Carpenter

By -
There was no systematic education for a boy after age thirteen. After this age, the father was obligated to teach his son his trade or apprentie him to a craftsman of another trade of the boy's choice. A boy could study the law with adults who studied in their spare time...
The quote is taken from a section on Jewish and Greco-Roman education from the book, 'Dictionary of New Testament Background'. What this implies to me is this: could Jesus have taken on any other form of employment or apprenticeship other than carpentry? We have always assumed that Jesus would have taken after Joseph to be a carpenter, cos this is of course the logical pathway to go. But if the quote is true, then it could have been any other occupations. Jesus might even have studied under a scholar of the law or be trained to be a rabbi. If this is so, it does solve one of the mysteries in the gospels, which stated that Jesus began teaching after His 40 days in the desert. I have always wondered other than what Jesus said, what had prompted thhe people to readily accept Him as a rabbi? Nonetheless, this is not conclusive. In fact, the rejection of Jesus from the people as descirbed in Luke 4 suggests that Jesus might have been known for a more humble background than I have previously suggested. The gap between His outing in the temple and His baptism had not been fully accounted for in the gospels, and we can only make educated guess based on what we know about the culture back then.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Parable of the 'Good Samaritan'

By -
Once there was this man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among thorns, and the thorns spring up and choked him. And as he went on, he didn’t have money, and he met the Queen of Sheba, and she gave him 1,000 talents of gold and 100 changes of raiment. And he got into a chariot and drove furiously, and when he was driving under a big juniper tree, his hair caught on a limb of that tree, and he hung there many days, and the ravens brought him food to eat and water to drink, and he ate 5,000 loaves of bread and two fishes. One night when he was hanging there asleep, his wife Delilah came along and cut off his hair, and he dropped, and fell on stony ground. But he got up and went on, and it began to rain, and it rained forty days and forty nights, and he hid himself in a cave, and he lived on locust and wild honey. Then he went on ‘til he met a servant who said, “Come, take supper at my house.” And he made an excuse and said, “No, I won’t. I have married a wife, and I c...
Read more

Of Teaching and Learning

By -
Image
Over the past two weeks, I was invited to attend a block class on "Learning to Teach." After two weeks of class, here are some reflections that I have. We thank God Bro Casey is a pretty humane teacher... :P  Firstly, teaching needs to meet the changing challenges of the 21st century. This is especially pertinent with all the advancements in technology as well as the worldview changes with the generation today. There is simply no room for the teacher to remain stagnant and not be able to keep up with times so as to engage their students and to facilitate learning. Applying to theological education and Bible school, we have to consider what kind of ministers we are training for the churches in the 21st century. If we are training ministers who are able to engage today’s generation, then we need to review the current methods of teaching and train ministers to be savvy in social media and technology and be able to make use of them in their ministries. Reflecting back on...
Read more

Of Exegesis, Wedding Preparation and the Whole Lot of Things: Another Reflection

By -
Image
To those who know what happened, the past months since the start of 2016 had been very stressful to me. In the preparation to my impending wedding this coming October, my future father-in-law decided to throw a few spanners into the wedding preparation by declaring that he was not comfortable with me as a life partner to his daughter because I am a full time Christian worker and more importantly because I come from a different family background from her.  The latter means that there are certain practices in my own family which are unthinkable in his worldview on how a family should function. This led to intense tensions between Angelina and myself. To compound the stress, NT Exegesis class was not that easy also and the stress of meeting the deadlines mean that I sometimes did not have the time to reflect deeper into the situations I was facing in my relationship.  However, studying the text of Philemon 15-20 reminded me of the way we should conduct our relationship ...
Read more