Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller.

As a young man, Jesus was a construction worker. From what we know about the region, he was probably a stone mason, not a carpenter.

That's because there were very

few trees in the region of Nazareth, and most of the furniture and buildings in that area were cut

from stone. But that's not all that we know from history. A major earthquake happened in a city

close to Nazareth called Sephora. Now, it was much larger than Nazareth and much more important than Nazareth, but what really set it apart from Nazareth was that it was a Greek-style city. That meant that many Gentiles lived there. They spoke Greek way more than they spoke Aramaic, which would have been Jesus' first language. They had a gymnasium there, like most Greek cities for exercise and learning, and they also had a Greek-style theater to watch Greek plays.

Now, after this earthquake, Sephora was destroyed, and so that meant that many Jewish men in the region with Jesus' skills, they were construction workers, stone masons, they actually went to Sephora to help with the rebuilding. And that was probably a

reliable source of work for many years for Jesus. So it's quite likely that Jesus actually

learned Greek and became familiar with Greek culture during his time as a construction

worker in Sephora. The reason we know, almost for certain, that Jesus was familiar with Greek theater, actually

comes from the Gospel of Matthew. In the sermon on the Mount, he warns people against being

hypocrites. Now, that word, hypocrite, has a straightforward meaning in our culture, people who

say one thing but do another, or maybe those who pretend to be one kind of person but in reality

or something else altogether. What you probably don't realize is that hypocrite is actually a

Greek word, and it's the Greek word for actor. And in Greek plays, actors would wear elaborate

masks to represent their characters. So here's what's super interesting. Jesus was the first

person in recorded history to use the Greek word hypocrite, not to refer to actors on stage, but actors

in real life, people who put on masks and act like they're one thing, but in reality, there's

something else. So where did Jesus hear about hypocrites or actors?

Where did Jesus see them and begin to think,

huh, isn't that how many people behave in real life?

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