Rozlee

As I've pointed out before, there was no real middle class in ancient Galilee. The closest that came to it was the merchant class that included merchants, bankers, certain clerics and traders. A carpenter in Nazareth 2,000 years ago built homes from crude stone, mud and straw that housed more than one family. Nazareth was a village of roughly 200 people, mostly tribal families. Your comment that he built cities is laughable. Even carpenters of today don't build cities, let alone a humble Iron Age artisan. In Matthew 11:7-8 and Luke:2-5, Jesus comments that John the Baptist was poor and not clothed, like the rich, in soft garments and gorgeous apparel and didn't live in a king's court. Neither did Jesus. He wore homespun woolen clothes sheared from sheep owned communally. If Jesus had been rich, he wouldn't have lived in a poverty-stricken town like Nazareth; he would have lived in the diaspora in Rome or some other wealthier area of his time. "Behold, your King is coming to you; he is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt; the foal of a donkey." A priest in the family was no guarantee that other members of the family would be rich, and levels of the priesthood existed from temple maintenance to the High Priests. No where in the New Testament does it say Zaccariah was a Sadducee, the wealthies of the priesthood, a sect that didn't believe in an afterlife and didn't believe in reward and punishment after life. And modern scholarship doesn't indicate any such thing as turtledove sacrifices for the general population of Jewish people. Those who were well off sacrificed lambs, those who weren't sacrificed fowl. That was part of the written mizvot and rigidly conformed to. For Mary to have sacrificed anything else would have been lying to God. The gift of the Magi might have gone for bribes in Egypt to escape Herod and live under the radar of his minions if such an event actually happened. I don't believe in biblical inerrancy and the Magi story of three wise men following a star (always depicted in Persian garb) is suspiciously identical with the story of the Zoroastrian god, Mithras who pre-dated Christ by 500 years. He, too, was born of a virgin. He was covered in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger and attended by shephards. He was visited by 3 kings who followed a star to his manger and gave him valuable gifts. He traveled the land with 12 followers. He was put to death by crucifixion and rose 3 days later on the 25th of March. He was born on Dec. 25th. He also had a Last Supper before he was put to death. He performed miracles and practised immersion in water or baptism to purify oneself for Heaven. He ascended into heaven after rising from the dead. He, too, preached a gospel of radical egalitarianism. Other deities who celebrated their birthdays on the 25th of December are Osiris, Adonis and Dionysus. Jesus never told his disciple to celebrate his birthday, his resurrection or even his death. At the Last Supper, he broke bread with them and drank wine and told them, "do this in remembrance of me." To say Joseph was middle class because he was a carpenter is silly. You can't compare any modern day profession to the ones practised 2,000 years ago. A doctor today makes good money. A doctor even 100 years ago struggled to keep a roof over his head, and did, indeed as one politician said, accept payment in a chicken. My grandmother said that when she was giving home birth to my uncle in 1920, the doctor accepted vegetables from her garden as payment. When my sister was born in a hospital in the 50s, they accepted payment from my dad (he was a plumber) to install some water fountains. My dad, as a plumber in the 50s, struggled to raise us and even today, my nephew, also a plumber, doesn't live in splendor for a middle class job. You're delusional if you think a modern day profession can compare to what it was 100 years ago, let alone 2,000.

Ever heard of the Mellon family? Ever heard of the Koch Brothers? I rest my case.

Oh, Jeebus. Sounds like almost every preacher out there that thinks America is doomed because we allow abortion, use birth control pills, teach evolution and the Big Bang Theory; let women work outside the home, refuse to stone gays, don't kill a commie for Mommie,  chicken out on frying Mexicans on border fences, don't own our own Negroes, and believe the earth is round. I guess it's OK when white preachers say America is being punished for her sins. But, black preachers who diss America can kiss off and go back to Kenya.

There was no real middle class in the Galilean world of 2,000 years ago. What little of it existed was in the merchant class and the traders. Carpenters of today deal in large homes made of durable wood from trees, brick, and other modern forms of building materials. Carpenters of Jesus' time built small homes made of mud, crude stones, and straw and often housed more than one family. Nazareth, his home town, consisted of a population at the time of no more than 200 people, mostly family tribes. They wore homespun wool clothes made from sheep owned communally. They considered themselves rich if they had enough seeds from their harvest for the next years planting. The class system at the time were a few staggeringly rich people and the poor peasants, the unbelievably poor peasants and the outcasts (i.e. lepers, certain sinners, unclaimed widows, those with certain birth defects, the castrated or those with genital abnormalities as proscribed in Deuteronomy, prostitutes, etc.). Mary and Joseph were very poor. As a carpenter, Joseph could have fashioned a wagon to pull a pregnant Mary into Bethlehem. Instead, she had to ride a donkey. You can't compare today's carpentry profession with the one that existed in the Iron Age. During that time, 99.4% of the people were illiterate. Galileans didn't own property. Even the donkey Mary rode on was technically the property of the Romans if they'd wanted to take it away from her. Starvation and disease were rampant. Skeletons dug up from that time in that area show marked scurvy, rickets and damage consistent with kwashiorkor. The average age of death for a male at that time was 32. Today's preachers teach a prosperity gospel where they encourage their congregants to become wealthy. Jesus said not to build treasure on earth where moth and rust would corrupt and time and time again stereotyped the rich as evil and told them to give their wealth away. Dirty, stinking, Socialist commie hippie.