Maybe On the other hand, he didn’t start actively preaching until he was about 30 (the Bible is oddly specific about that) and he would have needed to make a living too.
As Nick Cave sings in The Mercy Seat:
I hear stories from the chamber
How Christ was born into a manger
And like some ragged stranger
Died upon the cross
And might I say, it seems so fitting in its way
He was a carpenter by trade
Or at least that’s what I’m told
But he did not build it himself, I guess, he only had to carry the transversal part. I hope he approved the craftmanship anyway.
Knowing how vain people are, it’s hard to imagine the subject would not arise later. “The guy who built my table went on to become well known. Perhaps you’ve heard of Him…?”
Craftsmanship? “Ahhh, this thing won’t last a week…”
Joseph is described in the Gospels as a “tekton” which we translate as “carpenter.” Although, as I understand it, it’s a broadish concept that is a builder/craftsman in wood that is contrasted with a metalworker (chalkeus) or a stoneworker (laxeftís). A “tekton” is differentiate from other craftsman (goldworker, stonemasons, ironworkers) throughout the Greek translations of the Old Testament as well.
I guess the question would be whether we would expect Joseph to have taught Jesus his trade. On the one hand, this would seem pretty common for fathers (even adoptive fathers) and sons; but on the other hand, Jesus would have seem destined for a different lifestyle from an early age.
Relatedly, Church tradition holds the Joseph died when Jesus was still a child, so there’s that as well.
Even if Jesus’ spiritual leanings were obvious to his father (as they must have been, according to the episode of the 12 years old Jesus in the temple), he must have needed him to earn the familiy’s bread, so a profession and day job in Joseph’s trade seems rational.
The real question is, if you had super powers, would you display them all the time, or would you instead adopt a mild-mannered alter ego?
The miracle making by Jesus in the gospels is not told as if he ever did it to personally benefit from it. Granted, changing water into wine at Cana was a VERY cool stunt (and I’d love to have a buddy who could pull that off), but it was done to spare the groom the embarrassment. Walking on water also seems like a shortcut that his supernatural abilities allowed him to do, but as the story is told, it was rather done to test the faith of his disciples, especially Peter.
Legend has it Jesus had a real problem driving in nails by himself, the third one always gave him real trouble.
You missed a golden opportunity.
"Craftsmanship? It would be a miracle if this thing lasts a week…”
He also possessed teleportation ability (the road to Emmaus), but didn’t first perform it until after his resurrection.
Well, I think after you’re resurrected, all bets are off.
ETA: I had never really thought about it, but yes, the trick of early getting to Emmaus before the two disciples must have been either teleportation, or he just knew a killer shortcut to the place. Or he was a Olympic level runner.
Three days, even?
There’s an apocryphal Gospel of Jesus as a child: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
There’s a section where he stretches a beam of wood to help Joesph when it was cut too short.
Dalej42 ninja’d me by 13 minutes
So Joseph not only was a cuckold, he couldn’t measure accurately.
Was that before or after he fetched a left-handed screwdriver and a can of striped paint?
Some tekton. Every carpenter knows to “measure twice, cut large, kick into place”.
If Jesus ever had any trade other than preaching, the Bible says nothing about it. Maybe in the years before his public ministry, he worked in his father’s business. Maybe he was apprenticed into some other trade. Maybe he was a preacher all along, and it just wasn’t until his 30s that he hit it big. Maybe he was able to live all that time on the wealth given him by the magi. There are traditional answers, of course, but there are many different traditional answers.