Birth and Infancy of Jesus

122:5.1Joseph was a mild-man­nered man, ex­tremely con­sci­en­tious, and in ev­ery way faith­ful to the re­li­gious con­ven­tions and prac­tices of his peo­ple. He talked lit­tle but thought much. The sorry plight of the Jew­ish peo­ple caused Joseph much sad­ness. As a youth, among his eight broth­ers and sis­ters, he had been more cheer­ful, but in the ear­lier years of mar­ried life (dur­ing Je­sus’ child­hood) he was sub­ject to pe­ri­ods of mild spir­i­tual dis­cour­age­ment. These tem­per­a­men­tal man­i­fes­ta­tions were greatly im­proved just be­fore his un­timely death and af­ter the eco­nomic con­di­tion of his fam­ily had been en­hanced by his ad­vance­ment from the rank of car­pen­ter to the role of a pros­per­ous con­trac­tor.

122:5.2Mary’s tem­per­a­ment was quite op­po­site to that of her hus­band. She was usu­ally cheer­ful, was very rarely down­cast, and pos­sessed an ever-sunny dis­po­si­tion. Mary in­dulged in free and fre­quent ex­pres­sion of her emo­tional feel­ings and was never ob­served to be sor­row­ful un­til af­ter the sud­den death of Joseph. And she had hardly re­cov­ered from this shock when she had thrust upon her the anx­i­eties and ques­tion­ings aroused by the ex­traor­di­nary ca­reer of her el­dest son, which was so rapidly un­fold­ing be­fore her as­ton­ished gaze. But through­out all this un­usual ex­pe­ri­ence Mary was com­posed, coura­geous, and fairly wise in her re­la­tion­ship with her strange and lit­tle-un­der­stood first-born son and his sur­viv­ing broth­ers and sis­ters.

122:5.3Je­sus de­rived much of his un­usual gen­tle­ness and mar­velous sym­pa­thetic un­der­stand­ing of hu­man na­ture from his fa­ther; he in­her­ited his gift as a great teacher and his tremen­dous ca­pac­ity for righ­teous in­dig­na­tion from his mother. In emo­tional re­ac­tions to his adult-life en­vi­ron­ment, Je­sus was at one time like his fa­ther, med­i­ta­tive and wor­ship­ful, some­times char­ac­ter­ized by ap­par­ent sad­ness; but more of­ten he drove for­ward in the man­ner of his mother’s op­ti­mistic and de­ter­mined dis­po­si­tion. All in all, Mary’s tem­per­a­ment tended to dom­i­nate the ca­reer of the di­vine Son as he grew up and swung into the mo­men­tous strides of his adult life. In some par­tic­u­lars Je­sus was a blend­ing of his par­ents’ traits; in other re­spects he ex­hib­ited the traits of one in con­trast with those of the other.

122:5.4From Joseph Je­sus se­cured his strict train­ing in the us­ages of the Jew­ish cer­e­mo­ni­als and his un­usual ac­quain­tance with the He­brew scrip­tures; from Mary he de­rived a broader view­point of re­li­gious life and a more lib­eral con­cept of per­sonal spir­i­tual free­dom.

122:5.5The fam­i­lies of both Joseph and Mary were well ed­u­cated for their time. Joseph and Mary were ed­u­cated far above the av­er­age for their day and sta­tion in life. He was a thinker; she was a plan­ner, ex­pert in adap­ta­tion and prac­ti­cal in im­me­di­ate ex­e­cu­tion. Joseph was a black-eyed brunet; Mary, a brown-eyed well-nigh blond type.

122:5.6Had Joseph lived, he un­doubt­edly would have be­come a firm be­liever in the di­vine mis­sion of his el­dest son. Mary al­ter­nated be­tween be­liev­ing and doubt­ing, be­ing greatly in­flu­enced by the po­si­tion taken by her other chil­dren and by her friends and rel­a­tives, but al­ways was she stead­ied in her fi­nal at­ti­tude by the mem­ory of Ga­briel’s ap­pear­ance to her im­me­di­ately af­ter the child was con­ceived.

122:5.7Mary was an ex­pert weaver and more than av­er­agely skilled in most of the house­hold arts of that day; she was a good house­keeper and a su­pe­rior home­maker. Both Joseph and Mary were good teach­ers, and they saw to it that their chil­dren were well versed in the learn­ing of that day.

122:5.8When Joseph was a young man, he was em­ployed by Mary’s fa­ther in the work of build­ing an ad­di­tion to his house, and it was when Mary brought Joseph a cup of wa­ter, dur­ing a noon­time meal, that the court­ship of the pair who were des­tined to be­come the par­ents of Je­sus re­ally be­gan.

122:5.9Joseph and Mary were mar­ried, in ac­cor­dance with Jew­ish cus­tom, at Mary’s home in the en­vi­rons of Naz­a­reth when Joseph was twenty-one years old. This mar­riage con­cluded a nor­mal court­ship of al­most two years’ du­ra­tion. Shortly there­after they moved into their new home in Naz­a­reth, which had been built by Joseph with the as­sis­tance of two of his broth­ers. The house was lo­cated near the foot of the near-by el­e­vated land which so charm­ingly over­looked the sur­round­ing coun­try­side. In this home, es­pe­cially pre­pared, these young and ex­pec­tant par­ents had thought to wel­come the child of prom­ise, lit­tle re­al­iz­ing that this mo­men­tous event of a uni­verse was to tran­spire while they would be ab­sent from home in Beth­le­hem of Judea.

122:5.10The larger part of Joseph’s fam­ily be­came be­liev­ers in the teach­ings of Je­sus, but very few of Mary’s peo­ple ever be­lieved in him un­til af­ter he de­parted from this world. Joseph leaned more to­ward the spir­i­tual con­cept of the ex­pected Mes­siah, but Mary and her fam­ily, es­pe­cially her fa­ther, held to the idea of the Mes­siah as a tem­po­ral de­liv­erer and po­lit­i­cal ruler. Mary’s an­ces­tors had been promi­nently iden­ti­fied with the Mac­cabean ac­tiv­i­ties of the then but re­cent times.

122:5.11Joseph held vig­or­ously to the East­ern, or Baby­lo­nian, views of the Jew­ish re­li­gion; Mary leaned strongly to­ward the more lib­eral and broader West­ern, or Hel­lenis­tic, in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law and the proph­ets.