Note 34 — Chapter V · THE FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE, AND THE EDUCATION OF JESUS.

The employment of Jesus during the years of his boyhood and youth seems, from an intimation in our gospels, to have been determined by the trade of his father, who is there called a τέκτων (Matt. xiii. 55). This Greek word, used to designate the trade of Joseph, is generally understood in the sense of faber lignarius (carpenter);34 a few only, on mystical grounds, discover in it a faber ferrarius (blacksmith), aurarius (goldsmith), or cæmentarius (mason).35 The works in wood which he executed are held of different magnitude by different authors: according to Justin and the Evangelium Thomæ,36 they were ploughs and yokes, ἄροτρα καὶ ζυγὰ, and in that case he would be what we call a wheel-wright; according to the Evangelium infantiæ arabicum,37 they were doors, milk-vessels, sieves and coffers, and once Joseph makes a throne for the king; so that here he is represented partly as a cabinet-maker and partly as a cooper. The Protevangelium Jacobi, on the other hand, makes him work at buildings, οἰκοδομαῖς,38 without doubt as a carpenter. In these labours of the father Jesus appears to have shared, according to an expression of Mark, who makes the Nazarenes ask concerning Jesus, not merely as in the parallel passage of Matthew: Is not this the carpenter’s son? οὐκ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τοῦ τέκτονος υἱός; but Is not this the carpenter? οὐκ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τέκτων (vi. 3). It is true that in replying to the taunt of Celsus that the teacher of the Christians was a carpenter by trade, τέκτον ἦν τὴν τέχνην, Origen says, he must have forgotten that in none of the Gospels received by the churches is Jesus himself called a carpenter, ὅτι οὐδαμοῦ τῶν ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις φερομένων εὐαγγελίων τεκτων αὐτὸς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀναγέγραπται.39 The above passage in Mark has, in fact, the various reading, ὁ τοῦ τέκτονος υἱός, which Origen must have taken, unless he be supposed altogether to have overlooked the passage, and which is preferred by some modern critics.40 But here Beza has justly remarked that fortasse mutavit aliquis, existimans, hanc artem Christi majestati parum convenire; whereas there could hardly be an interest which would render the contrary alteration desirable.41 Moreover Fathers of the Church and apocryphal writings represent Jesus, in accordance with the more generally accepted reading, as following the trade of his father. Justin attaches especial importance to the fact that Jesus made ploughs and yokes or scales, as symbols of active life and of justice.42 In the Evangelium infantiæ Arabicum, Jesus goes about with Joseph to the places where the latter has work, to help him in such a manner that if Joseph made anything too long or too short, Jesus, by a touch or by merely stretching out his hand, gave to the object its right size, an assistance which was very useful to his foster-father, because, as the apocryphal text naively remarks: nec admodum peritus erat artis fabrilis.43