Jesus – a premise which is highly contested6 some have thought that Jesus may have deliberately avoided a city like Sepphoris. This is because the ‘Jewel of Galilee’ is never mentioned in the Gospels, and betrayed a more explicitly ‘Greek’ culture than Jesus’ Nazareth.
Sepphoris was in fact thoroughly Jewish in population.7 Yet this may not have been enough to persuade a pious Nazarene to work on the construction of a Greek source of entertainment. As Markus Bockmuehl observes, the possibility of Jesus attending – or, we might add, building the theatre – “must be balanced generally against the opposition to pagan theatre in conservative circles at this time.”8
Moreover, according to Dark’s recent archaeological survey, Nazareth and Sepphoris had distinct material cultures. From this, he concludes that “[t]here was probably little or no contact between first-century Nazareth and Sepphoris, despite their proximity…” He suggests that this was probably “due to the deliberate choice on the part of the people at Nazareth to keep themselves separate from Sepphoris.”9
If Jesus worked at home, he may have supplied a number of different items to his Nazarenes: doors, frames, locks and bolts were all made of wood, as well as lattices for those fortunate to have windows. Jesus may also have made different pieces of furniture, including beds, boxes, cabinets, chests, stools, tables and lamp-stands.10
Jesus may have also made materials for farming. Interestingly, in the second century, Justin Martyr claims that Jesus made ploughs and yokes (Dialogue with Trypho, 88). Again, one wonders whether Jesus may have struck upon these words in making a yoke: ‘Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is light, and my burden is easy.’
What was a Tektōn’s Status?
We have looked at the types of work Jesus may have had as a tektōn. But what does his work tell us about his status? What place in society would a tektōn occupy?
According to James Tabor, the work of a tektōn put one in a difficult role:
A tekton in this context was something akin to a day labourer. There were no unions or "blue collar" wages. To be a tekton meant first and foremost that one had no land and took work as one could find it with no guarantees or security. These itinerant peasants were left to eke out a subsistence existence on two or three sesterces a day – barely enough to sustain a slave.11
In support of this impression, the Greek poet Sophocles refuted someone who said that his father was a tektōn; that would belittle his social class. He writes that his father may have had such labourers as slaves, but he was not himself of tektōn stock.12
We may find an echo of this social embarrassment in Matthew. When Matthew read that Jesus was a tektōn in Mark, he changes Mark’s wording to ‘the son of the tektōn’, while Luke – who presents Jesus as a literate teacher – removes the label altogether.
As John P. Meier notes, this redaction may be part of a wider tendency of Matthew to ‘brush up’ embarrassing details in Mark’s Gospel. For example, Matthew removes Mark’s statement that Jesus ‘could do no’ miracles in Nazareth (6:5), to the less problematic, ‘he did no miracles’ (13:58). To describe the David Messiah as the ‘Son of the tektōn’, may have been more fitting than describing him as the tektōn.
A Tektōn in Nazareth
The idea that a tektōn is a ‘lower’ role in Society is supported by the Nazarene’s reaction to Jesus’ teaching. The neighbours ask – is this not the carpenter? – with a note of surprise. They were asking, how is this sort of person able to teach like this?
To understand this characterisation in the context of Mark, we can turn to a similar biography, the Life of Aesop. The Life is about a mute slave who becomes supernaturally imbued with verbal fluency. While he is not trained in formal paideia, he is nevertheless able to philosophise well. Like Aesop, the slave, Jesus also upsets the erudite servants of the status quo – the Pharisees – though he is just a tekton.
Jesus’ role as a tekton therefore contributes to the literary motif of the marginal figure who upsets the learned and wise. Yet we might question whether the material reality of Jesus’ life was a precarious as Tabor suggests. While he follows John Dominic Crossan’s classic view that Jesus was a “peasant,” living barely above subsistence, other scholars have questioned the accuracy of this characterisation.
While it is surely anachronistic to describe Jesus as “middle class” (so Martin Hengel), or even “lower-middle class” (J.P. Meier), Jesus occupied neither the highest nor the lowest rung of the social ladder.13 As Dark’s recent study suggests, Nazareth “in the early first century… was probably a population able to live well above subsistence level, if in no respect wealthy.” And it was the sort of place a tektōn could be found.
The Appearance of a Tektōn
We have seen that Jesus’ work as a tektōn gives us a glimpse into his place in society. But could it also tell us something about what he looked like – his physique?
While the Gospels do not tell us anything directly about Jesus’ physical traits, it is often assumed that a tektōn would have been well-built. In her book, What did Jesus Look Like?, Joan Taylor suggests that that “Jesus would have been reasonably strong; he would have had the physique of someone who did manual craft or building work.”14
What is always overlooked in such discussions, however, is the danger which Jesus’ labour may have posed to him – at a time without sophisticated healthcare.
Christian tradition has tended to imagine Jesus’ physique through an ableist lens. Surely, the perfect Christ was also physically perfect? Yet, as I recently suggested in an interview with Alex O’Connor, Jesus’ work may lead us to challenge this assumption.
In the ancient world, Louise Gosbell notes that “not only were positions [of labour] filled by people with impairments, but there was also a high risk of acquiring further impairments due to the nature of the work being done.”15 This should destabilise our familiar images of an able-bodied Christ.
Reflecting on Jesus’ Work Today
As we come into land, it is worth asking: So what? Why does it matter what Jesus did for work? Or, to quote of my colleagues – an Oxford-trained historian – ‘why don’t you spend your intellectual energy on something more important?!’
I hope this post has answered his question. We have seen that Jesus’ labour gives us a glimpse into his day-to-day life, status, some possible sources of inspiration for the imagery behind his teaching, and perhaps even a clue to his physique. On a purely historical level, the question of what Jesus – the most famous figure in human history – did for work is a curious one, especially when so little has been said about it.
Yet it would be remiss of me not to see the question as bearing spiritual significance. Certainly, the Christian tradition has found Jesus’ job work worthy of reflection. And even if the way it has done so may at times seem rather frivolous, I suppose that there are insights to be gained from a more serious re-imaging of his childhood.
In particular, the thought that God became incarnate, not as a philosopher or a King, but as a humble tektōn, is endlessly generative. While the Nazarenes asked, ‘Is this not the tektōn?’, we may do well to ask what it would mean if this tektōn was God.
See John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol.1 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 280-81.
James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (London: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 89.
On the stone quarries surrounding Nazareth, see Ken Dark, Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), passim.
Helen K. Bond, Joan E. Taylor, Women Remembered: Jesus’ Female Disciples (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2023), 26.
Frank Stern, A Rabbi Looks at Jesus’ Parables (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 81.
Carol L. Meyers, Eric M. Meyers date the theatre to the early second century (“The theater… seems to date to a period later than Antipas.”) See C.L. Meyers, E.M. Meyers, “Sepphoris,” OEANE 4:527-36 (530).
See, for example, Mark Chancey, Eric M. Meyers, “How Jewish Was Sepphoris in Jesus’ Time?” July/August, 2000, Biblical Archaeology Society Library, https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/how-jewish-was-sepphoris-in-jesus-time/
Markus Bockmuehl, This Jesus: Marytr, Lord, Messiah, 2nd ed. (London: T& Clark: 2004), 192.
Ken Dark, Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 161.
Meier, A Marginal Jew, 281.
Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, 90.
Vita Sophocles, 1, cited in Tabor, Jesus Dynasty, 90.
See Martin Hengel, Property and Riches in the Early Church: Aspects ofSocial History ofEarly Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 27.
Meier, A Marginal Jew, 282.
See Louise A. Gosbell, The Poor, the Crippled, the Blind, and the Lame: Physical and Sensory Disability in the Gospels of the New Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 69.