Was Jesus Rich?

I think an interesting verse to look at is 2 Corinthians 8:9. The classic view is that the reference is to “spiritual riches”, to a pre-existent status given up in the incarnation. A number of scholars have raised significant doubts about whether Paul held to a view that could accurately be described as “belief in Jesus’ pre-existence”, in which case it becomes possible that the reference was to some material or social status Jesus had inherited, presumably via his family. They were supposed to have been descended from David, after all, and may not have been without status and may not have been as poor as the vast majority of people who lived by subsistence farming. The classification of Jesus as a “peasant” (as most famously by John Dominic Crossan) can be misleading, since contrary to Crossan, those who practiced a trade were not necessarily poorer or in a more perilous economic situation than subsistence farmers.

But even if that were the case, Jesus would have been poor by modern American standards, even before leaving his family behind and “becoming poor.” And so this turns out to be yet another example of how badly modern readers can understand ancient texts.

One also has to consider the evidence (in particular in the Gospel of Luke) that Jesus said things like “Woe unto you who are rich” (Luke 6:24) – not a verse you are likely to hear the proponents of the Prosperity Gospel mention anytime soon. How do they make sense of such a verse, when according to them, Jesus was pronouncing a woe upon himself?!