[NYer]

Joseph and Jesus were supposed to have been carpenters... Anybody ever found any sort of a table or chair or any thing like that??

Carpenters work with wood. Not sure wooden objects designed for everyday use, would survive 2000 years.

[aruanan]

Joseph and Jesus were supposed to have been carpenters... Anybody ever found any sort of a table or chair or any thing like that??

Carpenters work with wood. Not sure wooden objects designed for everyday use, would survive 2000 years.

Not unless they were buried, as the Egyptians did, in a dry climate. There are mud bricks from Egypt from well before Jesus's era that still have stamp marks stuck in them. I saw wood and leather that looked pretty much new. The curators at the Oriental Institute told me that these objects were originals, not reproductions. That's how favorable the climate was to preservation there.

[maine-iac7]

“Carpenters work with wood. Not sure wooden objects designed for everyday use, would survive 2000 years.”
Actually, wooden objects have survived for longer - however -

the word that was translated as ‘carpenter'could also mean ‘builder’ - and, more than likely, Joseph and Jesus were employed in the rebuilding of Zepphoris/ Sepphoris - an easy walk from Nazareth and visible from there - the “Shining City on a hill?”

http://www.ancientsandals.com/overviews/sepphoris.htm

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/sepphoris.shtml

the city had been destroyed not long before Jesus was born and was being rebuilt in his time. A cosmotoltan Roman city - gleaming with white marble - at the cross roads of travel and commerce, it has largely been ignored in religious circles, perhaps because it waters down the ‘peasants living in an isolated little hamlet’ story?

Greek and Latin were spoken widely.

some of their famous mosaics and roads are still standing -

I believe it probable that the residents of Nazareth found work in Sepphoris - they could hardly make a living off a tiny hamlet of ‘50 dwellings.’

http://www.centuryone.org/sepphoris.html