Hi
What does the term Tektōn on its own mean?
Christians take a distinct perspective of Jesus than that portrayed in the New Testament, they heap unwarranted literacy on him. In the Gospel of John 7, we are led to believe that Jesus miraculously reads and speaks Hebrew, which amazes the Jews who see him as unlearned. Yet, Jesus himself was a peasant Aramaic speaker. Christian forgetting, that he was unschooled and probably unskilled too! Matthew 13:55 gives us a clue of Joseph, Jesus’ nonbiological earthly father’s skill was as a tektōn (Matthew 13:55), which Christian translators render as carpenter. (Also, tektōn is mentioned five times in the NT, and seven times in the OT. See https://journal.eahn.org/article/id/7535/ for variants of tektōn.) Which is most likely wrong and should be amended to read stonemason/builder. Wood was scares as a building material in an arid/desert land of Israel. To manufacture the mythical Christian cross, a tektōn working in wood would have to laminate various pieces of wood to construct one. Timber for a full-size Cross as depicted by Christian media would require a minimum of twice the height of a man (12ft). With an added 3ft for going into the ground making it 15ft, with a crossbeam of 6 to 7 ft minimum. Made of 8” x 8” or even 6” x 8” timber. The problem now is to find a tree or trees in the so-called holy land that could produce timber at the dimensions as shown above. Easy-peasy if you lived in the Americas, Europe, Asia, or Australasia, but nay impossible in the land of Israel. Which by all accounts is a dryland? The native trees species of Israel in the times of Jesus were the Palm family, the rest of the trees are not much better than large bushes, which have short trunks or even several spindly trunks. There are Palestine Oaks and Cedar of Lebanon trees, which are found further north in Syria, Turkey, and Cedar of Lebanon can be rare in Lebanon that would give the board measurements require. Trees such as the Palestine Oak, the Jerusalem Pine sound native to Israel, but you would be wrong. As the pine forest of today were introduced and planted in the 1930s. Today you will find Eucalyptus (gum tree) avenues in some Israeli cities, trees native to Australia. There are ten top trees in Israel, most to be found in the north of the country on mountain tops, etc. The Kermes oak, Syrian Juniper, Atlantic Pistachio, Black Mulberry, Olive tree, and Acacia Tree, some native and some introduced in the 20th-century. The native trees like the Giant Acacia (mentioned in the Old Testament *(OT)) are no more than a large bush, and a tektōn would be hard pressed to get a 5ft board from. Also see Bible trees but notice that these mature trees would not produce any wood suitable for making a full-size Christian cross. https://www.biblewalks.com/Trees
To get over any criticism of the so-called wood of the cross of Jesus, with critics wondering where the wood came from. Christians invented the triple-tree cross, and quadruple-tree cross. What is more, adherents genuinely believe in such trees existing?
*In the Old Testament, we find: “And you shall make upright boards for the tabernacle of shittim wood (Acacia wood). Ten cubits shall be the length of a board, and a cubit and a half shall be the breadth of one board.” (Exodus 26:15-16)
Length of Hebrew cubit =17.777 inches.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/peq.1897.29.3.201?journalCode=ypeq20 retrieved 22/01/2019.
The author of Genesis must have been thinking about the Redwood or the great Sequoia, for the type of board he was referencing too! I am also sure lots of Israeli botanists would like to find these biblical Acacia trees as all they have are short trunk trees which would just about give you a 5ft length board, and its width. Most building wood in Israel would be imported, that said, they could harvest their own pine, from the 1930s pine plantations. Wood as a material of construction/building, and the carpenter craftsmen are mentioned in both OT and NT, yet wood was a precious commodity in biblical times. If we believe the authors of the Bible, we must accept that the Romans put out tenders for wood from Home Depot, Bunnings, Rona, and B & Q, etc.
Why I say stonemason tektōn, because of the sparsity of wood in region. The 3 miles, between Nazareth and Roman city of Sepphoris aka Tzippori/Zippori there are two huge ancient stone quarries. Producing stone for Sepphoris during the first few centuries of the common era. https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/archaeology-nazareth-early-first-century Scroll down the Photograph 3 and read on.
So, if old Joseph was a tektōn, he most certainly was a stone working one, as stone was available in enormous quantities for building homes, and new cities, such as Sepphoris!
Mark 6:3 indicates that Jesus is a tektōn too! Some scholars say that the author of Matthew 13:55 was correcting Mark 6.3. As the Bible is silent on Jesus from the age twelve to age thirty. Pagan philosophers, and Jewish tradition hold that Jesus: “having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country, highly elated on account of them, and by means of these proclaimed himself a God.”—Celsus from Origen Adamantius Contra Celsum, BK I, ch.28.
Where the anonymous Greek writers of the canonical gospel naïve about aridness of Israel at the time they authored their stories. Writing in the Greek enclaves what we call Asia Minor today, with plentiful of trees to supply all the building trade needs. Was Joseph, a wood working tektōnes, or stone working tektōnes? One would think if an old man could walk the 100+ miles each way to the Passover at Jerusalem, he could walk the three miles from Nazareth to Sepphoris daily. Were work for a stone tektōn to build a new city would be assured, what do you say?
Cofion
R&I – FS