Yes. I was trying to avoid conflict while you were trying to get through to him.
That is how some of the ancient people viewed the word. But it is also one of the older modern positions recent archeology has modified. It never had a strong following and was rejected by most.
Johnathon Reed, Marvin Meyers, Marcus Borg, and Stephan Patterson, and John Crossan all follow what I was saying.
http://www.bibleinterp.com/review/man35821.shtml
Carolyn Osiek, Jonathan Reed, Jodi Magness, Mordecai Aviam, Stephen J. Patterson, Marcus Borg, Lawrence Schiffman, and Shimon Gibson
As scholars have
recently noted, the word usually translated “carpenter” (
tekton) can also mean someone who worked with his hands, or a stone worker. As Joseph may have done stonework and manual labor rather than being a craftsman with wood, this would have put him in the lowest of the lower class. Therefore, the family Jesus grew up in would not have owned land, but they would have been subsistence farmers accustomed to menial labor. According to Stephen Patterson, the family of Jesus was a step below the normal peasant. This being the case, neither Joseph nor Jesus was a carpenter; they were more likely workers with stone and general manual labor.