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On Joe Reilly’s podcast, archaeology professor Ken Dark says the Greek word tekton can mean a woodworker, so carpenter is not a false translation, but it is not the only sense. Mark calls Jesus the tekton and Matthew calls him the son of the tekton, which Dark reads as a slightly tidier wording. Galilee, including Nazareth, was more wooded in the early Roman centuries than it is now. The heavy clearing came much later. There were real woods, and timber shows up in buildings. Tekton might also cover someone who cut stone as well as wood. Dark notes that he is not a biblical scholar. His point is ordinary. A translation often freezes one meaning when a word had several, and scripture is not a special case. At the Sisters of Nazareth a first century cutting could be a courtyard house for an extended family or a plain room cut from rock. He once preferred the courtyard and now thinks both readings stay open. Taken literally as a childhood house, neither option makes the family rich.
Key points
- Dark says carpenter is one fair sense of tekton, not a mistake, and not the whole range of the word.
- He pictures early Roman Galilee as wooded enough for real timber, with the great clearance coming much later.
- A craftsman in that setting could have worked stone as well as wood.
- Bible translations, he argues, often lock one sense of a word, just as other ancient translations do.
- The Sisters of Nazareth cutting can be read as a courtyard house or as a simple rock cut home, and he no longer picks one.
- Taken as a childhood house, neither option makes the family rich.
Short quotes
Nazareth Area is known to have been a lot more wooded
Ken Dark, Tekton Was Not Only a Carpenter
The archaeologist says the Nazareth area held more trees in the early Roman period. Watch at 1:21
the Bible is not uniquely given to mistranslation
Ken Dark, Tekton Was Not Only a Carpenter
He adds that sacred books are not the only old texts that translations can bend. Watch at 3:34
Video by Joe Reilly. Watch on YouTube.