The Early Childhood of Jesus

123:2.1In some­thing more than a year af­ter the re­turn to Naz­a­reth the boy Je­sus ar­rived at the age of his first per­sonal and whole­hearted moral de­ci­sion; and there came to abide with him a Thought Ad­juster, a di­vine gift of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, which had afore­time served with Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, thus gain­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of func­tion­ing in con­nec­tion with the in­car­na­tion of a super­mor­tal be­ing liv­ing in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. This event oc­curred on Febru­ary 11, 2 B.C. Je­sus was no more aware of the com­ing of the di­vine Mon­i­tor than are the mil­lions upon mil­lions of other chil­dren who, be­fore and since that day, have like­wise re­ceived these Thought Ad­justers to in­dwell their minds and work for the ul­ti­mate spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of these minds and the eter­nal sur­vival of their evolv­ing im­mor­tal souls.

123:2.2On this day in Febru­ary the di­rect and per­sonal super­vi­sion of the Uni­verse Rulers, as it was re­lated to the in­tegrity of the child­like in­car­na­tion of Mi­chael, ter­mi­nated. From that time on through­out the hu­man un­fold­ing of the in­car­na­tion, the guardian­ship of Je­sus was des­tined to rest in the keep­ing of this in­dwelling Ad­juster and the as­so­ci­ated se­raphic guard­i­ans, sup­ple­mented from time to time by the min­istry of mid­way crea­tures as­signed for the per­for­mance of cer­tain def­i­nite du­ties in ac­cor­dance with the in­struc­tion of their plan­e­tary su­pe­ri­ors.

123:2.3Je­sus was five years old in Au­gust of this year, and we will, there­fore, re­fer to this as his fifth (cal­en­dar) year of life. In this year, 2 B.C., a lit­tle more than one month be­fore his fifth birth­day an­niver­sary, Je­sus was made very happy by the com­ing of his sis­ter Miriam, who was born on the night of July 11. Dur­ing the evening of the fol­low­ing day Je­sus had a long talk with his fa­ther con­cern­ing the man­ner in which var­i­ous groups of liv­ing things are born into the world as sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als. The most valu­able part of Je­sus’ early ed­u­ca­tion was se­cured from his par­ents in an­swer to his thought­ful and search­ing in­quiries. Joseph never failed to do his full duty in tak­ing pains and spend­ing time an­swer­ing the boy’s nu­mer­ous ques­tions. From the time Je­sus was five years old un­til he was ten, he was one con­tin­u­ous ques­tion mark. While Joseph and Mary could not al­ways an­swer his ques­tions, they never failed fully to dis­cuss his in­quiries and in ev­ery other pos­si­ble way to as­sist him in his ef­forts to reach a sat­is­fac­tory so­lu­tion of the prob­lem which his alert mind had sug­gested.

123:2.4Since re­turn­ing to Naz­a­reth, theirs had been a busy house­hold, and Joseph had been un­usu­ally oc­cu­pied build­ing his new shop and get­ting his busi­ness started again. So fully was he oc­cu­pied that he had found no time to build a cra­dle for James, but this was cor­rected long be­fore Miriam came, so that she had a very com­fort­able crib in which to nes­tle while the fam­ily ad­mired her. And the child Je­sus heart­ily en­tered into all these nat­u­ral and nor­mal home ex­pe­ri­ences. He greatly en­joyed his lit­tle brother and his baby sis­ter and was of great help to Mary in their care.

123:2.5There were few homes in the gen­tile world of those days that could give a child a bet­ter in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and re­li­gious train­ing than the Jew­ish homes of Gal­i­lee. These Jews had a sys­tem­atic pro­gram for rear­ing and ed­u­cat­ing their chil­dren. They di­vided a child’s life into seven stages:

123:2.61. The new­born child, the first to the eighth day.

123:2.72. The suck­ling child.

123:2.83. The weaned child.

123:2.94. The pe­riod of de­pen­dence on the mother, last­ing up to the end of the fifth year.

123:2.105. The be­gin­ning in­de­pen­dence of the child and, with sons, the fa­ther as­sum­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity for their ed­u­ca­tion.

123:2.116. The ado­les­cent youths and maid­ens.

123:2.127. The young men and the young women.

123:2.13It was the cus­tom of the Galilean Jews for the mother to bear the re­spon­si­bil­ity for a child’s train­ing un­til the fifth birth­day, and then, if the child were a boy, to hold the fa­ther re­spon­si­ble for the lad’s ed­u­ca­tion from that time on. This year, there­fore, Je­sus en­tered upon the fifth stage of a Galilean Jew­ish child’s ca­reer, and ac­cord­ingly on Au­gust 21, 2 B.C., Mary for­mally turned him over to Joseph for fur­ther in­struc­tion.

123:2.14Though Joseph was now as­sum­ing the di­rect re­spon­si­bil­ity for Je­sus’ in­tel­lec­tual and re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion, his mother still in­ter­ested her­self in his home train­ing. She taught him to know and care for the vines and flow­ers grow­ing about the gar­den walls which com­pletely sur­rounded the home plot. She also pro­vided on the roof of the house (the sum­mer bed­room) shal­low boxes of sand in which Je­sus worked out maps and did much of his early prac­tice at writ­ing Ara­maic, Greek, and later on, He­brew, for in time he learned to read, write, and speak, flu­ently, all three lan­guages.

123:2.15Je­sus ap­peared to be a well-nigh per­fect child phys­i­cally and con­tin­ued to make nor­mal prog­ress men­tally and emo­tion­ally. He ex­pe­ri­enced a mild di­ges­tive up­set, his first mi­nor ill­ness, in the lat­ter part of this, his fifth (cal­en­dar) year.

123:2.16Though Joseph and Mary of­ten talked about the fu­ture of their el­dest child, had you been there, you would only have ob­served the grow­ing up of a nor­mal, healthy, care­free, but ex­ceed­ingly in­quis­i­tive child of that time and place.