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  • From: JFAlward AT aol.com
  • To: gmark AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: The Carpenter in Mark and Homer
  • Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 01:18:17 EDT


There's a passage in Isaiah which I believe can be used to rebut Dennis
MacDonald's claim that Mark may have had Jesus emulate Homer's Carpenter
Odysseus when he had the people in Jesus' hometown refer to him as a
"carpenter."

The relevant Marcan passage is below; I've added emphasis to words I'll refer
to later:

Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When
the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him
were amazed. "Where did this man get these things?" they asked. "What's this
wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn't this the
CARPENTER? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and
Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" And THEY TOOK OFFENSE AT HIM. Jesus
said to them, "Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house
is a prophet WITHOUT HONOR." (Mark 6:1-4)


Dennis notes in _The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark_ (Yale University
Press, 2000) that

"Scholars routinely treat Mark's identification of Jesus as a carpenter as
historically reliable because there is no apparent reason for the evangelist
to have concocted this information…..Jesus may have indeed been a carpenter,
but [so was Odysseus]; he built the Trojan horse and built his own palace.
Homer went to great lengths to illustrate Odysseus's skill with his hands in
order to symbolize his intelligence, foresight, and clever
resourcefulness…For Homer….carpentry was a metaphor for wisdom. The
opposite is the case in Mark, and the earliest evangelist may be emulating
Homer's hero, making Jesus even wiser and more powerful than Odysseus.
Jesus' neighbors recognized him as a carpenter, but his wisdom and ability to
perform miracles far exceeded what they expected even from a skilled
craftsman." (pages 18-19).

I attach a quite different interpretation to Mark's use of "carpenter."
Before I explain, let me first provide the following from Isaiah 44:9-18:

All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless…
He and his kind will be put to shame; craftsmen are nothing but men…The
blacksmith takes a tool and works with it in the coals; he shapes an idol
with hammers…The CARPENTER measures with a line and makes an outline with a
marker; he roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes
it in the form of man, of man in all his glory, that it may dwell in a
shrine…He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god." They know
nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they
cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand."

I think that when Mark told us the people of Jesus' hometown took offense at
him and dishonored him, he never intended the word "carpenter" be a
description of his trade, but as a metaphoric description of one who is
misguided and deluded, who knows and understands nothing, and is to be
shamed, like Isaiah's carpenter. I believe the townspeople weren't
recognizing Jesus' "wisdom and ability to perform miracles," as MacDonald
says. It seems thy were doing just the opposite; I believe Mark is instead
having the people use sarcasm here in much the same way as he did when he had
the people after the arrest "[twist] together a crown of thorns and set it on
him [and] call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!" (Mark 15:17-18) The
people in Jesus' hometown no more thought Jesus was wise than the people at
the arrest thought Jesus was "king of the Jews."

In summary, Mark seems to have intended the "carpenter" in his story to call
to mind Isaiah's fashioner of idols, one who would be shamed--ironically, one
who doesn't have eyes to see. Dennis has noted that authors of Mark's time
time often blended material from several sources, but it doesn't seem
possible that Mark intended for his readers simultaneously to connect
"carpenter" to Isaiah's foolish idol-maker AND to Homer's revered carpenter.



Regards,

Joe Alward




  • The Carpenter in Mark and Homer, JFAlward, 09/03/2001

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