Was Jesus Poor?

Was Jesus Poor?

Well, certainly not. While his family may have been richer, we must put an end this talk that describes Jesus as poor, and then what follows from it, all of the literary and movie portrayals that depict Jesus and the Holy Family as rather abject. It simply was not true.

Allow me to cite just a few things to support my cause here. First, as we learn in the first chapter of Luke, his uncle, or Mary’s uncle Zachariah was a priest, and of sufficient priestly rank to be allowed into the “Lord’s sanctuary”. Well, Priests are educated upper middle class people, aren’t they?

Then, Jesus was of the House of David. Well, yes, the House of David may have gone into some decline, but for them to even remember that they were of a royal family indicates that not all was lost. Just on name alone they would have had sufficient connections to do business. Then there was the matter of Joseph having to go to Jerusalem to register for taxes. Well, poor peasants don’t have enough money to tax, do they? To make it worth all the clerical trouble of registering and tracking these people one must suppose that only significant property owners were assessed for taxes, while ordinary people would be left to pay the salt tax and other such user tariffs.

Let’s look at the Holy Family during the early years of Jesus’ youth. They had donkeys, they stayed in hotels (when they could find them open), they could flee to Egypt on a moments notice, they traveled as an extended family in numerous wagons (so many wagons that they lost track of Boy Jesus for 3 days). These were not poor people.

We hear that when Jesus was 12 that he visited the temple schools in Jerusalem attached to the Temple. Well, this is what we call a University, and it seems that Jesus felt as though he belonged. Now consider whether a peasant boy would have had such an inclination to mingle beyond his class?

Next we can consider what we know of the social connections Jesus had. We read that Jesus, before he began his ministry, was invited to a very well stocked wedding, and was treated with some semblance of respect, even though, at just 30 years old, he could hardly have expected to be treated with the respect that would automatically be rendered to an Elder. A young man of 30, who had been poor, would have been ignored or easily dismissed. Certainly no servants would have been detached during a busy wedding to cater to the demands of some ordinary young peasant.

Finally, we have the instances of people respectfully calling Jesus ‘Rabbi’. Again, this is a salutation for a middle class professional scholar – a ‘gentleman’.

Well, we could go further and surmise that many of his disciples had been members of his extended family, and they were all quite able to walk away from their businesses, weren’t they. This would have indicated that they were the bosses, not the employees.

Yes, I can understand that when Christianity became the Church for the disenfranchised of Society, that it became expedient to portray Jesus as one of the Poor… ‘just like us’. But that is all propaganda – lies people tell to help out with membership drives. But now that the facts have been brought into the light we all need to stop perpetuating this false picture of a Peasant Christ.

There is no reason to hold it against Jesus that his family was able to do at least as well as other families that had been able to manage during those times. So as poverty need not be seen as some horrible stigma, still, on the other side, it ought not to be something that people should brag about.