outhouse

And I was pretty clear when I stated, there isn't a consensus on many details.

I also stated in the beginning, scholarships are divided, on Jesus poverty.

Apologetically inclined scholars go for a well to do Jesus, more often then not.

And Anthropologist are running with a poor Jesus.




First, there is nothing holy about any book ever written, less the ones the bugs ate.

Do you know of any non apologetic scholars that place any historicity in that area at all?

Toto

What are you talking about? Who is the apologetically inclined scholar who goes for a well to do Jesus?




Then why are you so sure it is reliable???

I don't think any of it is historical, but you seem to think that one part is historical, and another is. Why?

outhouse

If you understood scholarships, you would know exactly what I'm talking about.

Ben Witherington is a perfect example.



Reliable doesn't have anything to do with possible historicity.

Take Act's for example, its anything but reliable, yet it is not devoid of historicity on certain subjects.





Because it is factually not devoid of historicity on certain topics.




Your argument/debate here doesn't have a lick to do with Jesus poverty or wealth.

Its only a disagreement about how historians do their job

Toto

Ben Witherington elevates Jesus' family to blue collar workers. I have yet to see one who calls Jesus "well to do" - except for James Tabor, who thinks he was royalty.


This is too confused for me to even respond to. It's not reliable, but it is, and you can't say exactly how or why.

And how else would we know about Jesus' economic status?

outhouse

Cultural anthropology of Galilee.


Blue collar is very well to do for a Galilean peasant.

Its stated there was no middle class in Galilee.


It was quite clear.

outhouse

Here is some cultural anthropology for the socioeconomics of Galilee

I know how you like blogs, maybe you will trust this.



http://cpsplittlerock.blogspot.com/2...m-galilee.html


The Roman Empire had an agrarian based economy. In theory at least the emperor owned the land or at least controlled it within contractual constraints. As patron he then distributed it to his clients, who in turn could rent or lease it to their clients. Something like 1% of the population owned or controlled 50% of the land in the Empire; another 15% was owned by priests. Other small land holders included military leaders and merchants. The largest population consisted of peasants, very few of whom controlled the land they farmed; approximately 2/3rds of their crops went to landlords. Further down the social scale were the so-called “artisans” who were often dispossessed farmers. Finally, on the lowest rung of the class ladder came what sociologists have called the “expendables,” the ancient equivalent of the day laborer, who had no patrons. (Crossan 1991: 43–46) This model of patron and client dominated both political and economic life in Palestine (Malina 1996: 143–175), with Herod the Great and his sons—Agrippa, Archelaus, Philip, and Antipas—among the best illustrations of how the system privileged the aristocracy.



In Mark 6:3, during the course of visiting Nazareth, the people react to Jesus’s teaching by asking, “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (BTW, Matthew changes the question to, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” Luke makes a further modification: “Is this not Joseph’s son?”) The Greek word used here—the only place in the gospels where Jesus is identified with a particular type of work—is typically translated as “carpenter” but would be better translated as “handyman.” It refers to one who works with his hands at a variety of tasks, among them wood working. It does not imply any modern notion of carpentry. Those who worked with wood were among the artisan class (Crossan 1994: 23–26). If John Meier is correct in his observation that Jesus’s use of illustrations and parables based on agriculture suggests he may have been a farmer at some time in his life (Meier 1991: 279), Mark’s report that the people of Nazareth knew him as a handyman suggests the family may have lost the farm during one of the many political upheavals in Lower Galilee, and Jesus had to turn to a different line of work to help support his rather large family.

Toto

I don't know what your obsession with bloggers is. Everyone has a blog. The quality of blogs varies from scholarly to not so much. The fact that something is on a blog says nothing about its quality.

Your source is: This is not a paper by a cultural anthropologist. It cites the standard line from Crossan and others about the social structure of Palestine.

There is nothing to show where Jesus, if he existed, fit into this social structure, other than the story of comments made by some of his listeners - comments that the gospels do not report consistently. "Is this not the carpenter" or the son of the carpenter?

What reason do we have to think that the authors of these passages meant for them to be read literally? Are they just part of the story line? Is there a symbolic meaning that we have missed?

The peasant worker model of the historical Jesus rests on a very unreliable shred of literary evidence. That is the issue here.

outhouse

Here's your problem, your not posting everything exactly as it is.


Here are the real sources.

by James D. Hester, Professor of Religion, Emeritus, University of Redlands
(Malina 1996: 143–175)
(Crossan 1991: 43–46)
(Crossan 1994: 23–26)
(Meier 1991: 279)


And by the way, if you did a little homework, you would know that Bruce Malina is a member of the Context Group, and has written quite a bit on anthropology.

outhouse

That's not the issue here.

I already stated scholarships are divided on his poverty.


It would not be, unreliable literary evidence that is the issue. Scholars use cultural anthropology to help them weed through scripture. Not only that, its only a drop in the bucket to what is used to critically examine scripture on a scholarly level.


I don't place Jesus peasant status based on scripture as much as I do where he is said to come from Galilee. Nazareth and Capernaum were both poor hovels.

Toto

My comment still stands. You can describe the social structure of Palestine in the first century, but that doesn't prove where Jesus fit in to that social structure.

All you have is a line in an unreliable gospel written well after the events in which someone asks if he is not a tekton. How much can you reasonably infer from that factoid?

And yes, I know about Bruce Malina. His work provides a framework for interpreting the Bible. He doesn't have any magical power to establish the historicity of any part of it..