Jesus, Modern Teacher?

We naturally overlay assumptions from our experience onto Jesus’ story. The notion of the modern teacher impacts how we read Jesus’ story. People I have questioned think of Jesus as teaching from sun-up to sundown, and when he is not teaching, he is traveling to his next teaching opportunity.

Whether grade school or grad school, as a general rule in North America people who specialize in teaching earn their living from teaching.

In some parts of the world, teachers supplement their income with a trade, and this practice gets us closer to first-century reality.

“Few pharisaic teachers and scribes were wealthy, and many followed rather lowly trades” (Jesus Life and Times, 74). “Rabbis were expected to gain a skilled trade apart from their study (thus Paul was a leather-worker)” (Carson & Moo, 240). Further, “work was considered dignified” (Jesus Life and Times, 160).

When I suggest that Jesus was bi-vocational, I often hear the protest that we know that Jesus received support from others.

True, but think of a non-profit organization today that employs twelve people. What kind of payroll do they need? Jesus had at least twelve full-time followers, some with families. How much income would they need in order to maintain a consistent travel schedule as a team as well as take care of their families?

The bottom line is that Jesus’ experience as well as that of his disciples most likely involved supplemental work at a trade. And this assumption informs the way we read the Gospels.

____________

D.A. Carson & Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992, 2005).

Jesus and His Times, ed. Kaari Ward (Pleasantville, New York: The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1987).