THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS - final

So, Jesus was a scholar and philosopher who revealed the truth to the greatest minds in Jerusalem. He would have been prestigious in the eyes of the intellectuals. He is endowed “rich” in mind and even independent of His believed to be parent, Joseph and mother, Mary.

Jesus was not the mother of God. God is Supreme. She was more so the vessel in which God walked. God had no need of anything. He just thought divine thoughts and they were there. If He had been thirsty, that would have been no issue. He was the fount of living waters.

If He was hungry, that would not be an issue for He is the bread of live. He would have provided for Himself manna from heaven. My point is to dispel the idea that Jesus was poor as anything He ever needed was right there, right then.

Anything that Jesus was, He chose to do… even His own death. He was never in agony for Himself but for all of mankind. Never underestimate the riches of Jesus; even riches He would never spend.

For example, the kings brought to Him at His birth, a tribute of gold, incense, and myrrh like they would a Caesar to whom they paid tribute.

Everybody knows the value of gold, but frankincense were very expensive and so were oils. They represented wealth; wealth which Jesus would never use nor waste.

Unknown is whatever happened to that cache! Perhaps Mary supplied the ointment for the burial of Jesus from those gifts (Luke 23:56) — literally aromatics and flowing juices. Incense is an aromatic and myrrh a sap that flows along the stripes cut on a tree.

Unknown is the amount of incense and myrrh that the kings brought but perhaps they were meant to be used on the body of Jesus. If so, since Jesus was not found in the tomb, the ointments, costly as they were, had gone unused. Their whereabouts, like the gold, remains unknown. The family of Jesus had gifts fit for a king, but Jesus never spent anything on Himself. He was not a “poor” anything!

Tradition has it that the gifts were chests for of each substance. If so, then Jesus was an extremely rich man who had no use for money. He even preached against the love of money as the root of all evil (1 Tim 6:10), but as rich as He was, Jesus told the scribe before His death, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has not where to lay His head” (Mat 8:20).

God (Himself) would provide. At last, Jesus had a place to lay His head, and that was in the unused, and quite expensive tomb of the upper crust man, Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus found a place to lay and bought it, not with the riches that He had, but the payment was His own life. Jesus died a wealthy, wealthy man in a small, small country, but His riches were in Paradise wherein there was a throne and great city.

Like George Washington long after, Jesus was land poor for His inheritance lied in another kingdom (John 18:36).

The Devil even offered Jesus a kingdom here, but Jesus refused the temptation. His riches were the vast Estate of God probated to Him when God suffered death on the Cross. Jesus’s supposed father, Joseph, may have been taxed for some small property in Bethlehem, the city of David, but Jesus would pay the “taxes” on His real, Real Estate (Paradise) with His own body — the most expensive sacrifice ever, and He paid that tax because He was both a Jew and the Son of God!

Now about the Cyrenius (Latin Quirinius) tax. The Roman tax could either be a head (poll) tax or a property tax, depending on the needs of the Romans.

There is a timing issue about the taxes of Cyrenius, but that may not be literal. Rather than Him collecting taxes as a prelate in 6 ACE. “Quirinius” fought wars in the mountains of Celicia, apparently to capture the rebels in the mountains near the boundary of Syria which at that time included all of Galilee and Judea in the time of the birth of Jesus. Perhaps he did tax, but not as governor, but as a general who needed to pay his troops; so don’t get caught up in accusations that the Bible is wrong.

Poll taxes are taxes just because a person exists. It makes sense that THE EXISTENCE (Yahweh) would be taxed. Usually, in the US, poll taxes were only on adults, but if Quirinius needed money for his armies, then the birth of Jesus would add a poll tax. In other words, the world taxed Jesus, if that is true, just because He was born.

The other tax enumerated by Quirinius was property tax. Joseph and Mary both went to Bethlehem — apparently their home city — to pay property taxes which were very expensive in contrast to Jewish taxes (perhaps a farthing or so that would be used oftentimes for sacrificial purposes and Herod’s building projects.)

Joseph, as scripture indicates, was the “son of David,” meaning that He was of David’s family. That Joseph owed taxes in Bethlehem implies that Joseph had land there. Since he was of David, perhaps Joseph had inherited some quantity of David’s land, and if so, Joseph perhaps owned property in both Nazareth and Bethlehem, Nazareth, being in Galilee near where Quirinius was fighting a war. It can be reasonably assumed that, that taxation was for conducting a war and any wrongness of scripture is dispelled.

Jesus was known as the “son of David” — “When Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed Him, crying, and saying, ‘You son of David, have mercy on us” (Mat 9:27). Even poor beggars knew that Jesus was a pretender to the throne and perhaps even knew, because it was published as was the custom of the Romans, that He was royalty. No wonder Herod sought to kill the young Jesus. Since blind men that could not read knew the genealogy of Jesus, then educated men would certainly have known. In modern times, Joseph would be called a member of the “landed gentry.”

However, theologians have portrayed Joseph as a poor carpenter. Those in His own country (Galilee) were astounded at His mighty works and asked, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at Him?” (Mark 6:3).

Would a poor family offend the common men and women in His home state? No, but wealthy men might very well. Was Jesus really a carpenter known by his structures or a Technician known by His astonishing miracles?

By now, everyone should know that wealth offends more so than poverty. Perhaps they were offended because the family of Joseph was too well off! Their wealth would support wars; perhaps that is why they shunned Him.

Joseph and Mary as righteous people would have hated war, but their taxes would have gone toward supporting the battles of Quirinius. That would explain why Jesus’s own people would reject Him; He may have been considered just part of the wealthy elite by His own people. Of course, those who were fair, knew that Jesus was a humble, humble man in His own land at Bethlehem.

Yes, there is speculation herein, but I do support the biblical account of things because they were inspired by God (2 Tim 3:16), meaning Jesus Himself. Jesus was not a liar! The writers were giving Jesus’s account of things.

Now consider the trade of Jesus and Joseph — a “carpenter.” They may have been but there is no evidence of any carpentry they may have done either in scripture or in archeology. Literally, in the Greek, they were “tekton” or “tradesmen” as they are called to this time.

In my book about, An Awesome Quantum God, I suggested that Jesus was a “technician” and because He made all things, He knew all things inside and out because He made them from nothing. Jesus was indeed a highly skilled, miraculous “Technician” who may have never sawed wood but in the genesis of all things, He literally cut firm things (Gen 1:1). He cut atoms and made sub-atomic particles. Nobody ever taught Jesus anything! In fact, Genesis is the only place that it is implied that He sawed anything.

However, admittedly Joseph was a tradesman of some sort, by why a carpenter? Because carpentry was a skill done by tradesmen in James’s England when the Bible was translated.

So, what happened to the gold? There may be explanations. Perhaps Joseph used part of it to pay for the head tax of the “Godhead” Jesus. Perhaps He paid property tax on the property he had inherited as the seed of David; or perhaps Jospeh was a jeweler, as many Jews are to this day! Perhaps that is part of the sin of envy that his people portrayed.

Did Joseph make jewelry from the gold the wise men brought? Had he made a crown of gold in preparation for the kingship of Jesus which he knew was planned because the kings revealed to Jospeph that Jesus would be king? Did Joseph fail to understand that gold would not be the crown of Jesus but thorns from a bramble bush like the ram of Abraham’s sacrifice?

Something did happen to the gold, expensive aromas, and ointments that the kings brought. My reasoning is as plausible as the next.

Why gold? Sacred writings explain that: 

After these things God said unto Adam, "Thou didst ask of Me something from the garden, to be comforted therewith, and I have given thee these three tokens as a consolation to thee; that thou trust in Me and in My covenant with thee. "For I will come and save thee; and kings shall bring me when in the flesh, gold, incense and myrrh; gold as a token of My kingdom; incense as a token of My divinity; and myrrh as a token of My suffering and of My death. "But, O Adam, put these by thee in the cave; the gold that it may shed light over thee by night; the incense, that thou smell its sweet savour; and the myrrh, to comfort thee in thy sorrow." (1 Adam & Eve XXXI:1-3) 

The gold was for the kingship of Jesus if that is true. A crown is a token of any kingdom. Kings brought the gold for something. A crown makes sense. If Jospeph was indeed a jeweler as many Jews have been, then perhaps he did use the gold to fabricate a crown as a “tekton” of sorts himself.

If so, then Jesus never wore the crown of gold for as a modest man he wore a crown of thorns.

The point is that Jesus was likely a wealthy propertied man who had riches that meant nothing to Him. God, His Father, had made for Him the gold, incense, and myrrh; making Him the Son (gens) of God as well as the gens of David.

Through the line of David, Jesus was king of Judea for only a few weeks, then He abdicated by death to be King of kings, and Lord of lords in the real, real estate in Paradise. If anybody used the crown, his successor, Herod Agrippa II would have. He was the last Herodian king of Judea, and it is likely that the Romans ended up with the crown made for Jesus.

Caesar, Caligua, so says AI Overview, gave Agrippa II a gold diadem (crown) when he made him king of Judea. It remains unknown who made that crown, but the Romans got the gold when Jerusalem fell. Did Jospeh make the crown that went unused until his son was deposed? We will probably never know!

With this commentary, perhaps we should quit thinking of Jesus as a man of poverty but one of prudence. He indeed could have had anything that He wanted, but all He wanted was that none who believed in Him should perish (John 3:16). Riches meant nothing to Him, so why would He be considered poor?

So, in summary, Jesus was not the son of Joseph, not a poor man, not a carpenter, not a king here but just as His Name suggests: “Ya(hweh) saves” and even at no charge because He pays by grace. And to the Jews, He was Teacher whose class mostly failed.