Expert: Pastor Don Carpenter - 10/12/2007

Question
there are verses in the bible that call jesus rabbi which i believe means teacher or master. my question is was jesus an actually rabbi holding the office of rabbi or was he called rabbi by his followers because way he taught scripture with authority. actually john 7:15 says And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?

the reason i ask this question is because i work in a prison and theres alot of inmates with different beliefs. these inmates i was talking to believe in islam and they were saying that jesus was married because by jewish law in order to be a rabbi you had to be married so they concluded that because jesus was a rabbi by law he had to be married to mary.

Answer
Hi Romand,

Thank you for this great question!  Jesus was not an official Rabbi holding an office.  The religious leadership was at war with Him.  He was called Rabbi because people saw Him as a teacher, not because the Temple priests conveyed that office upon Him.  If He were a Rabbi, He would have been disciplined for claiming to be God.  The Chief priest could not do that because he did not have direct jusdiction over Jesus as he would have if Jesus had been a Rabbi.

I hope that this helps.

In Christ
Pastor Don