Loading...How did Jesus and his disciples support themselves? They left their families, homes, and jobs, to engage in a life of itineracy, preaching about the coming kingdom. But until it came, how did they survive? Specifically, how did they eat?
I don’t recall ever seeing any extended discussion of the question in a scholarly (or a popular) book or article. If one of you has, let me know. It seems like an obvious question, and I suppose most people think there is an obvious answer. There may be (I can think of three), but it’s worth thinking about in greater depth.
One very BIG problem about understanding the historical Jesus (I confront this all the time) is that nearly everyone
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Not only is the question of how did they eat but also how did their families eat. If they really did leave their homes for a few months, their families would have been left to fend for themselves also. My thought is that they did not leave their families. I agree that the ministry was only for a few months. The ministry was around Capernaum where they could continue to work, provide for their families and talk to the people they saw each day while working. When it was time to travel to Jerusalem for the Passover, they had set their families up for the time they would be gone.
Yeah, that makes the most sense. If Jesus and his caravan of followers only traveled to seven other towns, over the seven-month period of Jesus public ministry, they would only be away from their homes, families, and jobs a few days each month. So, no problem. It’s even less of a problem if Judas Iscariot, the caravan’s treasurer, had wealthy female benefactors donating large sums of money to their treasury like Luke 8:1-3 says. Google AI also says “In Hellenistic and Roman societies, elite women often acted as patrons for religious, philosophical, or civic groups. Because they controlled private wealth or family estates, their patronage could provide the steady financial foundation that filled Judas’s money box. The Zebedee family (James and John) was wealthy enough to own large boats and employ hired day laborers. Publicans and tax collectors who converted or sympathized with the movement—such as Zacchaeus or Levi (Matthew) possessed significant cash reserves and likely contributed heavily to the common fund”.
My professional background was mainly in finance, so ever since I first began reading the New Testament seriously, I have often wondered about this very practical question: how did Jesus and his disciples actually support themselves, and especially how did they get enough food from day to day?
If they had left their homes, families, and regular occupations, even tomorrow’s food could not simply be taken for granted. And when we imagine not only Jesus and the Twelve, but also the larger crowds who gathered to hear him, the practical problem becomes even more striking. Some kind of hospitality, support network, shared resources, or perhaps what the tradition later remembered as miracle seems almost necessary.
One detail that has always interested me is that, at least in John’s Gospel, Judas Iscariot is associated with the common purse. The Japanese writer Osamu Dazai wrote a short story, *Kakekomi Uttae*, from Judas’s perspective, in which Judas is almost the only one worried about practical matters such as money. Eventually, unable to bear that burden, he betrays Jesus for money.
Of course, that is literary imagination, not history. But I will be very interested to read your further thoughts on this question.
Jesus regularly conjured fish. This seems like an easily solved problem. Hehe.
Diógenes the cynic survived as a beggar. But that is one man. Could this crew have done odd jobs while moving around. If they spent time in ports they could have worked as fishermen or boat repair on the side.
It seems as though the authors weren’t really interested in this question. The synoptics contain a small portion of Jesus’ life and some disciples are barely mentioned. Maybe including this information wouldn’t fit the literary style. Reading Shakespeare and Tolstoy characters frequently travel hundreds of miles in a day.
I wonder what a Passover meal for 13 people cost.
Depends if you could multiply loaves or not…
I’m not convinced Jesus was as poor as people assume. See my Platinum Post of Nov. 3, 2025, Was Jesus Poor? Plus, there was an early Christian tradition that Jesus’ mother Mary was from a wealthy family. Besides, modern televangelists demonstrate how willing people are to give their hard-earned money to religious figures.
Well, great minds don’t always think alike…
But I don’t think you want to turn to the Protevangelium Jacobi for historical information about the mother of Jesus…
Well, I guess you’ll never go hungry if your master happens to be a miracle working Son of God. Failing that, there was always the Capernaum branch of Burger Rex.
Seriously though, it calls to mind J D Crossan’s suggestion that Jesus might have been a Jewish version of a Cynic philosopher. They somehow survived on discarded scraps and handouts from passers by. There was also a free handout of bread in Rome and other towns and cities throughout the Empire.
Tax collectors were noted followers of John the Baptist (Matthew 21:32, Luke 7:29). Jesus was referred to as a “friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19, Luke 7:34). Recall that John the Baptist previously, publicly declared tax collection (for Rome?) was not sinful (Luke 3:12-13). Jesus dined with many (or a large company of) tax collectors (Matthew 9:10, Mark 2:15, Luke 5:29). One of his disciples was a tax collector. First, do you think these passages were associated with the historical John the Baptist/Jesus movements? It is hard to imagine the motivation for adding such an unpopular (or even hated) issue for Jews and/or Gentiles, at a later time. Tax collection obviously involves money, sometimes a great deal. Any thoughts on how this could relate to your first option mentioned above?
Yes, I think both John and Jesus had followers considered “sinners” by most Jewish leaders, including tax collectors. I think the mistake is to think that tax collectors were typically rich. Most of them were just the poor grunt who was hired to bang on your door or sit at the booth to collect your payments for the company they worked for.
I understand tax collectors would not have been wealthy enough to support John the Baptist and/or Jesus. However, who would have been responsible for setting the “appointed amount” mentioned in Luke 3:13? Did John the Baptist set the “appointed amount” or did Roman administration officials? Do you think John’s public declaration tended to increase or decrease tax revenue collection? Do you think Jesus’ subsequent apparent support of tax collectors tend to increase or decrease tax revenues? If Pontius Pilate was aware of efforts to improve the image of tax collectors amongst Judean subjects (which is not a stretch since Flavius Josephus mentioned John the Baptist and recorded that Herod Antipas was aware of John), do you think he would have been pleased or upset? Is the idea of clandestine support from Roman taxation officials (who would have had enough money) too worldly of a view for historical representations?
As a side note, I am not asking how effective the movement would have been at increasing tax revenues (no one knows), just whether you think the documented accounts would have tended to improve tax revenues.
A tax collector’s “appointed amount” was the amount that his superiors in the tax corporation told hi mhe had to collect. The corporation would have won the bid to collect the taxes by the Roman authorities (there was corporate competition); and they were obliged then to raise what they bid. What they raised above that was their profit. That’s why tax collectors had a bad reputation: there were collaborating with Romans and they would take as much as they could in order to increase their profit. John is talling them to raise only what they are supposed to, not above it.
We we know they could fish 😉
What a problem. I look forward to hearing the possible solution.
According to Love They Stranger by Bart Ehrman, there weren’t (yet) anything like Salvation Army soup kitchens, where Jesus and his guys could get a hot meal and a place to sleep.
Having grown up in rural setting and personally travelled for a couple of weeks camping out and catching enough fish at end of day to complete meals, I can assume that since many were fishermen by trade then they could obtain much of group’s food with only very limited effort. I had not thought much about this question before you posed it. Also, based upon my personal understanding of rural culture, extended families could have supplied basic support if their religious activities were deemed as acceptable. I would need to study the more careful analysis of this question (i.e., their extended families’ views and attitudes). What is your understanding of this based upon your academic study?
Good ideas. Most of the time they are not by watersources; and extended family could help only if they were in close proximity and had excess funds. The problem with impoverished areas is that poor people rarely have non-impoverished families…. But yes, both of these are optoins.
Were there other itinerant bands going around the region in that day, or do you think Jesus’ was the only one? Would John the Baptist be considered one?
I’m wondering if itinerant preachers knew there was a successful gig to be had in the area.
Plus, considering that Jesus was focused on Jews, he wasn’t trying to convert people, he preached a pretty cool message of simple repentance to get right with God, and he was talking about the imminent coming to pass of Jewish prophecies, I can see how people might chip in to support him.
Yes there were. Normally they begged. But gigs didn’t pay back then. (Literally, opposed to “didn’t pay much” as today)
Mel Brooks was 100 this past weekend. My favorite is Brooks as the waiter at the Last Supper and he asks if they want separate checks. The reason it’s funny is twofold: one, everyone in the room is a Jew including Brooks and Jesus and, two, of course they wanted separate checks. It’s acceptably funny because it makes fun of both Christians and Jews. What they ate likely included unleavened bread, wine, and roasted lamb, which symbolized the hasty departure from Egypt, the new covenant, and the traditional Passover sacrifice. My point, besides a tribute to Mr. Brooks, is the symbolism of what was on the menu not its historical accuracy.
Genius.
Can you explain more how you arrive at the 6-7 month estimate for Jesus’ ministry in Mark? In your text above I understood you to date his ministry starting in May and ending in April, which would be 11 or 12 months.
Oh, did I say 6-7 months? That wsa an original estimate and then when I looked into spring harvest and did the math I realized it had to be longer. I thought I changed it to say “less than a year”
Off subject. I recently caught a discussion about the translation of Matthew 28,17. I note:
And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. KJV
When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. NIV
When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. NRSVUE
The thinking was that using “they” implied that everyone doubted and so earlier translators were squeamish enough at this to moderate it to “some”. I have no Greek so I’m wondering just which reading is proper and whether or not there is some ambiguity in the Greek.
Thanks!
Ah, right. It’s a tricky translation issue. The word “some” does not occur in the verse. BUT the grammar might allow it. In Greek there’s a way of expressing the idea that “some did this and some did that” without using the word “some,” with the Greek conjunction DE. They DE…They DE — i.e this group this but that group that. This verse doesn’t have EXACTLY that phrasing, but it could be construed that way.
Unrelated question: I recently saw a Facebook post insisting that Mark 16:16 belongs in the Bible. It made two claims that I’m sure you can verify or invalidate.
The first is that 99.8% of Greek manuscripts contain Mark 16:9-20. I’m suppose they mean 99.8% of manuscripts containing Mark 16.
The second claim is that early church fathers quoted Mark 16:16 long before Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.
Your take on these two claims? Thanks!
1. Anyone who has taken a two-day course on textual criticism knows you don’t *count* the mss to determine the original reading.
2. No one quotes the verse saying it is found in Mark or in a Gospel of any kind. If you read it, hyou’ll see it’s not a sentence that stands out as distinctive but is simply the kind of thing — worded in a variety of ways — that Christians were saying all the time (e.g. see similar kinds of things in John 3:36; Acts 2:38; 16:31, 33; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 3:21) etc.
Speaking of “going to India,” have you ever read “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal” by Christopher Moore? It’s a hoot, a very light-hearted take on the missing years. But he goes to India.
Yup. Students used to recommend it to me all the time! (I wondered how many of them had read it instead of the Gospels [!])
Dear Dr Ehrman-If I may ask, is there an academic consensus as to when the Syriac Sinaiticus was written? Prior to or after Vaticanus?
I believe it is usually dated to the late 4th to the early 5th centuries (based on palaeography — ancient handwriting analysis); Vaticanus is usually date to around 375 CE. So probably around the same time or (possibly more likely) a bit later.
But it’s important to recall that both mss are copying their texts from an earlier ms (or more than one). It’s possible, theoretically, that Vaticanus’s exemplar was from, say, 355 CE and Syriac Sinaiticus’s 325. Or Vice versa! The date of the manuscript is not the date of its text, if you see what I mean.
Doesn’t Luke 12:22-24 indicate that at least some of Jesus’ disciples were realistically concerned about the subject of this post? Telling them, ‘not to worry and that God will provide for them since they are more important than fowl of the air’, seems evasive, like he is not giving them the full truth of their support. My thought is, “What about the thousands of people, including children (who have not the means to ‘seek the kingdom’), who starve to death each day? Why isn’t God providing for them? Aren’t they more important than the fowl of the air?” Are there on-going theological debates on how Luke 12:22-24 makes no sense at all?
Yes, I’ll be talking about that (in the Matthean version) in a future post.
Whilst it is open to interpretation, Paul could be read as claiming Jesus was wealthy at one point, but gave it all up:
“For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” (2Cor8:9)
Perhaps he used his wealth to support his early ministry?
Several women were known to support Jesus and his disciples financially:
“The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered to them out of their own resources.” (Luke 8:1b-3)
But the most significant factor, in my view, that supported Jesus and his disciples is the ancient Middle Eastern custom of hospitality (which is still felt today), where it is considered normal and honourable to provide for itinerant folk passing through. In fact, it would be considered a significant dishonour to refuse hospitality.
Add these factors together, and perhaps we have a plausible solution?
Yes, the Prosperity Gospel preachers certainly use that verse, but I’m afraid it’s taken out of context. 2 Cor. 8:9 is more or less a summary of Philippians 2:6-8. Christ left the glories of heaven to come to earth as a servant. (Nazareth day-laborers, btw, were never rich. Quite the contrary)