Jesus' capital balance

[Tis_Bearself]

Here’s the real dilemma: During his ‘working years’, if he had set aside funds for his ministry and for his mother’s upkeep, would he really be walking the talk to rely on divine providence? His exhortations in “give us today our daily bread” and “do not worry about the morrow” and “seek first the kingdom of God and all the rest will be added unto you” would sound hollow?

I tend to think when Jesus said those things, He expected people to use normal common sense and take their own family situations into account when applying His words.

 

[Wesrock]

Why would he need money to buy anything ? If he just by saying a word could create and accomplish anything ?
**
Matthew 8:8** “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed”

https://franksblogg.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/jesus-cursing-the-fig-tree.jpg

Jesus is said to have humbled Himself. We don’t see him performing miracles for his own benefit. He submitted himself to the hardships and limitations humanity faces, and I don’t see him simply side-stepping such burdens for convenience.

 

[GEddie]

Jesus is said to have humbled Himself. We don’t see him performing miracles for his own benefit. He submitted himself to the hardships and limitations humanity faces, and I don’t see him simply side-stepping such burdens for convenience.

Not only that, He was setting an example for His followers, who would be carrying out His commission in standard-issue, nondivinized human bodies.

ICXC NIKA

 

[jcrichton]

I didn’t say He did.

But it doesn’t stretch credibility that He might have fixed things in each town to buy bread and wine

ICXC NIKA

Hi, Eddie!

…I’m not knowledgeable about these things… but aren’t rabbis supposed to separate themselves from worldly things… and in the case of Jesus, wouldn’t His work blur the lines between Rabbuni and carpenter?

…did you also noticed that while on Mission the only reference to carpentry was:
55 This is the carpenter’s son, surely? (St. Matthew 13:55)

…it is fine to speculate and wonder… but we must remain as close to Revelation as possible or we will fall into that scholar’s pitfall! (…imagination trumps reason and purpose)

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

Here’s the real dilemma: During his ‘working years’, if he had set aside funds for his ministry and for his mother’s upkeep, would he really be walking the talk to rely on divine providence? His exhortations in “give us today our daily bread” and “do not worry about the morrow” and “seek first the kingdom of God and all the rest will be added unto you” would sound hollow?

Hi!

…which would create a false teaching with double standards… something that even the commoners would recognize:

22 And his teaching made a deep impression on them because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority

(St. Mark 1:22)
Maran atha!

Angel

 

[PNEUMA]

PNEUMA;14718367:

Why would he need money to buy anything ? If he just by saying a word could create and accomplish anything ?
**
Matthew 8:8**

“Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed”

https://franksblogg.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/jesus-cursing-the-fig-tree.jpgJesus is said to have humbled Himself. We don’t see him performing miracles for his own benefit. He submitted himself to the hardships and limitations humanity faces, and I don’t see him simply side-stepping such burdens for convenience.

I think he wanted to eat the figs of the fig tree himself

 

[patrick457]

Hi!

…yeah… and it would be wonderful to have known that the Magi brought Jesus pounds of gold and not just a small offering…

…as today, it is not who you are but who you know… carpentry was not a lucrative business because, unless you were working for monarchs, the people that could afford/needed the carpenter’s services/goods were poor.

Another thing. You folks might already know this, but the Greek word translated as “carpenter” is tekton, which isn’t as specific as ‘carpenter’ might imply. Strictly speaking, it just means “artisan” or “craftsman” or “worker” skilled in working with hard materials. In the Latin, this term is rendered as faber, which is also not as specific as the word ‘carpenter’ is.

There was no real good quality wood in Nazareth. Real trees were scarce in much of Palestine, not to mention that all the good wood (e.g. the cedars of Lebanon) was imported from outside Palestine to be used in urban areas and thus, unlikely to surface in a backwater rural hamlet like Nazareth. Wood was so valuable, that it is even said that people did not so much cut down trees and leave a stump behind as uproot them from the ground: they would dig the earth around the tree and they would scavenge as much wood as they could from it, the root included. It’s because of this lack of wood that people used weeds as fuel instead of twigs.

If Jesus worked with wood, what He would have made aren’t high-class furniture like cabinets or tables (certainly not that big table you see Jim Caviezel making in The Passion of the Christ) or chairs, but mundane utensils rural villagers actually used like doors, farming tools or boats. Because that’s really what all one could make from local timber, and peasants in those days who spent most of the day working outside and who slept on the floor did not have use for furniture except for maybe, a low table - think something like the Japanese tea table or chabudai - or an occasional stool or cot.

Now what there was in abundance in that area was stone, which people actually use to build houses and stoneware such as cups. There was more demand for stone than wood, and thus it’s more likely that Joseph and Jesus mainly worked as stonemasons and construction workers with a side job of making and repairing wooden stuff, rather than full-fledged woodworkers. I mean you do have building metaphors show up in His teaching from time to time (the parable of the wise and foolish builders, “upon this rock I will build my Church,” “the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” etc.)

Nazareth is just 6 kilometers away from the city of Sepphoris. When Herod Antipas became the tetrarch of the Galilee in 4 BC, he set about rebuilding the city, which was destroyed in an attack led by a bandit named Judas son of Hezekiah. Antipas employed hundreds or maybe even thousands of builders and workers for that project, and it’s not impossible that Joseph - and maybe Jesus, once He came of age - was one of them.

In a nutshell: in those days, you would make more money working with stone than with wood. Because you are literally surrounded by stone - you are even walking on it.

 

[jcrichton]

Another thing. You folks might already know this, but the Greek word translated as “carpenter” is tekton, which isn’t as specific as ‘carpenter’ might imply. Strictly speaking, it just means “artisan” or “craftsman” or “worker” skilled in working with hard materials. In the Latin, this term is rendered as faber, which is also not as specific as the word ‘carpenter’ is.

There was no real good quality wood in Nazareth. Real trees were scarce in much of Palestine, not to mention that all the good wood (e.g. the cedars of Lebanon) was imported from outside Palestine to be used in urban areas and thus, unlikely to surface in a backwater rural hamlet like Nazareth. Wood was so valuable, that it is even said that people did not so much cut down trees and leave a stump behind as uproot them from the ground: they would dig the earth around the tree and they would scavenge as much wood as they could from it, the root included. It’s because of this lack of wood that people used weeds as fuel instead of twigs.

If Jesus worked with wood, what He would have made aren’t high-class furniture like cabinets or tables (certainly not that big table you see Jim Caviezel making in The Passion of the Christ) or chairs, but mundane utensils rural villagers actually used like doors, farming tools or boats. Because that’s really what all one could make from local timber, and peasants in those days who spent most of the day working outside and who slept on the floor did not have use for furniture except for maybe, a low table - think something like the Japanese tea table or chabudai - or an occasional stool or cot.

Now what there was in abundance in that area was stone, which people actually use to build houses and stoneware such as cups. There was more demand for stone than wood, and thus it’s more likely that Joseph and Jesus mainly worked as stonemasons and construction workers with a side job of making and repairing wooden stuff, rather than full-fledged woodworkers. I mean you do have building metaphors show up in His teaching from time to time (the parable of the wise and foolish builders, “upon this rock I will build my Church,” “the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” etc.)

Nazareth is just 6 kilometers away from the city of Sepphoris. When Herod Antipas became the tetrarch of the Galilee in 4 BC, he set about rebuilding the city, which was destroyed in an attack led by a bandit named Judas son of Hezekiah. Antipas employed hundreds or maybe even thousands of builders and workers for that project, and it’s not impossible that Joseph - and maybe Jesus, once He came of age - was one of them.

In a nutshell: in those days, you would make more money working with stone than with wood. Because you are literally surrounded by stone - you are even walking on it.

Hi, Patrick!

Thanks for the info… I concur with you… the things we envision when we read Scriptures must take into consideration both the region and the timeframe of the actual place/reference.

…it is easy to fall into error if we do not distinguish what we experience (present day) from what Christ and the Apostles experienced (far in the past).

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[afthomercy]

I suppose his pricing policy would have been never to charge more than the value delivered and in fact to give more value than the money charged! If he did this, then there is nothing wrong if a small corpus got built up over a period of time. It would have become a problem only if he began to derive his security from that. I’m sure that he would have been regularly dropping excess savings into the temple treasury, which is why he could empathise with the widow who put in her ‘whole livelihood’. This also gave him the moral authority to command the rich young man to sell off all his possessions and distribute the money to the poor before coming and joining him.
As for his mother’s upkeep, his father, St. Joseph, ‘just man’ that he was, would probably have provided for her in proper measure, knowing very well that he could not put the full responsibility on Jesus…