outhouse

Sources


http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/b...-Of-Change.htm

Archaeologists studying Sepphoris have uncovered one example that shows vast lifestyle differences between wealthy elites and rural peasants in Galilee of Jesus' time: the ruins of their houses.

Professor Reed wrote that homes in Sepphoris' western neighborhood were built with stone blocks that were evenly shaped in consistent sizes. In contrast, homes in Capernaum were made of uneven boulders gathered from nearby fields. The stone blocks of wealthy Sepphoris houses fit tightly together, but the uneven stones of Capernaum houses often left holes in which clay, mud and smaller stones were packed. From these differences, archaeologists surmise that not only were the Capernaum houses draftier, their inhabitants also could have been subjected more frequently to the dangers of having the walls fall on them.


When Herod Antipas took over Galilee in Jesus' time, it was a rural region on Judea's margins. Larger towns such as Bethsaida, a fishing center on the Sea of Galilee, could hold as many as 2,000 to 3,000 people. However, most people lived in small villages such as Nazareth, the home of Jesus' foster father Joseph and his mother Mary, and Capernaum, the village where Jesus' ministry was centered. The populations of these hamlets rarely rose above 400 people, according to archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed in his book, The Harper Collins Visual Guide to the New Testament.

http://lutheranscience.org/2008-Nati...phicJesus.html

We could agree it’s likely that Joseph’s family was low on the social scale. Joseph is called
a tekton in Greek which is usually translated as “carpenter.”

However, Reed says that a tekton is simply a person who works with his hands. While Joseph
and Jesus may at times have worked with wood, they more likely, he claims, to have shaped
stone, repaired houses, or even worked in the fields.

Patterson says that being a tekton means Joseph owned no land and was a step below that
of a normal peasant.

We do know Jesus was born in a very humble abode and lived in poverty as an adult, at least
after starting his ministry. “The Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” Jesus says in
Matthew 8:20.

Toto

"We could agree" or we could disagree. We can agree that there is no evidence for this outside of the Bible

Did you understand anything that I wrote? How do I get through to you? What is the basis for these opinions?

Tekton has a wide range of meanings. Odysseus was a tekton, a master builder. Pindar describes poets as tektons, craftsmen of words.

M. Nagler, "Dread Goddess Revisited" in Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays edited by Seth L. Schein

The series begins and ends (omitting the olive stake in Polyphemus' cave, in narrated time) with objects that Odysseus crafted himself and that represent an obvious inversion, sine the first, the pine tree mast, enables him to get away from Calypso, and the last, the bedpost, to return to Penelope; . . .

In a serious that moves in a general way from nature to culture, from the half wild olive bush on Scheria in the world of the Adventures to the climactic, shaped olive tree-bed in the heart of the oikos of Ithaca, it is the more remarkable that this last is the only object Odysseus shapes yet leaves alive. Odysseus is establishing his typological identity as tektōn, or "builder," in the tradition of his father, who hews life-support systems out of nature. . .

The Raft of Odysseus : The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer's Odyssey: (Google eBook)
...
By Carol Dougherty Associate Professor of Classical Studies Wellesley College

Pindar uses the image of fitting materials together when he invokes the figure of poet as craftsman, the skilled tekton of words . . .

We do not "know" this. We infer it from the stories in the Bible, especially if we want to shape them into a romantic story of oppressed peasant fighting the man.

Why does this refer to Jesus' family status, as opposed to the position of a wandering Cynic preacher? Why should it even be taken literally?

outhouse

Im sorry but your no one to attack the credible findings of Johnathon Reeds cultural anthropology. Nor Prof. Stephen Patterson

His findings are based from archeology. This isn't some cracker jack box blog of untrained bloggers making crap up as they go like a YEC fighting science from ignorance.

Your arguments are not comprehensible enough to respond to, rambling on and on about something you have not studied.

How do I get through to you?

The only way you can respond this ill informed, is to not have read a word I posted, nor the links I provided.

The evidence of the socioeconomic impact of Antipas building projects in Galilee for the most part are archeological in nature.


How do I get through to you? How does anyone get through to someone who discounts non biased anthropology and the findings they have produced?

Toto

Their findings are not the problem. The problem is the assumptions that they make about Jesus, and these assumptions are not based on archaeology or cultural anthropology. They are based on their belief in the Bible.

Evidently you did not comprehend what I wrote. What can I do to make it clearer?

Oh, but you have. I understand exactly where you get your information, and I know why you are wrong.

But the only thing that ties this to Jesus is THE BIBLE.

You could start by reading more closely. You could realize how well some people hide their biases and their assumptions behind scholarly window dressing.

It's all very well to describe the social history of Galilee, but what allows these scholars to link their research to Jesus? NOTHING BUT THE BIBLE.

When you stop believing that the Bible has to be true, you have no reason to think that any of Reed's archaeological research relates to Jesus.

outhouse

Here is more on the same topic and same production.

http://www.bibleinterp.com/review/man35821.shtml

Building on the contributions of first-rate biblical scholars, archaeologists, and historians (including Carolyn Osiek, Jonathan Reed, Jodi Magness, Mordecai Aviam, Stephen J. Patterson, Marcus Borg, Lawrence Schiffman, and Shimon Gibson)

As scholars have recently noted, the word usually translated “carpenter” (tekton) can also mean someone who worked with his hands, or a stone worker. As Joseph may have done stonework and manual labor rather than being a craftsman with wood, this would have put him in the lowest of the lower class. Therefore, the family Jesus grew up in would not have owned land, but they would have been subsistence farmers accustomed to menial labor. According to Stephen Patterson, the family of Jesus was a step below the normal peasant. This being the case, neither Joseph nor Jesus was a carpenter; they were more likely workers with stone and general manual labor.

And this below is the real dirt you should be focusing on, its the only real argument.

You could also find opposing views from Craig Evans and Ben Witherington.

Rene Aslan has recently supported this view, but I personally wouldn't use him as a credible source.

it cannot rule out carpentry altogether; nor does it rule out skilled labor rather than menial labor, as some stone masons would have been skilled.

This argument even if the Jesus character had a higher position, does not change the socioeconomic status of those in Nazareth or Capernaum which both do not show a middle class lifestyle

outhouse

The bible isn't true.

The people who compiled it were brilliant people and had literary skills that surpass us both, night and day. They compiled the bible with known errors and contradictions and history that wasn't even correct, and they knew this going in.


The bible isn't whole cloth fiction either.


Sure, the authors believed Jesus to be a temple trouble maker from Galilee.

The bible claims are not all refutable, it is factually a great insight into the past due to just how rare information is from this time period regarding Judaism and Hellenistic Judaism, despite the mythology used in its creation.

Toto

Start at the beginning. Why do you think Jesus was from Nazareth, or Galilee? IT'S IN THE BIBLE. There is no other source.

Why do you think Jesus was a carpenter, or a tekton?
There is only one reference to tekton in the gospels - based on Mark - when villagers look at each other in amazement, and say "Is this not the carpenter?" All of this commentary trying to make Jesus a lowly worker derives from this one comment. IS THERE ANY REASON TO THINK THIS IS HISTORICALLY ACCURATE? I don't think so. Why do you?

Toto

Then why do you rely on it?

Nope. The Bible is written in bad Greek and is full of errors.

How do you know this?

This is the crux of the matter - you assume the Bible must be true if it can't be proven false? WHY? What can you use to separate the mythology from the part you think is true?

If you don't start with the assumption that the Bible must be true at least in part, there is no basis for anything you have written in this thread.

outhouse

Yelling wont help you at this point.

Tekton, we see mark giving us a description, and later gospels changing this altogether, sort of hiding this first statement.

Similar to the way we see later Pauline epistles trying to soften up and change Pauls stance a wee bit, with their later work introduced.


There is no reason for Gmark to give a description unless they believed it to be true. Then later authors do not try and change this entry, they try and hide it a bit.

Could Gmark's author have used fiction, sure he could. But a hand worker fits the bill for Nazareth or Capernaum.

Why use that instead of a fishermen? a farm owner? a shepherd, a farm watchman, a tekton of stone, a tekton of wood,

outhouse

Depends on which book. Some are pathetic. Some have skilled writers [Hebrews if i'm not mistaken, and why some claim a tie to the author of Luke /Acts]



Because historians have factually determined parts to be factually accurate.

My personal opinion, regarding this movement and its origin? They were writing within a lifetime of the event.

had it been much later like typical OT mythology, I would not be searching for a historical core that can only have the possibility of a historical core like Noah and Moses. Moses I claim as fiction possibly from refracted legends passed down in oral tradition that no longer resemble the story in scripture.

Noah = Ziusudra and the mythology that grew from the attested flood in 2900 BC that spawned said mythology, a story so great it passed down through multiple cultures over thousands of years and evolved.

Very very poor methodology on your part.

My preconceived belief based from study, has no relevance to what is historical and a-historical.

As a strong atheist, I have no bias, and that is the context your trying to attack with a statement like that.