Saint Joseph - A Terrible Carpenter?

[Bonnie]

The illustrator probably had no idea St. Joseph was a carpenter.

I recently saw a board book about the Birth of Jesus, and among the animals in the stable was a cute little pig. I highly doubt that the piggy would have been there, since they were considered unclean animals.

Oh my word! That’s so bad it’s funny.

 

[Book_Worm]

Exactly. The word just means ‘artisan’ or ‘craftsman’, with no exact specification of what one specializes in. If you wanted to say ‘woodworker’, you’ll have to specify it: ‘a wood-working tektōn’.

We get the idea of Joseph and Jesus being woodworkers from an early belief that Jesus made plows and yokes, and it just kind of grew from there. (There’s a symbolic meaning in this: the yoke evokes the wood of the cross. The horizontal beam of the cross is sometimes called patibulum, which means ‘yoke’.)

Now while the idea of Jesus making yokes and other mundane implements is still plausible, the type of carpentry we see in some images - where Jesus and Joseph make large, high-quality furniture - is a bit unlikely, because high-quality wood was rare and were usually imported. In other words, there’s a very slim chance that imported decent lumber (the cedars of Lebanon, etc.) will end up in a small backwater rural village like Nazareth.

As oneofmany implies, at that part of the world you’d get more jobs and money working with stone - which were in abundance compared to wood. With stone, you could build houses or even make bowls or cups or jars. (Most Jews took the purity laws of the Old Testament seriously; unlike pottery or wooden utensils, bowls or cups made of stone are thought to be immune to ritual impurity, which is which they were in high demand, especially for the more pious folks.)

The only thing we know about St. Joseph and Jesus is that they were both artisans. But what exactly they worked on, we don’t know. It’s not like they would have worked only with wood or only with stone; maybe it was both. Maybe they built houses or made stone cups; maybe they made yokes or plows; maybe they also doubled as repairmen, fixing boats or some small furniture or some leaky roof.

In fact, many artisans in those days were not just artisans to the exclusion of other jobs, nor were many farmers just farmers and nothing else. Most people were not stuck to one single kind of job: a lot of working peasants would have had a ‘side job’ of sorts, because after all it helps bring food to the table. Farmers, for instance, also functioned as an occasional artisan or laborer (especially in villages). They farmed for food and they practiced some other trade on the side.

The Galilee was the most naturally fertile agricultural region in all of Palestine, and many people around Jesus would have been subsistence farmers. The grandsons of one of Jesus’ ‘brothers’, Jude, were farmers who owned a small plot of land; it’s not unlikely that many of Jesus’ other relatives were farmers too. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Joseph or Jesus doing farm work at some point in their lives in addition to their artisanry.

Thanks for taking the time to post this. I found it very informative and interesting. It’s fodder for meditating on Our Lord’s human life.

 

[patrick457]

Maybe the Home Depot was closed when they got to Bethlehem, and St. Joseph had to use whatever he could find to quickly cobble together the basket/basinet for Our Lord .

As an aside, guess what? Mangers in those days were also made of stone.

The illustrator probably had no idea St. Joseph was a carpenter.

I recently saw a board book about the Birth of Jesus, and among the animals in the stable was a cute little pig. I highly doubt that the piggy would have been there, since they were considered unclean animals.

You know one of the tell-tale signs archaeologists look for when they’re trying to determine whether a site was inhabited by Jews or not? It’s the presence or absence of non-kosher animals like pigs. If no (or a very negligible amount of) pig bones were found in the area they were digging, then it’s likely that the place was Jewish. No joking:

I have seen an illustration of Our Lord, seated in the midst of a group of children, in which one of the shins beneath his robe had to have been about nine inches shorter than the other. The bend of his knee was that close to his foot. Some illustrators are more accomplished than others.

As someone dabbling in art myself, on the one hand I often tend to nitpick this sort of stuff, but on the other hand part of me still wants to root out for the artist.

I know I said the artist in the OP may have been clumsy, but to cut him/her some slack, maybe the artist was just too tired to actually go back and draw the basket a little better, or maybe he/she just didn’t have enough time. I mean, if you’re doing commissions, you’re basically working with a deadline. You only have a limited period of time to draw and/or paint these pictures.

A lot of people think making art - drawing or painting - is easy, but in reality, it actually ain’t so much, especially if you’re doing it for a job. Some people only think it’s easy usually because they don’t have to meet deadlines when they’re doodling.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Perhaps the conclusion to draw here us not that St Joseph was a terrible carpenter but rather the illustrator is terrible at thier craft…

 

[Xantippe]

I have a wooden Eastern European Easter egg with St. Joseph on one side and Our Lady on the other in our bedroom. I normally keep it facing St. Joseph-side out, because the artist really did a number on Our Lady’s face.

 

[Bonnie]

I have a wooden Eastern European Easter egg with St. Joseph on one side and Our Lady on the other in our bedroom. I normally keep it facing St. Joseph-side out, because the artist really did a number on Our Lady’s face.

I feel for you. I was once give a holy card where the main saint was drawn OK, but the young children surrounding her looked like gargoyles.

 

[oneofmany]

Must be like the new article about how our Lord really looked.

One person said he never pictured Jesus looking like the village idiot. LOL It’s a really bad picture.

 

[Mary_Estelle]

I agree. It kind of looks like Crow Magnum man. It is a rendition, not a good one, but what the artist thinks Jesus looked like. Back to art school for him!!