The Early Childhood of Jesus

123:3.1Al­ready, with his mother’s help, Je­sus had mas­tered the Galilean di­alect of the Ara­maic tongue; and now his fa­ther be­gan teach­ing him Greek. Mary spoke lit­tle Greek, but Joseph was a flu­ent speaker of both Ara­maic and Greek. The text­book for the study of the Greek lan­guage was the copy of the He­brew scrip­tures—a com­plete ver­sion of the law and the proph­ets, in­clud­ing the Psalms—which had been pre­sented to them on leav­ing Egypt. There were only two com­plete copies of the Scrip­tures in Greek in all Naz­a­reth, and the pos­ses­sion of one of them by the car­pen­ter’s fam­ily made Joseph’s home a much-sought place and en­abled Je­sus, as he grew up, to meet an al­most end­less pro­ces­sion of earnest stu­dents and sin­cere truth seek­ers. Be­fore this year ended, Je­sus had as­sumed cus­tody of this price­less man­u­script, hav­ing been told on his sixth birth­day that the sa­cred book had been pre­sented to him by Alexan­drian friends and rel­a­tives. And in a very short time he could read it read­ily.

123:3.2The first great shock of Je­sus’ young life oc­curred when he was not quite six years old. It had seemed to the lad that his fa­ther—at least his fa­ther and mother to­gether—knew ev­ery­thing. Imag­ine, there­fore, the sur­prise of this in­quir­ing child, when he asked his fa­ther the cause of a mild earth­quake which had just oc­curred, to hear Joseph say, “My son, I re­ally do not know.” Thus be­gan that long and dis­con­cert­ing dis­il­lu­sion­ment in the course of which Je­sus found out that his earthly par­ents were not all-wise and all-know­ing.

123:3.3Joseph’s first thought was to tell Je­sus that the earth­quake had been caused by God, but a mo­ment’s re­flec­tion ad­mon­ished him that such an an­swer would im­me­di­ately be provoca­tive of fur­ther and still more em­bar­rass­ing in­quiries. Even at an early age it was very dif­fi­cult to an­swer Je­sus’ ques­tions about phys­i­cal or so­cial phe­nom­ena by thought­lessly telling him that ei­ther God or the devil was re­spon­si­ble. In har­mony with the pre­vail­ing be­lief of the Jew­ish peo­ple, Je­sus was long will­ing to ac­cept the doc­trine of good spir­its and evil spir­its as the pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion of men­tal and spir­i­tual phe­nom­ena, but he very early be­came doubt­ful that such un­seen in­flu­ences were re­spon­si­ble for the phys­i­cal hap­pen­ings of the nat­u­ral world.

123:3.4Be­fore Je­sus was six years of age, in the early sum­mer of 1 B.C., Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth and their son John came to visit the Naz­a­reth fam­ily. Je­sus and John had a happy time dur­ing this, their first visit within their mem­o­ries. Al­though the vis­i­tors could re­main only a few days, the par­ents talked over many things, in­clud­ing the fu­ture plans for their sons. While they were thus en­gaged, the lads played with blocks in the sand on top of the house and in many other ways en­joyed them­selves in true boy­ish fash­ion.

123:3.5Hav­ing met John, who came from near Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus be­gan to evince an un­usual in­ter­est in the his­tory of Is­rael and to in­quire in great de­tail as to the mean­ing of the Sab­bath rites, the syn­a­gogue ser­mons, and the re­cur­ring feasts of com­mem­o­ra­tion. His fa­ther ex­plained to him the mean­ing of all these sea­sons. The first was the mid­win­ter fes­tive il­lu­mi­na­tion, last­ing eight days, start­ing out with one can­dle the first night and adding one each suc­ces­sive night; this com­mem­o­rated the ded­i­ca­tion of the tem­ple af­ter the restora­tion of the Mo­saic ser­vices by Ju­das Mac­cabee. Next came the early spring­time cel­e­bra­tion of Purim, the feast of Es­ther and Is­rael’s de­liv­er­ance through her. Then fol­lowed the solemn Pass­over, which the adults cel­e­brated in Je­ru­sa­lem when­ever pos­si­ble, while at home the chil­dren would re­mem­ber that no leav­ened bread was to be eaten for the whole week. Later came the feast of the first-fruits, the har­vest in­gath­er­ing; and last, the most solemn of all, the feast of the new year, the day of atone­ment. While some of these cel­e­bra­tions and ob­ser­vances were dif­fi­cult for Je­sus’ young mind to un­der­stand, he pon­dered them se­ri­ously and then en­tered fully into the joy of the feast of taber­na­cles, the an­nual va­ca­tion sea­son of the whole Jew­ish peo­ple, the time when they camped out in leafy booths and gave them­selves up to mirth and plea­sure.

123:3.6Dur­ing this year Joseph and Mary had trou­ble with Je­sus about his prayers. He in­sisted on talk­ing to his heav­enly Fa­ther much as he would talk to Joseph, his earthly fa­ther. This de­par­ture from the more solemn and rev­er­ent modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with De­ity was a bit dis­con­cert­ing to his par­ents, es­pe­cially to his mother, but there was no per­suad­ing him to change; he would say his prayers just as he had been taught, af­ter which he in­sisted on hav­ing “just a lit­tle talk with my Fa­ther in heaven.”

123:3.7In June of this year Joseph turned the shop in Naz­a­reth over to his broth­ers and for­mally en­tered upon his work as a builder. Be­fore the year was over, the fam­ily in­come had more than tre­bled. Never again, un­til af­ter Joseph’s death, did the Naz­a­reth fam­ily feel the pinch of pov­erty. The fam­ily grew larger and larger, and they spent much money on ex­tra ed­u­ca­tion and travel, but al­ways Joseph’s in­creas­ing in­come kept pace with the grow­ing ex­penses.

123:3.8The next few years Joseph did con­sid­er­able work at Cana, Beth­le­hem (of Gal­i­lee), Mag­dala, Nain, Sep­pho­ris, Ca­per­naum, and En­dor, as well as much build­ing in and near Naz­a­reth. As James grew up to be old enough to help his mother with the house­work and care of the younger chil­dren, Je­sus made fre­quent trips away from home with his fa­ther to these sur­round­ing towns and vil­lages. Je­sus was a keen ob­server and gained much prac­ti­cal knowl­edge from these trips away from home; he was as­sid­u­ously stor­ing up knowl­edge re­gard­ing man and the way he lived on earth.

123:3.9This year Je­sus made great prog­ress in ad­just­ing his strong feel­ings and vig­or­ous im­pulses to the de­mands of fam­ily co-op­er­a­tion and home dis­ci­pline. Mary was a lov­ing mother but a fairly strict dis­ci­plinar­ian. In many ways, how­ever, Joseph ex­erted the greater con­trol over Je­sus as it was his prac­tice to sit down with the boy and fully ex­plain the real and un­der­ly­ing rea­sons for the ne­ces­sity of dis­ci­plinary cur­tail­ment of per­sonal de­sires in def­er­ence to the wel­fare and tran­quil­lity of the en­tire fam­ily. When the sit­u­a­tion had been ex­plained to Je­sus, he was al­ways in­tel­li­gently and will­ingly co-op­er­a­tive with pa­ren­tal wishes and fam­ily reg­u­la­tions.

123:3.10Much of his spare time—when his mother did not re­quire his help about the house—was spent study­ing the flow­ers and plants by day and the stars by night. He evinced a trou­ble­some pen­chant for ly­ing on his back and gaz­ing won­der­ingly up into the starry heav­ens long af­ter his usual bed­time in this well-or­dered Naz­a­reth house­hold.