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.<\/p>\n
Whether grade school or grad school, as a general rule in North America people who specialize in teaching earn their living from teaching.<\/p>\n
In some parts of the world, teachers supplement their income with a trade,\u00a0and this practice gets us closer\u00a0to first-century reality.<\/p>\n
“Few pharisaic teachers and scribes were wealthy, and many followed rather lowly trades” (Jesus Life and Times<\/em>, 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”\u00a0(Jesus Life and Times<\/em>, 160).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When I suggest that Jesus was bi-vocational, I often hear the protest that we know that Jesus received support from others.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0with 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?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
____________<\/p>\n
D.A. Carson & Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992, 2005).<\/p>\n
Jesus and His Times<\/em>, ed. Kaari Ward (Pleasantville, New York: The Reader\u2019s Digest Association, Inc., 1987).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experience-reconsidered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}