JESUS WAS RICH

The wise men from the East made Jesus wealthy at his birth: The Rev. Creflo Dollar, senior pastor of World Changers Church International in College Park, says the Gospel of Matthew proves that Jesus was the recipient of wealth at his birth.

"In the book of Matthew in Chapter 2, the kings came to him, and they bought him gold, frankincense and myrrh."

Jesus had so much money that he needed a treasurer: The New Testament describes Judas as the "treasurer" for Jesus' disciples. "Why would a band of 12 men need a treasurer if they didn't have some treasures," says Bishop Johnathan Alvarado of Total Grace Christian Center in Decatur. "You need a treasurer when you have surplus."

Jesus wore expensive clothes: In the 19th chapter of John's Gospel, the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus are depicted gambling for his "seamless" undergarment. Alvarado says Jesus wore garments that were a "nobleman's garments." "If his clothes were a poor man's clothes, why would centurions gamble for it?" Alvarado asks.

Jesus was an entrepreneur because he was a carpenter: Jesus had a well-paying job and could afford to build his own home.

The disciples didn't think of themselves as poor, either: The disciples had lucrative careers and didn't regard themselves as impoverished. "The disciples were absolutely not poor," Dollar says. "Peter had an overflowing boatload of fish that came in when Jesus called him. You're looking at a doctor, a tax collector — you're looking at guys who had jobs."

People wouldn't follow a poor man: Jesus couldn't have attracted the crowds to follow him unless he had wealth. They would not have respected a poor man.

JESUS WAS POOR

Most New Testament scholars don't believe the wise men from the East story is literally true: Biblical scholars say the story about the wise men from the East giving treasure to baby Jesus appears in only one of the four Gospels. New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan says the story "is absolutely parabolic."

Roman soldiers gambled for the clothes of many condemned criminals:

"It was ordinary for prisoners to be stripped naked and looted by soldiers," says Sondra Ely Wheeler, an ethicist at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and author of "Wealth as Peril and Obligation: The New Testament on Possessions" (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, $20). Wheeler says the soldiers also were gambling for the robe Herod placed on Jesus to mock him. "I'm sure that was expensive — he got it from Herod."

The text doesn't say that Judas was a treasurer, only that he held the common purse: Neither the King James nor the New International Version of the Bible calls Judas the "treasurer." The NIV calls him the "keeper of the money bag," and the King James says he "had the bag." Scholars say he held the money not for Jesus but for all the disciples, a common custom of the time for itinerant preachers. "To call Judas a treasurer is like looking at two kids who go to the movies and calling the one who holds the money the treasurer," Wheeler says.

Jesus did not have a lucrative occupation: Crossan says the Greek word in Matthew for Jesus' occupation has been translated into carpenter, but a more accurate translation would change the word to a laborer.

Jesus and his disciples were poor, according to archaeological evidence: Eric Meyers, a professor of archaeology at Duke University and editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, says he has personally excavated the village of Nazareth where Jesus lived. He pointed out that the Bible says Jesus was so poor that he couldn't afford his own tomb for his burial. "There is no way to speak of wealth in that context," he says. "This is living at the margins of society, eking out an agricultural existence."

Wealthy people were viewed with hostility: Obery M. Hendricks Jr., author of "The Politics of Jesus" (Doubleday, $26), says wealthy people of Jesus' time were people who preyed upon the poor or collaborated with the Romans.

"To have a whole lot meant that I stole it from somewhere else," he says. "The only way you could really become rich was by exploiting others."