Was Jesus really a carpenter – and Paul a tentmaker?
The Bible says that Yahweh had chosen the house of David from the tribe of Judah to be the royal line that would rule over his kingdom, which was Israel. King David was given the responsibility of building the kingdom of God on earth, and David's son King Solomon had the temple of Yahweh built on the mountain in Jerusalem. The kings became "builders" of God's kingdom, Israel.
Before the era of the kings, Moses and the judges had been Yahweh's chosen leaders of the Israelite people. The Israelites were shepherds and semi-nomads who lived on the fringes of society in the land of Canaan. Here they were barely tolerated by the country's inhabitants. The Israelites did not yet have their own land.
Therefore, Yahweh's sanctuary was a portable tent-temple, called the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting. Moses and the judges were “tentmakers.” They were at the head of the nomadic people of Israel, who lived in tents.
After the death of King Solomon, the kingdom of Israel was divided into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Centuries later, however, the kingdoms came to an end when first the Assyrians conquered Israel, and later on Judah was taken by the Babylonians. Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed and the king and the elite of the people were taken away to Babylon.
When the Judeans, many years later, returned from Babylon, the kingdom did not rise again. Instead, the priests (and later the Pharisees) took power over the people.
However, the dream of the restored kingdom was kept alive by the prophets. Amos uses the image of the kingdom as a house or hut that needs to be rebuilt: ”In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old …” [Amos 9,11][1].
The prophet Zechariah wrote: ”Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: and he shall grow up out of his place; and he shall build the temple of Yahweh …” [Zechariah 6.12]. But it did not happen. The king did not return, and the priests and the Pharisees became the builders of the new Judah. A new temple was built, but the priests transformed the Yahweh cult from a cult of the king to a cult of the priests.
However, the psalm asserts that the kingdom will ultimately prevail: ”The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” [Psalms 118.22].
In the New Testament, Simon Peter says to the high priests that now it had happened. Jesus: ”… is 'the stone which was regarded as worthless by you, the builders, which has become the head of the corner.'” [Acts. 4.11. Also Matthew 21.33-45]. Jesus was the returned king. He was the Branch.
According to the evangelists, the king was again to be the builder. This is undoubtedly why they have made Jesus ”… the carpenter's son …” [Matthew 13,55], or even: ”… the carpenter, the son of Mary …” [Mark 6,3]. The original Greek text uses the word “tekton,” which can be translated as carpenter, but also as builder.[2]
The king, the builder of the new Israel, had returned. But the priests would not give up their power over the people, so the king had to die. Jesus was crucified. In 70 AD, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, and later, the Jews were expelled from the city and the country.
The Acts of the Apostles was probably written by the evangelist Luke. He says that the apostle Paul was a tentmaker [Acts 18.1-3], something which Paul himself never mentioned. He only writes in his ‘Letter to the Thessalonians’: ”For you remember, brothers, our labor and travail; for working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached to you the Good News of God.” [1 Thessalonians 2.9].
Strictly speaking, Paul could well have been a tentmaker. Just as Jesus could have been a carpenter. But Luke was a master of symbolism. And therefore it must, of course, be interpreted symbolically. Just as with the “carpenter” Jesus.
Paul never experienced the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. But Luke, like the other evangelists, had faced the Romans' total destruction of Jerusalem and the temple of Yahweh. Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles after the disaster; he saw that the Christian congregation was now without a country. God's people was once again become "nomads".
Luke undoubtedly drew on the words of the prophet Isaiah, that Yahweh had once said to Jerusalem, the Daughter of Zion: ”I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning …” [Isiah 1.26]. Luke saw Paul as a tentmaker in the new “Era of Judges.” The apostle's "tent" was the new space for the congregation until the true builder returned and rebuilt the kingdom in heaven and on earth.