What were some occupations in the time of Jesus?

Answer 1

Most people lived by farming. Every year their lives were governed by the same cycle. In autumn they picked olives. In October and November 'early rain' fell after the long dry summer. From November of January the land was ploughed and crops of flax, wheat and barley were sown. From January to March people planted vegetables. Meanwhile shepherds looked after sheep and goats Carpenter, shepherds, scribes, fisherman, farmers, butchers.

Answer 2

A:John Dominic Crossan (The Birth of Christianity) commits a substantial section of the book to discussing social conditions not only in first-century Palestine, but in other comparable agrarian societies. The governing classes took up to two thirds of the total crop produced by peasant farmers, leaving peasants at or close to subsistence level. This exploitation was certainly an evil, but Crossan also points out that without the exploitation of the Roman Empire, there would have been an ecological evil throughout the Mediterranean area. With no means of Birth Control other than primitive abortions and infanticide, a more prosperous peasant population would have grown rapidly and exponentially until, even in good times, famine took over and destroyed society. Nevertheless, it is important to note that peasants were close to absolute poverty. They could pass their farms on to one son, but other children would have to make do as best they could.

Below the peasants were the artisans, such as carpenters. For them, life was a constant struggle to survive. Boys would have worked for their fathers, if work was available, but otherwise begged or obtained food as best they could. Of course, there were even lower classes, whom Crossan calls the Unclean and Degraded Class, who performed the most noxious and unpleasant jobs in society. Apart from the first-born who would receive the inheritance, the lucky children of the peasants and artisans would find this kind of work.

Finally, there was the 'Expendable Class', consisting of those for whom the governing classes could find no useful work. They lived by begging and crime, and their lives were short and brutal. Evidence is they formed up to 15 per cent of society, but the high mortality rate was balanced by a constant stream of children from the classes above them.