How Poor was Jesus? and Mary's cousin Elizabeth?

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billsherman said:
As other posters have noted, when it comes down to details about the wealth of Jesus and his family, we don’t have terribly much to go on. It’s fairly clear that Nazareth was a poor town,
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Thats begun to be in dispute with more archaeology etc. It is thought these satellite towns were doing ok with the extent of ongoing building and supply required for the Romans.
 
I think starting with the work done by Dr Jodi Magness as a good intro. Jodi is at the University of North Carolina and has led and co led many digs in Jerusalem and around the Holy Land. Masada amongst them. There is also an educational series, freely available on line, and used in first year Theology courses that discusses this. I will have to remember which one it is to link it for you.
 
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Any more specific citation you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
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With all due respect, the idea that IHS and family were deeply poor based on poverty being “holy” has been vastly overdone. Scripture just doesn’t say that.

We have to remember that most people in that place/time lived what we would consider poverty. There was no “getting financially ahead.”

But whether that was poor “for that time” is a much harder question.
 
My grandfather always disliked the focus people put on the “poverty of the Holy Family”. I also think it’s overstated. The turtledoves thing would signify that they were not exactly rolliing in cash, but I doubt very much that St. Joseph was unable to provide for Mary and Jesus.

He was a capenter after all and apparently known in his locality as Jesus is reffered to as “the carpenters son”.

They were probably in the middle-class of their time.
 
Mary’s parents, Joseph and Hannah, had given up their fortune to the Temple. Mary was raised at the temple so she was wearing beautiful clothes given by the Temple but she had no fortune. Her fiancée Joseph had to work for a living.
After the flee in Egypt they had to abandon anything that they previously may have owned. So after they returned, they were poor.
 
Well, this is all speculative, but from what I have read, Jesus’ family was pretty much low-average by the standards of the time. They weren’t really poor.
The Holy Family had a roof over their head, probably had a reasonable amount to eat and wear.
They weren’t living in the streets or dependent on alms.
They had the means to rush off to Egypt on short notice (although one tradition says Joseph used the gold given as a gift by the Magi to finance that trip) and support themselves there.
Jesus had a father who had a skilled trade job and taught it to his son. Jesus also received a good education, and could read and write (as shown by him reading the Jewish scripture in the temple) and probably do math including geometry that he would need for his carpenter job.

The truly impoverished would have been people like widows with no son to provide for them, or disabled people who were begging in public in order to survive. Many of those people were also illiterate.

Elizabeth was probably a little more well-off because from what I have read, temple priests were the wealthiest and highest class in Jewish society of the time. However, there were several hundred priests and Zachariah was not of the top echelon, so he was probably what we would consider “middle class” or “high average” today. Which was still pretty good in a society where many people were begging in the street. Also, when Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, she is apparently welcome to stay for several months in Elizabeth’s household and they have no difficulty supporting an extra guest in the house for that time, so that tends to show they had some resources.

When we talk about Jesus and the Holy Family being “poor”, it means that they weren’t overly attached to or attracted to material things. They lived a simple life without luxuries and if someone had been in need, they would have helped the needy person rather than spent money on something lavish for themselves. Probably same for Elizabeth and her family.
 
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AdamP88 said:
The turtledoves thing would signify that they were not exactly rolliing in cash, but I doubt very much that St. Joseph was unable to provide for Mary and Jesus.

He was a capenter after all and apparently known in his locality as Jesus is reffered to as “the carpenters son”.
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Right. Turtledoves would simply mean the person did not own flocks of sheep or cattle and did not have the means to buy cattle to sacrifice. I’m willing to bet most people fell in that category.
 
smith500 said:
Father James Martin implies it, among others. Frankly, it doesn’t matter much to me at what level of humility Jesus lived It’s all humble compared to the majesty of Heaven. Most of the time, these claims are made in a political context and that bothers me. I just want the facts
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While I don’t disagree with you that the politicization of Jesus’ reputed “poverty” can be annoying (as well as the “Blessed are the poor” from the Beatitudes, which actually refers to being “Poor IN SPIRIT”, and the possible misinterpretation of the Scripture about how it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to get to Heaven, which I was taught about in Jerusalem),
I think we can safely say that even if Jesus’ family was doing okay for their time, their lifestyle compared to our normal middle-class or even working-class lifestyle would be considered very poor.

It’s highly likely they were hungry some of the time. Food wasn’t always available whenever and in the amount you would want it. Everybody who wasn’t a wealthy person was hungry some of the time. Furthermore, given that they were probably charitable and shared with those who had even less, they would likely be going without themselves in order to help somebody else.

Clothing was also a luxury, so they probably just had the basics to wear.

Pretty safe to say they were not living a wealthy or fancy lifestyle and that life involved a lot of physical labor sunrise to sunset. But they don’t appear to have been “dirt poor”.

I would suggest you ignore whatever politicizations people want to make.
 
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I have read that the tithing rules were widely neglected in practice and apparently unenforceable, at least as far as the lower ranks of the priesthood were concerned, which meant that many of them – even all of them, in some parts of the country – could only survive by earning a living in the local economy like anyone else.
 
I also read that some of the upper ranks of the priesthood were corrupt/ greedy and would take some of the support for themselves that should have gone to the lower ranking priests.
 
Actually, we do have an idea.

Joseph was a carpenter, so had a means of making a living to support his family

They did not live in destitution.

Living a life in the spirit of poverty doesn’t mean living in detitution, but accepting what God sends as a means for living a life according to His will.

Even the rich can become saints. It’s the attitude they have about their wealth which makes the difference. Are they grateful to God for what they have, and share with the poor ?

A good book on the subject is, " Happy are You Poor: The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedom"
by Fr Thomas Dubey.

Jim
 
Well, Mary and Joseph were poor enough that Joseph offered two doves instead of lambs or cows at Jesus’ dedication at the temple. With regard to the priesthood, it is true that the high priests in Jerusalem lived pretty well. I doubt however that the same lush lifestyle extended out to the Levites living among the rest of the Judean countryside who were selected by lot to perform the priestly duties as Zechariah was.
 
Thanks. I have no doubt things were tougher than Jesus than for me. No indoor plumbing or toilet paper in a hot dusty environment. No microwave overs or fast food.
 
Jim,

Just so you know, the Greek word to describe Joseph’s job in the Bible is tekton, which just means craftsman. Joseph’s job more specifically as a carpenter is Church tradition. While tekton can mean anything, many “scholars” are now saying he was a day laborer and had no real skills.

I wanted to keep the focus on the status of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, the wife of a Temple priest.
 
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