Was Jesus a Rabbi?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

The question of whether Jesus was a rabbi is more complex than it may first appear. It requires us to explore historical contexts and the evolving definitions of terms over time. While the title "rabbi" is often associated with Jewish teachers and religious leaders, its usage in the time of Jesus differs significantly from how we understand it today.

Was Jesus a rabbi? In this article, I’ll investigate the meaning and historical development of the term "rabbi." By analyzing the Gospels, I’ll explore why Jesus might have been addressed as "Rabbi" and consider whether this title accurately reflects his role in the Jewish society of his time. To do this, I’ll also look into the title's historical significance and how it relates to others ascribed to Jesus (for instance, was Jesus a rabbi or a carpenter?)

The Meaning of the Word Rabbi

The word “rabbi” is derived from the Hebrew word rav. In early uses of the word in the Hebrew Bible, it was simply a term of respect or honor. The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary notes that this sense of the word can be found in 2 Kings 18:17 and 2 Kings 25:8, where it’s used to mean something like “chief” or “officer” rather than its later meaning of “teacher.” In the Hebrew Bible, by the way, the term is not used to mean teacher, which is instead denoted by the Hebrew word mō·w·rāy.

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However, by the New Testament period, there had clearly been a shift from its original meaning, as it seems to have been used only to mean “teacher” in a religious sense. In the Gospels, Jesus is called “Rabbi” 15 times (for example, Mark 9:5; Mark 11:21; Mark 14:45; John 1:38) and is also addressed twice using the Aramaic equivalent “Rabbouni,” since Aramaic was the language of Jesus and his disciples (Mark 10:51; John 20:16). Interestingly, in Matthew, only Judas calls Jesus “Rabbi,” while the other disciples call him “Lord.” The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary notes that in the New Testament, only Matthew, Mark, and John use the term Rabbi.

It's also significant that in Jesus’ time, and even in contemporary Judaism, a rabbi has never been a priest. In the Second Temple period in which Jesus lived (539 BCE-70 CE), priests were responsible for the administration of the Temple, as well as the performance of sacrificial rites. The term “rabbi” is not found in literature from this period. For example, Hillel and Shammai, two early and foundational Jewish sages who lived in the late 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, were never called rabbis. So why was Jesus addressed with this term in three of the Gospels?

It's important to remember that although Jesus lived from approximately 6 BCE to 30 CE, Mark, our earliest Gospel, wasn’t written until 70 CE — around the time the Temple was destroyed by the Romans. This destruction of this holy building had a profound effect on Judaism. Without a Temple, there was no sacred space in which priests could perform sacrifices; sacrifices were only allowed to be performed in the Temple.

In the wake of this devastating change, rabbinic Judaism would change the focus of Judaism from the Temple and sacrifice to the study and interpretation of the Jewish Law exclusively. Thus, rabbis became the main spiritual authorities, focusing on the texts of the Hebrew Bible and writing voluminous commentaries on them in texts like the Mishna and the Talmud.

When Jesus is called “Rabbi” in the Gospels, it is a reflection of that post-destruction period in which the Gospel authors all lived and wrote. This is not to say that rabbis didn’t exist before this, but the term took on a new level of authority with the destruction of the Temple.

Was Jesus a Rabbi?

Given the above information, asking if Jesus was a rabbi is a bit more complicated than it seems. In fact, the answer comes down to both history and definitions.

What was a rabbi in Jesus’ time? In one sense, it is an anachronism to think of Jesus as a rabbi in the sense we generally mean today. Rabbis, starting in the post-Temple-destruction period and continuing today, have been highly trained and highly literate specialists in the interpretation of the texts of the Torah and its commentaries. Since only about 10% of all people in Jesus’ time could read, and since Jesus apparently came from a working class background (he is called a tekton — carpenter or craftsman — in Mark 6:3) it seems unlikely he would have been among the literate, despite the synagogue episode in which he reads in Luke 4:16-30.

In fact, as Rabbi Jack Abramowitz writes, “The title ‘rabbi’ really only started in the second generation of Tannaim [rabbinic sages from the late 1st and early 2nd century CE], so nobody in Jesus’ day was a ‘rabbi.’” This is an important point; in Jesus’ time, “rabbi” was not yet an official role within the religious establishment. Additionally, a rabbi, as we use the term today, also means someone on whom authority is bestowed by another rabbi. There is no sign of this process of ordination with Jesus.

Nevertheless, since the term rabbi denotes both “master” and “teacher” and since, as Rabbi Abramowitz notes, the term certainly did exist in Jesus’ time, it is valid to say that he was a rabbi of sorts. What was a rabbi in Jesus’ time? Since Jesus did teach some people in a religious context, he may have been addressed by them as “Rabbi.” By the way, John the Baptist is also called “Rabbi” in John 3:26. Like Jesus, he was a religious teacher and could therefore correctly be called a rabbi, albeit without the authority accorded to rabbis in later decades.

Finally, keep in mind that since the Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ actual lifetime, they reflected a different time in history when rabbis held much more authority than they had when he lived.

How Does the Term Rabbi Compare with Jesus’ Other Titles?

I’ve already acknowledged that the word rabbi in its earliest Hebrew Bible sense was simply a term of respect or honor. This is certainly appropriate as something Jesus’ disciples might have called him, although they definitely thought of him as their teacher as well. But how does the term rabbi accord with other terms ascribed to Jesus in the NT?

One of the words most often used to address Jesus in the Gospels is “Lord” (Greek: kyrios). In his book How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, Bart Ehrman points out that we have a bit of a translation problem with this term. In Psalm 110:1, for example, most English Bible translations say this:

However, in Hebrew, the two “lords” in this passage are different words. The first is YHWH, the name of God which Jews traditionally do not pronounce because of its holiness. The second lord, however, is the Hebrew word “Adonai,” a word that is often used for God but can also be used, for example, as a term with which a slave addresses his or her master. Since we know that the term “rabbi” originated as a kind of honorific outside of a religious context, “Lord” makes sense as an honorific equivalent, although without the connotation of teacher.

What about the term “messiah,” another title used for Jesus in the NT? The word messiah (Hebrew: mashiach) literally means “anointed one.” In the Hebrew Bible, anointing someone — ritually pouring oil on their heads — signifies that God has given his favor to them in their role as priest or king. For some Jews in Jesus’ time, however, the term came to be used solely to mean someone who would come to save Israel from its oppressors.

So was this term an equivalent of “rabbi”? It was not, because the two terms existed in different domains. The messiah was meant to be a salvific hero, either in the original sense of a warrior king who would defeat Israel’s enemies, or in the later NT sense as a person who saves people from sin. In that second sense, a rabbi could be the messiah, but it certainly wasn’t necessary.

Jesus was also called “Son of Man” in the Gospels. This term, like the term “messiah,” was a reference to a salvific figure. It is found in Daniel 7:13-14, where it means a heavenly being who would be sent by God to lead Israel to victory over its enemies. The Son of Man in this sense was too celestial a being to be a mere teacher, as a rabbi would have been. While Jesus may have been both, there is no linguistic equivalency between the two terms.

Finally, since we’ve already mentioned Jesus being called by the Greek term tekton in Mark 6:3, how does this accord with the term rabbi? While tekton is almost always translated into English as “carpenter,” the Cambridge Greek Lexicon notes that while it could mean a builder with wood, it could also be someone who works with other building materials like stone or brick. So was Jesus a rabbi or a carpenter? In this case, Mark 6:3 is the perfect illustration of the difference between a rabbi and a builder in the eyes of a 1st-century audience.

In Mark 6, Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth and teaches in the synagogue, displaying remarkable wisdom and thus surprising the townspeople with whom he grew up. In Mark 6:2-3 we see their reaction:

Why were they so offended at Jesus’ wisdom and power? Because the role of teacher in a synagogue was a role of honor. Jesus was known to them as a builder, a carpenter or mason. This was certainly a respectable way to make a living, but not expected to be equivalent in wisdom or power to one who could teach with authority in the synagogue. In other words, the term “carpenter” would not have been considered the equal of the term rabbi.

Conclusion

Was Jesus a rabbi? As we’ve seen, the term rabbi in the sense we think of it today did not have the same authority in Jesus’ time. A rabbi in his time was a person who was an honored teacher, like a Pharisee. However, the Gospel accounts in which we find Jesus being called this were written in a later time.

For Jews, the term rabbi came to mean something more authoritative and religiously significant, primarily after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Religious authority originally rested within the Temple, the place where God was said to dwell and where priests performed sacrifices. However, after the destruction of this Temple, Judaism moved almost exclusively toward a focus on the study and interpretation of the Jewish Law.

Given this, we could say that Jesus was a rabbi in that he taught and was honored by his followers. However, since rabbinic Judaism didn’t really begin until decades after Jesus’ death, the title is somewhat anachronistic. It is, however, equivalent in its honorific sense to other terms of respect common in Jesus’ time, including lord. It is not, however, equivalent to others, such as messiah and son of man, both of which denote a specific role not involved with teaching.