We have all heard the phrase “my boss is a Jewish Carpenter”. The image of “Jesus” as a carpenter has been instilled in our culture. Everyone knows Yeshua was a carpenter… but it turns out that “everyone” is wrong.
The idea that Yeshua was a carpenter comes from two passages in the Gospels:
Is not this the carpenter‘s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? (Matthew 13:55 KJV)
And the Synoptic parallel in Mark:
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. (Mark 6:3 KJV)
However if we look at the DuTillet/Munster Hebrew text of Matthew 13:55 we read: הלא זה בן נפחא “Is this not the son of the smith?” and similarly in the Shem Tob Hebrew text of Matthew 13:55 אין זה בן הנפח “Is this not the son of the smith?”
The Hebrew noun here נפח or נפחא comes from the Hebrew verb root נפח meaning “to blow” and in this noun, referring to one who blows, using a bellows. The Hebrew word refers to a metal smith in general, one who smelts metals and makes things from them and encompasses a blacksmith, a silversmith a goldsmith etc.
This Hebrew word is attested at least as early as the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Thanksgiving Hymns “You have brought him to the crucible like gold to be worked by the fire, and as silver, which is refined in the smelter of the smiths to be refined seven times.” (1QH 13, 16)
The idea that Yeshua was a blacksmith brings whole new dimensions to his person and his sayings.
To begin with, the image of Yeshua as a weak, mild mannered looking individual are all wrong. Yeshua the blacksmith would have been a strong powerful man with big biceps, who could sling a blacksmith’s hammer and pound metal against an anvil.
Moreover, when Yeshua said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” (Matt. 10:34) these words have a stronger meaning coming from a blacksmith, who could literally make swords! And when Yeshua advocates sword ownership saying “and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one” (Luke 22:36) it has a whole new dimension, knowing he was a blacksmith!
So where did the idea that Yeshua was a Carpenter arise? The Aramaic (Old Syriac and Peshitta) versions translate this Hebrew word נפחא (smith) with the the Aramaic word נגרא which Jastrow defines as “carpenter, turner; in gen. artisan” (A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi and the Midrashic Literature, Marcus Jastrow 876a). This word usually means “carpenter” but generally can refer to any kind of “artisan”. The Greek translator renders with τέκτονος which can also refer to a carpenter or generally to an artisan.
The original Hebrew of Matthew, as preserved in both the DuTillet/Munster and Shem Tob Hebrew versions, reveals that Yeshua was a blacksmith, and the Aramaic and Greek translations generalized this with a word meaning “artisan” but most commonly referring to a “carpenter” and thus the deep set, yet incorrect, tradition that Yeshua was a carpenter was born.
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