If Jesus was not a carpenter – I have my doubts – can we think of a reason Mark may have wanted to say he was (Mark 6:3).? I’ve never seen this discussed before, but I can indeed imagine a reason.

Recall the setting.  In the opening chapters of Mark, Jesus has been preaching, healing, casting out demons, doing other miracles, and gathering crowds.  Then in chapter six we come to this:

6 He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. ² On the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! ³ Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. ⁴ Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown and among their own kin and in their own house.” ⁵ And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. ⁶ And he was amazed at their unbelief.

             The comment about him being a carpenter seems a bit off the cuff and ad hoc.  Mark doesn’t seem to be making a big point of it.  But in fact, maybe he is trying to say something important.

The townspeople (oddly, since Jesus grew up with them and apparently left the village as an adult just some months before) wonder if this is really who he appears to be, “the carpenter.”  That certainly matters for Mark.

One of the major themes found throughout this Gospel in particular is that during Jesus’ ministry, almost from beginning to end, no one can understand who he is.

Read the first half of Mark carefully and ask who knows and who doesn’t know his true identity.  The only ones who know that he is the son of God are: God who tells him at his baptism (Mark 1:11); Jesus who hears God tell him (Mark 1:11), the demons he casts out (Mark 1:24); and Mark himself (Mark 1:1 etc.).  No one else knows.

In this Gospel, Jesus’ mother and brothers come to rescue him from the public view because they literally think he has gone out of his mind (Mark 3:20-21); the Jewish leaders think he must be possessed by Beelzebub, that is, the Devil, since he casts out demons (3:22); and the disciples repeatedly are said not to understand who he is. In fact they wonder aloud when with a word he calms the stormy sea: “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41).

Later they see him walking on water and don’t get it: “For they did not understand … but their hearts were hardened” (Mark 6:51–52). Two chapters later, Jesus warns them “to beware of the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees” (Mark 8:15) and they mistake his meaning, thinking he is angry because they have forgotten to bring bread along, even though they had seen him miraculously feed thousands of hungry people on two different occasions. Now Jesus expresses his own exasperation: “Do you not yet understand?” (Mark 8:21).

The disciples do begin to have an inkling, just after this.  The episode starts with a question from Jesus: “Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27). The disciples reply that some think he is John the Baptist, others Elijah, and yet others a prophet raised from the dead. He then turns the question on them: “But who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29). Peter, as spokesperson for the group, replies, “You are the Christ.”

Ah, Peter finally understands, right?  Wrong. He only partly understands.

Jesus reacts to Peter’s confession by ordering the disciples not to spread the word: “And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him” (Mark 8:30).  Then he tells them that  he “must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise from the dead” (Mark 8:31).  And how does Peter respond?

It makes no sense to him. He has just indicated that Jesus is the future King of the Jews (= Messiah) and now Jesus is talking about being executed by his enemies?  He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him and Jesus famously responds: “Get behind me Satan!. For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Mark 8:33).

For Mark (and for all the other early Christians we know about), Jesus was the messiah who had to suffer and die.  Peter can’t get his mind around it.

In this entire Gospel, it is not till after Jesus’ death that anyone understands that he – precisely as the messiah, the Son of God — had to be crucified.  And the one who recognizes is not one of his family, his disciples, his townspeople, or anyone else you might expect.  It’s the centurion who just crucified him.   (This may be a symbolic claim on Mark’s part, that the identity of Jesus as a crucified messiah might make no sense to Jews, but it will be openly recognized by gentiles.)

So … What does this have to do with Mark’s indication Jesus was a “carpenter” (or some other manual laborer: TEKTON)?

Recall, in broader Roman society, those who worked with their hands to make things – carpenters, metal smiths, stone masons – were seen generally as having lowly work, to have been uneducated and socially unimportant.  When Mark has Jesus’ hometown folk say that he is a TEKTON he is showing that they have no idea of who he really is, despite the fact that he has been doing miracles and delivering incredibly wise and insightful teachings.  Isn’t he just the TEKTON?  The lower-class peasant who fixed my gate one time?

But why wouldn’t Mark just have them identify Jesus as a farmer, since that’s almost certainly what he would have done for most of his life?   On this theory, it’s because that would not single him out from everyone else.  It wouldn’t make sense to say “Isn’t this a farmer?”  They all were farmers.  To separate him off as distinct, they call him a lowly occasional worker, “the” TEKTON”; that makes it clear that he is the uneducated day laborer who may be good with his hands, but he ain’t no Jesus Christ Superstar….

There is some possible support for this reading of the passage in the first mention of Jesus as a carpenter outside the New Testament, in the book called the Dialogue with Trypho by Justin Martyr, around 150 CE (it’s a debate that the Christian philosopher Justin has with a Rabbi over the truth claims of Christianity).   Justin indicates that Jesus was thought to be a lowly carpenter, and that no one knew who he was during his life up till the time he got baptized by John.

When Jesus came to the Jordan, being considered to be the son of Joseph, the carpenter,³ and having no comeliness, as the Scriptures affirmed, He was thought to be a carpenter (for, when He was on earth He used to work as a carpenter, making ploughs and yokes, and thereby giving us symbolic lessons of the necessity of leading a just and active life); but then, as I already stated, the Holy Spirit for the sake of mankind descended upon Him in the form of a dove, and at the same instant a voice out of the heavens spoke the words which had also been uttered by David, when he, in the person of Christ, spoke what was later to be said to Christ by the Father: “Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee,”⁴ meaning that His birth really began for men when they first realized who He was.’ (Translation of Thomas Falls, Dialogue with Trypho, in the Fathers of the Church series)

Justin gets the idea of “carpenter” from Mark and points out that as such, he was not known to be significant (let alone “the Son of God”) until he left home to be baptized by John.  He (Justin) realizes that the term shows – in the eyes of his townsfolk – Jesus may have been a hardworking and innocent enough fellow, but in their eyes he was nothing more.  Being a “carpenter” made him of no account to the world at large.  Here the Nazareth crowd, like everyone else, simply had no understanding of who he really was.