“Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph?”
Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then can He say, 'I have come down from heaven?' (John 6:42 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Neighbors fondly recognizing a local boy.
The cultural key
In honor culture, this is a put-down dressed as a question. Honor was fixed at birth by family and trade; publicly reciting a man's trade, mother, and brothers pins him to his assigned station. Tektōn meant a manual craftsman in wood and stone: respectable, but the working class, without scribal training ('How does this man know letters, having never studied?', John 7:15). 'They took offense at him.' In John the hometown ceiling is applied not to teaching in general but to the bread-of-life claim specifically: we know the family, therefore he cannot have come down from heaven. The genealogy functions as a rebuttal to revelation.
Recovered meaning
'We know exactly what he is, so he cannot be more.' The hometown's familiarity functions as a ceiling, and Jesus answers with the proverb about prophets having honor everywhere except home.