Not in this post they can't, since you are not quoting Mark. Rhetorical questions. You know it means he was a carpenter according to Mark There is no such thing as Mark 13:55, but here is Mark 6:3 This describes him as a carpenter. I know you will say it doesn't but that's crazy. I have never said they did. No passage in the gospels says "Jesus had a brother called James the Apostle". You are now intentionally repeating misrepresentations which I have already dealt with, and I will not respond again until you apologise for that incivility, and start conversing in good faith.
Craig - a huge problem in trying to analyse any of the quotes and sentences from the bible in the way that you are doing (and that we all do to some extent), is that you/we/anyone are relying on whatever you have read as a modern translation by someone.
But as you know, there are disagreements between those various translators as to what the correct translation should really be. As well as different original manuscripts being used and which actually say slightly different things, e.g. using different words in the actual texts themselves.
But as far as Jesus being known as a carpenter is concerned - I don't recall anything in the gospels or letters of Paul that describes anyone ever talking about the carpentry that Jesus had produced! This is a "carpenter" who apparently never did any woodwork ... iirc there are no mentions at all of disciples saying they had been with Jesus when he was making a set drawers or making a kitchen table or whatever. Afaik, there is no credible claim in the bible of Jesus actually doing any woodwork to make anything.
And on the question of James or anyone else as an actual brother of Jesus - you are really hanging absolutely everything on that one remark in a letter of Paul which you and other HJ posters (and all biblical scholars), claim as pre-dating the gospels and being written circa.50-60 AD. But we have discussed before how and why there are multiple problems with that singe line in just one of Paul's letters.
1. It was said only once in just one of the "genuine" letters, and never again repeated by Paul anywhere.
2. The half-sentence does not actually mention Jesus or say that James was a family brother of Jesus. It just says "other apostles saw I none, save James the lords brother"
3. According to Richard Carrier in his 2015 book, which is peer reviewed, i.e. checked and agreed by international experts in this field of Jesus historicity, Carrier says that there is evidence to show that the term "brothers of the lord" actually just designated people (inc. "apostles") who had been baptised in the correct way (e.g. perhaps by John the Baptist).
4. That single line in Paul's letter comes at the very end of a sentence where it is the easiest point to add an explanatory remark or alteration, and is worded in the form as if it was an afterthought to explain who James was. That is as if the original writer had only written "other apostles saw I none" or perhaps written only "other apostles saw I none, save James" ... and then someone (the original writer or later copyists) had decided that it was necessary to explain who James was, and added the words "the lords brother".
That is - it is written as if the writer, or writers/copyists", had meant to write "I saw no other apostles ... oh, except for James, I forgot to mention him ... oh and I should also add that James was the lords brother". It's written in that from as if the name James was added as an explanatory afterthought, and then the words "lords brother" again added as another later afterthought.
5. In describing that meeting, Paul says not a single word about ever asking James about his brother Jesus! And he mentions not a single word to say that James had ever told him anything at all about Jesus. In fact iirc, "Jesus" is never mentioned there at all. That is very surprising if Paul really thought that James was the actual family brother of Jesus. Because Paul was someone whose life had recently been changed completely by a revelation from God telling him that Jesus was the true messiah and God's own Son ... this was an event so cataclysmic that it changed everything that Paul ever subsequently said and did 24/7 ... after his vision he did nothing else except preach Jesus all day long every day to everyone ... this was by far the most important event in Paul's life ... and yet when just a few years later he meets the actual brother of the son of God, he asks not a single thing about Jesus, and the brother offers to tell Paul not one single word about Jesus!
6. That same "James" supposedly wrote his own gospel. It was afaik a gospel entirely concerned with belief in Jesus as the Son of God. And yet in his very own gospel, James never even claims to have ever met anyone called Jesus, let alone any claim to have been his family brother.
7. Afaik, that half-sentence comes from, or is included, in P46, which is the earliest extant copy of Paul's letters, said to date to c.200 AD. But that is
a copy, i.e. written by Christian copyists around 150 years after Paul had died. So it's perfectly possible that when the copyists wrote those words "other apostles saw I none" ... the copyist, or in fact various successive copyists, may have added the explanation parts saying "save James" ... and then adding "the lords brother".
Why should we think that copyists had altered that sentence? Well it's obvious - firstly out of 13 or 14 letters all once claimed to have been written by Paul himself, we now know that around half of them were never written by "Paul" at all. Instead they are not merely copies with lots of "interpolations", the whole thing is one complete "interpolation", i.e. those letters are "fakes" written by anonymous Christians falsely posing as Paul.
And of course, even the most Christian of biblical scholars and theologians, who specialise in writing on the historicity of Jesus, all admit that the biblical writing was subject to later "interpolations", additions, deletions and alterations of various words and sentences, by later copyists who simply changed what was originally written whenever they or their pay-masters decided that the original writing was incorrect or where they did not like what was originally written and wanted it to say something else instead.
