What do Others Say About τέκτων?

Now I feel I must address some common objections I’ve heard and read over the years. First is that the city of Zippora was next to Nazareth and had a lot of stone construction, being built next to a quarry. This reference appears in several places, but all point to the same source, a self-published holy-land workbook by Dr. James Fleming.1 While I don’t wish to denigrate the value of his other work, this particular argument is just conjecture. This is speculation based on coincidental geography, much like assuming there are no plumbers in a mining town.

[This is an excerpt from my book, The Blue-Collar Blindspot in it I dig deep into how Christian Media tacitly ignores blue-collar workers and the dignity of human work. I’ll be posting more each week till I’m through the whole book.]

Part of this position is to point out the lack of wooden structures and the large presence of stone buildings. Wooden structures that may have been there wouldn’t last thousands of years. So it’s impossible to say whether or not there were wooden structures. David was sent literal tons of wood when he was building his palace and the temple. Both of those were predominantly stone buildings, that seem to have required a lot of wood to build. Also, I’d like to point out that stones were cut by hand on wooden tables, moved with wooden carts, pulled by oxen with wooden yokes, hoisted on wooden ladders, with wooden scaffolding, with wooden cranes using wooden pulleys. All of those men went home to sit on wooden chairs, eat at wooden tables, and sleep in wooden beds.

The commute distance is another main point of this argument. Before cars were common in America, it was common to walk a day or two from home to work for a week or more at a time. A longer commute for a working man just means he needs to work for a longer stretch to make the commute worth it. Another option is a local shop making furniture, equipment, and tools wouldn’t require much travel.

Some others point to all the places Jesus uses 'stone' analogies to say He was a mason and not a carpenter. This simply does not hold up. Jesus used analogies and parables for fishermen, fathers, grooms, wealthy landowners, farmers, shepherds, slaves, stewards, and kings. While in His earthly life, Jesus was none of these things. No serious argument can be made for any of them. Why would a few illustrations be weighted above the others?

Another assertion I’ve heard regarding τέκτων in the first century is that they were unskilled laborers little more than ignorant slave labor. This is usually just based on the variety of meanings found in a Greek lexicon. The author, to support his point, will pick the favored definition and one or two odd places where the translation matches. The Septuagint and Josephus record τέκτων making the Tabernacle with the skill that God gave them. Epictetus, Dio, and Aelius consistently speak of the skill of the τέκτων, comparing them to philosophers, soldiers, and doctors. Josephus recounts times when the skill of the τέκτων turned the tide of battle, and Dio says they are critical for the security of a city.

τέκτων are occasionally called small business owners by the odd politician or business man. This is misleading, if not entirely false. The place of τέκτων near bottom of society seems clear. Dio says they are looked down upon and mentions them not being able to afford certain amenities. In the Septuagint they are removed from the land as separate from the poor and beggars, but they aren’t seen as wealthy.

One of the most common ideas seems to be that τέκτων could mean anything, to include masons. The idea is that we just can’t know. This is flawed because of how we humans use words. Yes, if you look in the lexicon under τέκτων you see: carpenter, artisan, or mason. That does not mean that the word could mean any of those at any time. When we use a word in any human language, we understand that word has a given range of meaning and use that word in a specific context. The context, combined with the range of meaning, gives us the specific intended meaning.

The context is determined by who is speaking and where they are in time. If someone told you, “I’m going to go study,” it would be crazy to think, “Whoah! The range of meaning of 'study' is huge, I can’t know what you mean!” If it’s a student, study means something different than if it’s a scientist going to perform a study, than if it’s a millionaire going to his study. The context makes the range of meaning very narrow.

A contemporary example is the word smith. If you know I’m not using someone’s name and I say, “Joe is a smith.” You immediately assume he works with iron or steel. But what about coppersmiths, tinsmiths, goldsmiths, silversmiths, gunsmiths, locksmiths, wordsmiths, songsmiths, and tunesmiths. Smith could mean anything, right? Except, unless you specify, we understand smith to mean a blacksmith. Any native-English speaker knows that and would clarify if they meant anything other than blacksmith.

Next we’ll discuss the spiritual and practical implications of Christ as Carpenter.

[This is an excerpt from my book, The Blue-Collar Blindspot in it I dig deep into how Christian Media tacitly ignores blue-collar workers and the dignity of human work. I’ll be posting more each week till I’m through the whole book.]

If you’re interested in assessing your ministry or outreach, to know how blue-collar friendly it is, just pick up my free Ministry Assessment Tool it will allow you gauge what color your collar is and give tailored advice based on your score.

1James W. Fleming, The Jewish Background of Jesus (LaGrange, GA: Biblical Resources, 2004), 11

Now, I never had this workbook to reference and can not find it, but everyone making the argument references Robby Gallaty’s The Forgotten Jesus and this is his footnote for that assertion.