The Early Childhood of Jesus

123:0.1Ow­ing to the un­cer­tain­ties and anx­i­eties of their so­journ in Beth­le­hem, Mary did not wean the babe un­til they had ar­rived safely in Alexan­dria, where the fam­ily was able to set­tle down to a nor­mal life. They lived with kins­folk, and Joseph was well able to sup­port his fam­ily as he se­cured work shortly af­ter their ar­rival. He was em­ployed as a car­pen­ter for sev­eral months and then el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of fore­man of a large group of work­men em­ployed on one of the pub­lic build­ings then in pro­cess of con­struc­tion. This new ex­pe­ri­ence gave him the idea of be­com­ing a con­trac­tor and builder af­ter their re­turn to Naz­a­reth.

123:0.2All through these early years of Je­sus’ help­less in­fancy, Mary main­tained one long and con­stant vigil lest any­thing be­fall her child which might jeop­ar­dize his wel­fare or in any way in­ter­fere with his fu­ture mis­sion on earth; no mother was ever more de­voted to her child. In the home where Je­sus chanced to be there were two other chil­dren about his age, and among the near neigh­bors there were six oth­ers whose ages were suf­fi­ciently near his own to make them ac­cept­able play-fel­lows. At first Mary was dis­posed to keep Je­sus close by her side. She feared some­thing might hap­pen to him if he were al­lowed to play in the gar­den with the other chil­dren, but Joseph, with the as­sis­tance of his kins­folk, was able to con­vince her that such a course would de­prive Je­sus of the help­ful ex­pe­ri­ence of learn­ing how to ad­just him­self to chil­dren of his own age. And Mary, re­al­iz­ing that such a pro­gram of un­due shel­ter­ing and un­usual pro­tec­tion might tend to make him self-con­scious and some­what self-cen­tered, fi­nally gave as­sent to the plan of per­mit­ting the child of prom­ise to grow up just like any other child; and though she was obe­di­ent to this de­ci­sion, she made it her busi­ness al­ways to be on watch while the lit­tle folks were at play about the house or in the gar­den. Only an af­fec­tion­ate mother can know the bur­den that Mary car­ried in her heart for the safety of her son dur­ing these years of his in­fancy and early child­hood.

123:0.3Through­out the two years of their so­journ at Alexan­dria, Je­sus en­joyed good health and con­tin­ued to grow nor­mally. Aside from a few friends and rel­a­tives no one was told about Je­sus’ be­ing a “child of prom­ise.” One of Joseph’s rel­a­tives re­vealed this to a few friends in Mem­phis, de­scen­dants of the dis­tant Ikh­na­ton, and they, with a small group of Alexan­drian be­liev­ers, as­sem­bled at the pala­tial home of Joseph’s rel­a­tive-bene­fac­tor a short time be­fore the re­turn to Pales­tine to wish the Naz­a­reth fam­ily well and to pay their re­spects to the child. On this oc­ca­sion the as­sem­bled friends pre­sented Je­sus with a com­plete copy of the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. But this copy of the Jew­ish sa­cred writ­ings was not placed in Joseph’s hands un­til both he and Mary had fi­nally de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion of their Mem­phis and Alexan­drian friends to re­main in Egypt. These be­liev­ers in­sisted that the child of des­tiny would be able to ex­ert a far greater world in­flu­ence as a res­i­dent of Alexan­dria than of any des­ig­nated place in Pales­tine. These per­sua­sions de­layed their de­par­ture for Pales­tine for some time af­ter they re­ceived the news of Herod’s death.

123:0.4Joseph and Mary fi­nally took leave of Alexan­dria on a boat be­long­ing to their friend Ezraeon, bound for Joppa, ar­riv­ing at that port late in Au­gust of the year 4 B.C. They went di­rectly to Beth­le­hem, where they spent the en­tire month of Septem­ber in coun­sel with their friends and rel­a­tives con­cern­ing whether they should re­main there or re­turn to Naz­a­reth.

123:0.5Mary had never fully given up the idea that Je­sus ought to grow up in Beth­le­hem, the City of David. Joseph did not re­ally be­lieve that their son was to be­come a kingly de­liv­erer of Is­rael. Be­sides, he knew that he him­self was not re­ally a de­scen­dant of David; that his be­ing reck­oned among the off­spring of David was due to the adop­tion of one of his an­ces­tors into the Da­vidic line of de­scent. Mary, of course, thought the City of David the most ap­pro­pri­ate place in which the new can­di­date for David’s throne could be reared, but Joseph pre­ferred to take chances with Herod An­tipas rather than with his brother Archelaus. He en­ter­tained great fears for the child’s safety in Beth­le­hem or in any other city in Judea, and sur­mised that Archelaus would be more likely to pur­sue the men­ac­ing poli­cies of his fa­ther, Herod, than would An­tipas in Gal­i­lee. And be­sides all these rea­sons, Joseph was out­spo­ken in his pref­er­ence for Gal­i­lee as a bet­ter place in which to rear and ed­u­cate the child, but it re­quired three weeks to over­come Mary’s ob­jec­tions.

123:0.6By the first of Oc­to­ber Joseph had con­vinced Mary and all their friends that it was best for them to re­turn to Naz­a­reth. Ac­cord­ingly, early in Oc­to­ber, 4 B.C., they de­parted from Beth­le­hem for Naz­a­reth, go­ing by way of Ly­dda and Scythopo­lis. They started out early one Sun­day morn­ing, Mary and the child rid­ing on their newly ac­quired beast of bur­den, while Joseph and five ac­com­pa­ny­ing kins­men pro­ceeded on foot; Joseph’s rel­a­tives re­fused to per­mit them to make the trip to Naz­a­reth alone. They feared to go to Gal­i­lee by Je­ru­sa­lem and the Jor­dan val­ley, and the west­ern routes were not al­to­gether safe for two lone trav­el­ers with a child of ten­der years.