Was Jesus born into a ‘poor’ family?
One of the repeated themes of short Christmas expositions is that, in the birth story, we see God coming to the 'poor', and as a result the principal bulletin of Christmas is that nosotros should pay particular attention to the 'poor'. I put the term in inverted commas, because in both these contexts the term 'poor' has a specific meaning: the distinctively materially poor. Hither is a good example:
This Christmas why not ask the souvenir to dear the poor more deeply, with an abiding and deep affection? For poverty and neediness are an intrinsic aspect of the Infancy narratives. The showtime Christmas was anything but charming or sentimental. It is charged with homelessness, hardship, a lack of decent resources, disregard for human life (by Herod), and the flight of the Holy Family every bit refugees and aliens in a foreign land…
Yes, Joseph and Mary are swept away from their resources, their family unit, extended family, and Joseph from his livelihood. They are swept downstream some lxx miles to the boondocks of Bethlehem at a critical time for their family, the ninth month of Mary's pregnancy. Could you walk 70 miles? And what if you were pregnant?
Homelessness awaited them…Off to the stinking stable, the dank cave. Poverty does stink, and leads to deep and dank places. We may sentimentalize the birth of Jesus among animals, but there was nothing beautiful about it…Yep, the wondrous mystery is that God so esteems poverty. But the disgrace of this remains at our door…So poverty is an overarching theme in the infancy narrative.
There are some basic errors of fact in this reflection, and lots of unwarranted suppositions, but they are very common in popular commentary. It is more like 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and it would be nearly five or vi days walk. But if you lived in a civilisation where walking was the norm, this would not seem remarkable; it is only a claiming to a sofa-bound culture like ours. Observant Jews from the region would have made this journey at least iii times a year for the pilgrim festivals and there is every likelihood that Joseph and Mary would have combined the two purposes in their trip. The journey was, read in context, comparatively unremarkable.
As far equally I can come across, there is nothing in the gospel accounts that suggests that Mary was on the verge of giving birth when they made the trip. And Luke specifically tells us that Joseph was returning to his ancestral home, so he was mostly probable returning to extended family unit, not leaving it. And, of course, Jesus wasn't built-in in a stinking stable.
I recently got into a little Twitter spat on this event, with my interlocutors objecting to my annotate that material poverty isn't a particular theme of the birth narratives, and I was defendant of offer a 'middle class' reading of the texts. I actually recall that the truth is exactly the opposite, and there are iii elements to my further reflection on this.
The first is that, the simple answer to the question 'Were Joseph and Mary poor' is 'Yes—considering 2,000 years ago everyone was poor'. I thing that the kind of reading higher up fails to take into account is the very different world that the narratives are ready in—and this difference has grown massively in the last l years. It might be argued that the top 1.v% elite in the Roman Empire (on which run across below) were more than materially wealthy than many in the modern world, only in regard to some import measures, such equally infant mortality and general health, they would still take looked 'poor' compared with nigh people in the world today.
This graphic from the Brilliant Maps website illustrates the situation well. The accompanying article highlights some fundamental markers which show how different life was then compared with now; the figures are disputed and some of the calculations are out of engagement, but they are based on some serious research.
What a departure 2,000 years makes. The map above shows the GDP per capita in 14AD of the various provinces of the Roman Empire in 1990 PPP Dollars. On average, the Gross domestic product per capita across the whole Empire, was only $570.
This would make the average Roman in 14AD poorer than the boilerplate citizen of every single one of the world's countries in 2015…
According to the Globe Bank, the Congo-kinshasa is currently the world'southward poorest nation with Gdp per capita in constant 1990 PPP dollars of $766 in 2012. This makes today's average Congolese citizen about 34% richer than the boilerplate Roman in 14AD.
Life Expectancy in the Roman Empire has been estimated to have been equally depression as 25 years, due in part to extremely high infant bloodshed rates that might accept been somewhere between xv-35%. Today, Sierra Leone has the world's everyman life expectancyat 38 years and Afghanistan has the the worst babe mortality rate of somewhere between fourteen-19%.
Interestingly, the yawning chasm between the ancient and the contemporary globe has only opened up relatively recently. The major impetus to the growth of wealth (and health) first in the West and then globally happened with the industrial revolution. There was a significant increase in the rate of Gdp growth later on the Second World War, and then a dramatic acceleration following the spread of Neo-liberal economics, where growth was based on borrowing rather than product, from the 1980s. We are dramatically farther from the social and economical context of the first century than we were even in the 1960s. (The original of this graphic is interactive, so that yous can see the exact years of particular growth and what specific Gdp values were. Watching it as an animated unfolding video is particularly sobering.)
What was the reason for this comparative poverty for all?
The Roman earth was pre-industrial. Its economic system was fundamentally based in agriculture, and its population was largely rural. In modern terminology 'the Roman economy was underdeveloped'.10 Life expectancy was low (life expectancy at nativity was somewhere between twenty and thirty and probably closer to twenty).11 Nutritional deficiencies were widespread.12 Just in none of these features was the Roman world clearly distinct from the Hellenistic world or from the globe of the archaic and classical Greek urban center-state.
Poverty in this pre-industrial world was largely determined by access to land.13 Those who owned, or were able to secure the rental of, land could secure their subsistence provided that the surface area of land at their disposal was large enough, and the climatic atmospheric condition favourable enough. How big the plot of land needed to be has been much debated: information technology is articulate that the productivity of land is directly related to the labour put into it – gardening is more than productive per unit expanse than farming – just also that the constabulary of diminishing returns applies – repeatedly doubling the number of gardeners does not repeatedly double the output of the garden.xiv What counts equally favourable climatic conditions depends upon the nature of the land ('the grimness of the terrain'15) and the crops grown (barley tin withstand drier conditions than wheat). What it is possible or reasonable to grow, still, volition often, in turn, depend upon the relationship of the farmer to the market: farming régimes that optimise the yield of the land in calorific terms may not produce the kind of nutrient a family needs to consume. In full general big landowners do better than small out of drought conditions, but how badly the small-scale farmer fares will depend upon access to the market.16 Many people, therefore, had reason to exist anxious nigh food, but for those who had admission to land the threat of hunger was episodic, not endemic…17
Times of dearth divided communities between those who had and those who had not managed to fill their storehouses. Those compelled to pay the soaring prices of foodstuffs in the marketplace quickly found their conditions of life deteriorating as the demand to secure food caused other economic activeness to contract. It was in such times that individuals were no uncertainty tempted to sell themselves or their children into slavery – a practice legislated confronting past Solon in Athens but still encountered past Augustine.21
For those who were not able-bodied, all times were times of dearth. The disabled relied on the clemency of their families, their friends, and ultimately of strangers. If they exhausted local charity and moved away to seek alms from larger pools of beneficence they risked finding themselves isolated from all with whom they had melancholia bonds. For such people, poverty was structural.
In many ways, subsequently yearning for a return to the classical era was romantic nonsense. In his brilliant studyBearing Simulated Witness,Rodney Stark exposes the lie embedded in the Enlightenment terminology of the medieval period every bit the 'Nighttime Ages'. Compared with the Roman era, this was a time of enormous technological and artistic development, in which humanity made huge strides in health and wealth. He notes in chapter 4 (pp 77–81):
- The development of technology to make use of wind and water ability, where the Romans just depended on transmission labour by slaves.
- Revolutions in agronomics, including the development of the three-field system which left areas fallow that then became significantly more productive.
- The invention of the heavy plough and the equus caballus harness, which made more state productive.
- Selective constitute breeding in monasteries, leading to more than productive and hardier strains, thus giving higher yields.
- The invention of chimneys, which allowed the heating of buildings without either letting the pelting in or causing people to alive in smokey interiors.
- The development of true sailing ships which improved trade.
All these had a huge affect on wellness, wealth and life expectancy—and were accompanied by enormous strides forward both in moral thinking and in other aspects of cultural life. Compared with the Center Ages, life in the Roman Empire was brutish and short, and much, much poorer.
This then leads to a 2nd question: even though people in the Roman catamenia were poor compared with anything in the modern globe, they were not all as poor, and then where did Joseph, Mary and Jesus fit into the hierarchy of poverty and wealth in the Roman earth?
This has actually been a subject of considerable debate amongst scholars of the New Testament for some fourth dimension, though not much of that contend has filtered through to popular discussion. The main protagonists include Steven Friesen, who is a Mennonite and a detail scholar of the Book of Revelation, Bruce Longenecker, who has written much on aspects of fabric culture, Peter Oakes from Manchester, and Roland Deines, a German scholar who was for several years based here in Nottingham.
Longenecker gives a adept overview of the contend in chapter 3 of his 2010 volume of essays,Call back the Poor. His concern is to offer, in dialogue with others, a model for 'scaling wealth and poverty' which moves beyond a simplistic binary of 'rich v poor' that is based on actual show. He cites Steven Friesen'due south 'Poverty Scale' published in 2004, which gives a helpful delineation of different socio-economical groups:
After some give-and-take, Longenecker offers this revised scale for urban dwellers in the Empire, switching to the language of 'Economical Calibration':
There are a number of things to note about this—and of course the arguments about the research evidence are circuitous. Slaves are not included here as a separate group; they take been approximate to compromise between 15% and twoscore% of the population of the Empire at unlike times, but their wealth and welfare depended entirely on the household of which they were a office.
But in that location are two cardinal things worth noting. Commencement, although it has oft been said 'There was no middle course in the ancient world', that is certainly true, both in terms of Marxist theories of class identity, and in term of the development of a mail-industrial professional, not-manual, comparatively wealthy working group. Nonetheless, as Longenecker points out (p 56) this is often taken to mean that there were no middling economical groups whose wealth saturday betwixt the elites and the 'poor'—and this is non the case.
It as well appears, from the texts of the NT, that many of Jesus' followers belonged to these middling groups, both in the gospel accounts and later in the first and 2d centuries. When Mark tells us that James and John exit their father Zebedee 'in the boat with the hired men' (Mark 1.xx) he puts them squarely in ES4. And as atekton, a general builder (Matt 13.55, Mark vi.three), working with stone and wood (though not metal), it is more than than probable that Joseph (and therefore Jesus) was in ES4 or ES5, then in economical terms higher up either 55% or 82% of the population non including slaves, beyond the Empire equally a whole.
Roland Deines has a long and detailed consideration of these issues in his affiliate 'God and Mammon' in the German language volume Anthropologie und Ethik im Frühjudentum und im Neuen Attestation (Anthropology and Ideals in Early Judaism and the New Attestation) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). After noting the problems with simplistic claims that 'Jesus associated with the poor', he notes the complexities even with the kinds of economic scales proposed by Longenecker and others, detail in the context of rural Galilee. Even so, there is plenty of testify in the gospels that Jesus' followers oftentimes belonged to this economic middle:
When Jesus commissioned the Twelve to spread the message of the kingdom of God he required them to go without provisions of whatsoever kind: co-ordinate to Matthew and Luke they were not immune a staff, a handbag or any money, nor shoes (merely Matthew) nor a second tunic, whereas in Mark the restrictions are less rigid; hither Jesus allows them a staff and sandals (Mark 6:8f. par. Matt 10:9f.; Luke nine:three, cf. x:4; 22:35). The point hither is that such requirements simply make sense if the disciples were able to provide themselves with these things; in other words, if they had more than than i tunic etc. From Luke 22:36 it becomes clear that this requirement was not seen as a lasting one simply equally a symbolic one for this specific commissioning…
According to John 12:6; 13:29 the disciples had a shared purse which was administered by Judas Iscariot, which ways that Jesus had money with him when he was on the way. (The possession of coin is too presupposed in the reply of the disciples about buying food: Mark six:37 par. Matt 14:15; Luke 9:xiii.) Although simply mentioned past John, it is confirmed by Luke 8:2f. where 3 women out of many, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Salome, were named who provided for Jesus and his disciples out of their means (cf. besides Mark 15:40f.).
At that place is more than bear witness for this position betwixt the rich and the very poor throughout the Gospels, and even a coincidental look at the people Jesus is associating with reveals that they are not the "destitute" in economic terms simply people with at least some means and not leap in a daily struggle for survival, with some fifty-fifty having a sure surplus they can spend on things other than their ain immediate subsistence.
- Simon Peter owns a house (Marking 1:29 par. Matt 8:14; Luke 4:38) and a boat including fishing implements (Mark one:16)…
- Zebedee, the father of 2 of the disciples, also has a boat and even employs day-labourers (Marking 1:20); Jesus calls merely the sons, not these hirelings, by the way. And in Luke 17:7, Jesus asks a non-specified audition what to say to a servant when he returns from the field to the house (Τίς δὲ ἐξ ὑμῶν δοῦλον ἔχων…). Fifty-fifty if this is simply an illustration for a educational activity of Jesus and should not be read as a matter of fact, it is withal worth recognizing that it is formulated from the perspective of the one who has a servant.
- A similar picture emerges from the wider circle of disciples, like the many women who supported Jesus and the Twelve with their money (Luke 8:2f.); Joseph of Arimathea (Mark xv:43, 46 par. Luke 23:50f., 53, Matt 27:57, 59f.; John xix:38, 40f.); and Nicodemus (John 3:1; 19:39).
- Levi-Matthew, the tax-collector (Marker ii:13–17 par. Matt 9:ix–13; Luke 5:27–32) is able to invite many into his house, which points to a certain standard of living, fifty-fifty if one should not assume that all tax-collectors are wealthy but because of their profession… (there follows two more pages of examples)
In conclusion, Jesus is not addressing directly the very rich nor the very poor (in economic terms). The really rich and the destitute are actually – with some notable exceptions – rather absent as real persons. Instead, they part every bit types against which the followers of Jesus have to acquire how to follow him with regard to their possessions (pp 350–354).
All this makes perfect sense when you think virtually it; well-nigh of united states find the teaching of Jesus relevant, engaging and practical. If he were primarily addressing either the rich elite or the destitute poor, so we would have more trouble making sense of it.
In that location are three qualifications to add to the above comments. First (equally Deines explores) questions of economic wealth in the aboriginal earth did non map onto social status in a uncomplicated way. In his NIC commentary on Luke, Joel Green offers a more complex diagram (p 60) of the interrelationship between wealth and status as a preface to his discussion of the birth narrative. When Mary, in the Magnificat, talks about God raising up the humble (and hungry) and putting down the mighty from their thrones, this is not simply a reference to economic status. She is testifying the grace of God which comes to us regardless of our worth, as estimated past the values of whatever culture we live in, and in hit contrast to expectations in the ancient world.
Secondly, much is oftentimes made of the observation from Luke ii.24 that Joseph and Mary offering the sacrifice for her purification after giving birth 'a pair of doves or two immature pigeons'. This is taken as an indication that they are 'poor', since in Lev 12.viii this offering is the alternative to bringing a 'lamb', and most mod translations say 'If she cannot beget a lamb…'. In fact, the AV of Lev 12.8 follows more than literally both the Hebrew and Greek which say 'If her hand cannot find plenty for a lamb' by rendering the phrase equally 'If she is non able to bring a lamb…' leaving open the possibility that there might be other reasons that a lamb is non bachelor. (At that place is a parallel later in Lev 14.21, where povertyis explicitly a reason for an alternative offer, but that language is non used in Lev 12.viii.)
Joel Green is right to limited the significance here, not that Joseph and Mary were 'poor', but that 'they were non wealthy'. This fits perfectly well with them beingness in group ES4 or ES5 in Longenecker's scheme above—and in fact there might have been any number of reasons why a lamb was non available. Moreover, Luke makes nothing of this issue in the narrative, omitting fifty-fifty the reference to this existence an alternative. Rather, the repeated emphasis of the narrative is that Joseph and Mary are pious, Torah-keeping Jews, who have been at every indicate obedient to the give-and-take of God both in the Torah and co-ordinate to the angel's bulletin.
[Luke] presents Jesus' family as obedient to the Lord, and unquestionably pious…Luke highlights notwhat they do, butwhy they do information technology…Mary and Joseph are willing supporters of God's aims, certifying that Jesus will operate from within God's purpose (pp 140–141).
Thirdly, outside this there is but no proffer that Joseph and Mary were distinctively materially poor, or that this formed any significant part of the birth narrative. When Paul says in 2 Cor 8.nine 'that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, then that y'all through his poverty might become rich', it is articulate that 'richness' is a reference to his heavenly splendour, that 'poverty' is his becoming man, like the states, and that in render our 'richness' is our inheritance in the kingdom of God. Paul is non here referring to distinctive material poverty but to our inheritance in Christ.
There is no doubt that a repeated teaching of Jesus, the New Testament, and the whole canon of Scripture is that we should care for others, and in item treat the poor. This is found in any number of places in the Torah; it is a repeated theme of the denunciation of the people in the prophets; information technology is institute clearly in the teaching of Jesus; it is repeated by Paul, and particularly by James. In that location is no question that business organisation for the poor is an integral part of Christian discipleship. But it is not true that distinctive material poverty is an 'intrinsic role of the infancy narratives'.
In fact, when the nascency and infancy narratives are read in this style, something rather shocking happens. God shows special favour to 'the poor', information technology is claimed, and as a effect we should bear witness special favour to the 'poor'. This involves a two-fold motility. First, the poor whom God visits are not u.s.a., and are non like us, simply are quite distinct. Secondly, our clemency to the poor finds its parallel in God's beneficence, so that, in outcome, we stride into the part of God, whilst the poor are the benighted who benefit from our largess. It is this which is a thoroughly eye-course reading, where we accept on the part of the rich and powerful who stoop in condescending grace to bestow our wealth on others.
The existent story of the incarnation is quite the opposite. Joseph and Mary are not distinctive, but represent ordinary humanity, only like virtually of us. The only one who stoops in condescension is God, and he touches all humanity with his grace. The story is non in the first instance near anything that nosotros should do (as if all gospels narratives were virtually us) merely what God has washed for usa, and the invitation that nosotros should receive this earlier annihilation else. Nosotros are not in the role of God; we are in the role of Joseph and Mary.
Jesus was not born in a stable, the shepherds were not despised outcasts, and Mary and Joseph were rather ordinary. Christmas is non most God coming to others, over there, for whom we ought to experience sorry, but to ordinary people like you and me. In the incarnation, Jesus embraced the poverty that every i of united states experiences as a vulnerable, dependant human being. And if he came to us then, he volition come to the states again this yr. 'Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.'
(Previously published in 2020. The picture at the acme is "Christ in the House of His Parents" by Sir John Everett Millais.)
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