Jesus and His Early Life
Because the Bible tells us nothing
about Jesus during his early years, before he began his public ministry (except
the brief moment when he was 12 in the
Mat.13:55 and Mark 6:3.
Assuming that the sons followed their father in the trade, Jesus and his
brothers probably learned carpentry from their father. It was from carpentry
that a living was earned. In the Jewish community every man had his trade, and
worked with his hands – even those devoted to the study of the Law. Rabbi Hillel, for example, was a woodcutter, and Rabbi Schammai was a carpenter.
One of the Rabbinical precepts said: “Whoever does not teach his son a
trade, is teaching him to thieve”.
In Genesis 3:19 God said that Mankind would have to earn his
bread by the “sweat” of his brow. Since Jesus inherited the fallen body of
sinful Mankind through his mother, he would also have had to share in the
punishment due to all sinners. There is no doubt therefore that Jesus sweated –
something so foreign and so alien to the Mighty Living God, who is Spirit, and
who inhabits eternity. We ‘normal’
humans take sweating for granted. It comes whenever we exert ourselves, but
Adam and Eve were not made like us. They had perfect bodies, and were probably
clothed in light. They were glorious beings . . . but after they sinned they
lost so much . . . it is impossible to imagine how much. Now Jesus was
suffering the degradation caused by their sin. Sweat is a sign of this present
age, along with hard labour, and the effort humans
must put into extracting food from the soil.
Carpenter = Greek: tekton = artificer.
This Greek work signifies both a joiner and an artisan in wood. A carpenter had
a wide range of skills. He made props for shoring up walls, yokes for oxen,
harness poles and goads, beds, chests, stools, bins and kneading troughs. He
had to take the local wood from the trees he found and cut them into many
different shapes. He had to know how different woods behaved as they dried out,
how they might split, and whether they were suitable for the job they were used
for. His tools were simple – saws and drills, planes and sanders. A lot of the
skills used were a result of much effort – which leads us to the not
unreasonable conclusion that Jesus was a strong man, sinewy but not overly
muscular.
Other skills required by carpenters in those days included making doors,
latches, steps, supports for ceilings, window frames, trellises, guard-rails,
canopy supports and even toys for children. The dwarf oaks of
Jesus was called “the son of the carpenter” so we naturally
assume that Jesus too was a carpenter. Compared to today’s modern carpenters,
he would be called an “old fashioned” carpenter, in the sense that he would
have done a lot more than simply make and sell objects. In those days there
were also two kinds of carpenter – those who worked entirely from the ground up
and supplied what clients needed, and those who simply prepared boards and sold
them on to other carpenters.
In those days a carpenter’s clients were the agricultural labourers of the district. These men of the soil would have
come to Joseph’s workshop and discussed their needs, then Joseph would have
contracted to make and keep in good repair for the whole year, whatever he made
for them. He would have made all the agricultural tools for his clients, and
often, instead of a cash payment, he might have received a sack or two of grain
for his oxen – a certain amount per yoke of oxen he might own. Carpenters needed oxen to haul the logs
about. At the end of the year, at threshing time, the carpenter would go about
from client to client, collecting his payment in wheat, or barley, or sesame
seeds, or olives.
A carpenter in those days also often had a small block of land, which he
cultivated and grew a small amount of food for his needs.
Assuming that Jesus was a typical eldest son, he would naturally
have learned the trade from his father. There was no ‘social welfare’ system in
those days, so every member of a family had to work to bring in money and food
for the rest of the family. It was the eldest son’s responsibility to ensure
that his parents were cared for as they aged, so Jesus probably worked hard,
learned his skills, and helped to earn money to pay for the necessities of
life. If this is so, then we can imagine him lying down in the evenings, weary
after another day of hard work, but content that he had done his best. As the
proverb says “The sleep of a labouring man is sweet”.
It was probably because of his responsibility to provide for his family that
Jesus handed his mother over to John’s care as he died on the cross. Mary,
apparently, was a widow at this stage, so she might have needed support, since
it was unlikely that she was able to support herself. One wonders where all her
other children were at this time – and just because they had become Christians
surely didn’t obviate them from caring for their mother?
When
the Jews called Jesus “a carpenter” they were not using the word in a
complimentary way. What they were saying was “he is just a carpenter”,
he is a mere carpenter, an unskilled man, a working class labourer. It was a derogatory term, meant as a put down,
even sarcastic. How can a mere labourer think he is a
prophet? You don’t expect us to believe that a man who cuts trees into pieces
and makes animal toughs is the Messiah?!
Never was it more truly said that ‘appearances can be deceptive’!
Jesus was raised not in poverty, neither in wealth, but in the normal
ways of a working class family. His life was dictated by the daily round of
chores. His diet was simple – barley bread, very little meat, vegetable and
sour milk. On feast days he ate a little grilled fish. He was certainly not
overweight, but he was also not underfed. The food was nutritious and filling,
and it was enough to keep his body healthy and strong.
Jesus probably had many friends. As a man of the book of Proverbs, he
would have been wise, and friendly. His outgoing and peaceful temperament would
have attracted people, his ability to listen and to sympathise,
his willingness to help and care for others, and his unwillingness to compete
or try to monopolise would have made him unthreatening
and socially agreeable. As a working class man he would have drawn his friends
mainly from the working class community. This is probably why he spoke like a labourer. No high Greek came from his mouth, no
intellectual, or scholarly sayings. All his speech was simple and
uncomplicated, and all the gospels have recorded his words in the same simple
way.
His friends
would have included many poor people, fishermen, workmen, labourers
in the fields and vineyards. He would have known many ‘simple’ people too, who
neither read nor write, people who were not preoccupied with formalities,
earthy people, who enjoyed a good meal and a drink or two. People who swore and
shouted at times. Genuine people, who had few pretensions – not like the
tradition-bound Jewish intellectuals in
So we can assume many things, and build up a probable picture of Jesus
in those early years, but because the Bible does not tell us exactly
what he was doing, we cannot know for certain. Sometimes the silences of
Scripture are just as important as the places where Scripture speaks. By
inference we can guess that most of the above is accurate, but what is probably
most important of all is the fact that God came to Earth and humbled himself,
even to the level of fallen Mankind, and from there God humbled himself even
further, even to the death on a cross. The early life of Jesus was a 30 year
demonstration of his love for us all, and served as the precursor to the
greatest demonstration of love the universe has ever seen.