LOL...hardly a new concept...
Posted on 04/07/2010 7:19:43 AM PDT by Palter
Jesus was the son of a middle-class, highly educated architect, according to a new book, which claims the previous belief that Joseph worked as a carpenter has distorted the Bible's meaning.
The book- The Jesus Discovery- claims that Jesus rose to become the most senior Rabbi of his time, thus explaining how he was able to exert such influence and why his teachings became such a concern to the authorities.
Author Dr Adam Bradford, who works as a GP, drew his conclusions after studying and comparing the original Greek and Hebrew scriptures, as well as using human psychology to analyse the behaviour towards Jesus as depicted in the Bible.
Biblical scholar Dr Bradford said: "Jesus's high ranking position as a Jew seems to have been written out of history but in fact it makes more sense of the Bible.
'If Jesus was the son of a poor itinerant carpenter with some radical ideas nobody would have been that concerned about what he said.
'But, because Jesus was trained up to become the most educated Jew of his time it gave him the chance to exert extraordinary influence and let him get away with acts that normal Jews would have been imprisoned or chastised for.
'For example, when Jesus turned the money changers out of the temple there is no mention in the Bible of the police guards getting involved or there being a backlash. The money changers were an essential part of gaining revenue for the Temple so if Jesus was an ordinary Jew he would have been arrested or physically attacked.
'Christ enjoyed social privileges that would not have been available to an uneducated itinerant carpenter.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I thought that argument came from Chesterton, not Lewis, or at least from Chesterton first.
In MY new book, coming out in two days, I make the argument that Jesus was a midget who married another midget and made pastries to sell to all the worshipers at the temple. I got a development deal from TLC for a new show based on all their trials and tribulations being little people.
One respected Biblical scholar claims the language issue has confused the actual occupation of Joseph and Jesus.
His reading of the Aramaic original is that the occupation is ‘stone worker’ or mason. That might be more reasonable and common in small village whose homes were known to be constructed largely of stone.
In either case, its more likely that the occupation was blue-collar than an elite architect in a poor village.
I love Free Republic!
“I believe he was a poor man who became a skilled craftsman.”
Well, at least your theory explains why his son was born in a stable. Hard to picture an architect being put in that position. Likewise, how could an architect made a living in a podunk village like Nazareth? This new theory sounds like armchair reasoning whose conclusions raise as many questions as they answer.
And all the rest, as Dylan said, ‘Don’t criticise what you can’t understand.’
I have heard a lecture on this at www.templehouse-publishing.com
Refute it if you can. Also there is an academic endorsement at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7547540/Jesus-was-son-of-an-architect-book-claims.html
If there was never anything ‘new’, what is Jesus saying in Matthew 13:52?
Not ‘guilty til proved innocent’...
Thank you.
That must make God a city planner.
Having the knowledge of God in His brain, what earthly training could possibly suit Him? Are you suggesting that He did not sound learned and that His understanding was not up to that of a Rabbi?
LOL...hardly a new concept...
Isaiah 53:
And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Doesn't sound like he was human aristocrat to me. I guess if I'm too big a simp to understand it, I'm happy to remain in my ignorance.
John’s Gospel indicates that somehow the Jewish authorities knew that Jesus had not received formal rabbinical training, and they were using that against him to challenge his authority to teach. It would not have been unusual for his followers to call him Rabbi as a courtesy and in a non-technical sense, despite his lack of such formal training. (I agree that he hardly needed it.)
Funny how I went to that exact same passage, and I hadn’t even seen yours. Almost like there’s Someone guiding us down the same path. Sure it’s just a coincidence. We just read that in Good Friday service.
Nazareth was an oasis on the egypt - babylon trade route.
Not a podunk village.
The word in Luke 2:7 is guestroom. not inn. So the stable of Joseph’s father’s house was where Mary had her labour, because the guestroom was full with the census.
Common knowledge for some.
“Common knowledge for some.”
Uh, OK, guess these are dead wrong:
“During the life of Jesus, this [Nazareth] was an isolated agricultural village with few inhabitants. Some say that as few as 150 people lived here during the days of Christ. Some scholars conclude that Nazareth was founded in 100 BC by a clan from the line of David who was returning from exile in Babylonia. However, ancient sources do not speak at all about Nazareth; we only hear of it in the New Testament.”
http://www.jesusfamilytomb.com/nazareth.html
“Situated inside a bowl atop the Nazareth ridge north of the Jezreel valley, Nazareth was a relatively isolated village in the time of Jesus with a population less than two hundred.”
http://www.bibleplaces.com/nazareth.htm
“James Strange, an American archaeologist, notes: “Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century AD. This likely reflects its lack of prominence both in Galilee and in Judaea.”[27] Strange originally speculated that the population of Nazareth at the time of Christ to be “roughly 1,600 to 2,000 people”, but later, in a subsequent publication, at “a maximum of about 480.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth
FWIW, these are the first 3 listings under a Google search for “Nazareth” “bible,” my point being that I didn’t cherry-pick the results to select the ones supporting my original contention that Nazareth was pretty puny. Even a “village/town/city” of 480 presumably would encompass only about 100 households. Could such a small number seriously support an architect? I’m no biblical scholar: I’m merely saying that the speculation that Joseph was an architect lacks some face validity.
Thank God!
It could have, but it is attributed to Lewis.
Since you have taken time to study the question, perhaps a piece of new information could influence your thinking?
Of course Nazareth was a small village, not large enough to support any significant "upper class" population or activities. But Nazareth was also just a few miles, walking distance, down the road from Sepphoris, Harad Antipas' capital city -- a place of wealth, power and no doubt, intrigue.
And if I remember correctly, wasn't one of Jesus' first followers a woman from Harad's court?
So here's my conclusion: if Joseph and/or Jesus were larger scale builders or "architects," then they worked not in Nazareth, but next door, in Sepphoris.
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