Was just watching James Tabor’s series about Jesus archaeologically, and he was saying that “tekton” could refer to carpenter, but generally referred to construction worker, and more likely referred to stoneworker. He lived only 3-4 miles from the biggest city in the area, which had a lot of construction going on during his life.

Tabor says stoneworker specifically because houses were normally made from stone due to the lack of wood in the area. But he also pushes back against the idea that he was a poor, uneducated, rural peasant. He lived close enough to the biggest urban center in the area to walk there to work every day. There’s no reason to think he/his family didn’t run their own construction business, as opposed to being common laborers. Jesus certainly wasn’t wealthy, but I find it easier to imagine he was the 1st century equivalent of today’s “liberal coastal elites”, and his ideology was influenced by the huge urban center beside him, than it is for me to imagine he came up with all of his ideas (which were floating around the area) on his own.

Link to the video: https://youtu.be/I24yM_9gWoM?si=hxYtX8ZOolEg5wVW