The Early Childhood of Jesus

123:5.1Je­sus was now seven years old, the age when Jew­ish chil­dren were sup­posed to be­gin their for­mal ed­u­ca­tion in the syn­a­gogue schools. Ac­cord­ingly, in Au­gust of this year he en­tered upon his event­ful school life at Naz­a­reth. Al­ready this lad was a flu­ent reader, writer, and speaker of two lan­guages, Ara­maic and Greek. He was now to ac­quaint him­self with the task of learn­ing to read, write, and speak the He­brew lan­guage. And he was truly ea­ger for the new school life which was ahead of him.

123:5.2For three years—un­til he was ten—he at­tended the el­e­men­tary school of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue. For these three years he stud­ied the rudi­ments of the Book of the Law as it was re­corded in the He­brew tongue. For the fol­low­ing three years he stud­ied in the ad­vanced school and com­mit­ted to mem­ory, by the method of re­peat­ing aloud, the deeper teach­ings of the sa­cred law. He grad­u­ated from this school of the syn­a­gogue dur­ing his thir­teenth year and was turned over to his par­ents by the syn­a­gogue rulers as an ed­u­cated “son of the com­mand­ment”—hence­forth a re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen of the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael, all of which en­tailed his at­ten­dance at the Passovers in Je­ru­sa­lem; ac­cord­ingly, he at­tended his first Pass­over that year in com­pany with his fa­ther and mother.

123:5.3At Naz­a­reth the pupils sat on the floor in a semi­cir­cle, while their teacher, the chazan, an of­fi­cer of the syn­a­gogue, sat fac­ing them. Be­gin­ning with the Book of Leviti­cus, they passed on to the study of the other books of the law, fol­lowed by the study of the Proph­ets and the Psalms. The Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue pos­sessed a com­plete copy of the Scrip­tures in He­brew. Noth­ing but the Scrip­tures was stud­ied prior to the twelfth year. In the sum­mer months the hours for school were greatly short­ened.

123:5.4Je­sus early be­came a mas­ter of He­brew, and as a young man, when no vis­i­tor of promi­nence hap­pened to be so­journ­ing in Naz­a­reth, he would of­ten be asked to read the He­brew scrip­tures to the faith­ful as­sem­bled in the syn­a­gogue at the reg­u­lar Sab­bath ser­vices.

123:5.5These syn­a­gogue schools, of course, had no text­books. In teach­ing, the chazan would ut­ter a state­ment while the pupils would in uni­son re­peat it af­ter him. When hav­ing ac­cess to the writ­ten books of the law, the stu­dent learned his les­son by read­ing aloud and by con­stant rep­e­ti­tion.

123:5.6Next, in ad­di­tion to his more for­mal school­ing, Je­sus be­gan to make con­tact with hu­man na­ture from the four quar­ters of the earth as men from many lands passed in and out of his fa­ther’s re­pair shop. When he grew older, he min­gled freely with the car­a­vans as they tar­ried near the spring for rest and nour­ish­ment. Be­ing a flu­ent speaker of Greek, he had lit­tle trou­ble in con­vers­ing with the ma­jor­ity of the car­a­van trav­el­ers and con­duc­tors.

123:5.7Naz­a­reth was a car­a­van way sta­tion and cross­roads of travel and largely gen­tile in pop­u­la­tion; at the same time it was widely known as a cen­ter of lib­eral in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Jew­ish tra­di­tional law. In Gal­i­lee the Jews min­gled more freely with the gen­tiles than was their prac­tice in Judea. And of all the cities of Gal­i­lee, the Jews of Naz­a­reth were most lib­eral in their in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the so­cial re­stric­tions based on the fears of con­tam­i­na­tion as a re­sult of con­tact with the gen­tiles. And these con­di­tions gave rise to the com­mon say­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem, “Can any good thing come out of Naz­a­reth?”

123:5.8Je­sus re­ceived his moral train­ing and spir­i­tual cul­ture chiefly in his own home. He se­cured much of his in­tel­lec­tual and the­o­log­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion from the chazan. But his real ed­u­ca­tion—that equip­ment of mind and heart for the ac­tual test of grap­pling with the dif­fi­cult prob­lems of life—he ob­tained by min­gling with his fel­low men. It was this close as­so­ci­a­tion with his fel­low men, young and old, Jew and gen­tile, that af­forded him the op­por­tu­nity to know the hu­man race. Je­sus was highly ed­u­cated in that he thor­oughly un­der­stood men and de­vot­edly loved them.

123:5.9Through­out his years at the syn­a­gogue he was a bril­liant stu­dent, pos­sess­ing a great ad­van­tage since he was con­ver­sant with three lan­guages. The Naz­a­reth chazan, on the oc­ca­sion of Je­sus’ fin­ish­ing the course in his school, re­marked to Joseph that he feared he “had learned more from Je­sus’ search­ing ques­tions” than he had “been able to teach the lad.”

123:5.10Through­out his course of study Je­sus learned much and de­rived great in­spi­ra­tion from the reg­u­lar Sab­bath ser­mons in the syn­a­gogue. It was cus­tom­ary to ask dis­tin­guished vis­i­tors, stop­ping over the Sab­bath in Naz­a­reth, to ad­dress the syn­a­gogue. As Je­sus grew up, he heard many great thinkers of the en­tire Jew­ish world ex­pound their views, and many also who were hardly or­tho­dox Jews since the syn­a­gogue of Naz­a­reth was an ad­vanced and lib­eral cen­ter of He­brew thought and cul­ture.

123:5.11When en­ter­ing school at seven years (at this time the Jews had just in­au­gu­rated a com­pul­sory ed­u­ca­tion law), it was cus­tom­ary for the pupils to choose their “birth­day text,” a sort of golden rule to guide them through­out their stud­ies, one upon which they of­ten ex­pa­ti­ated at their grad­u­a­tion when thir­teen years old. The text which Je­sus chose was from the Prophet Isa­iah: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives, and to set the spir­i­tual pris­on­ers free.”

123:5.12Naz­a­reth was one of the twenty-four priest cen­ters of the He­brew na­tion. But the Galilean priest­hood was more lib­eral in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the tra­di­tional laws than were the Judean scribes and rab­bis. And at Naz­a­reth they were also more lib­eral re­gard­ing the ob­ser­vance of the Sab­bath. It was there­fore the cus­tom for Joseph to take Je­sus out for walks on Sab­bath af­ter­noons, one of their fa­vorite jaunts be­ing to climb the high hill near their home, from which they could ob­tain a panoramic view of all Gal­i­lee. To the north­west, on clear days, they could see the long ridge of Mount Carmel run­ning down to the sea; and many times Je­sus heard his fa­ther re­late the story of Eli­jah, one of the first of that long line of He­brew proph­ets, who re­proved Ahab and ex­posed the priests of Baal. To the north Mount Her­mon raised its snowy peak in ma­jes­tic splen­dor and mo­nop­o­lized the sky­line, al­most 3,000 feet of the up­per slopes glis­ten­ing white with per­pet­ual snow. Far to the east they could dis­cern the Jor­dan val­ley and, far be­yond, the rocky hills of Moab. Also to the south and the east, when the sun shone upon their mar­ble walls, they could see the Greco-Ro­man cities of the De­capo­lis, with their am­phithe­aters and pre­ten­tious tem­ples. And when they lin­gered to­ward the go­ing down of the sun, to the west they could make out the sail­ing ves­sels on the dis­tant Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

123:5.13From four di­rec­tions Je­sus could ob­serve the car­a­van trains as they wended their way in and out of Naz­a­reth, and to the south he could over­look the broad and fer­tile plain coun­try of Es­draelon, stretch­ing off to­ward Mount Gil­boa and Samaria.

123:5.14When they did not climb the heights to view the dis­tant land­scape, they strolled through the coun­try­side and stud­ied na­ture in her var­i­ous moods in ac­cor­dance with the sea­sons. Je­sus’ ear­li­est train­ing, aside from that of the home hearth, had to do with a rev­er­ent and sym­pa­thetic con­tact with na­ture.

123:5.15Be­fore he was eight years of age, he was known to all the moth­ers and young women of Naz­a­reth, who had met him and talked with him at the spring, which was not far from his home, and which was one of the so­cial cen­ters of con­tact and gos­sip for the en­tire town. This year Je­sus learned to milk the fam­ily cow and care for the other an­i­mals. Dur­ing this and the fol­low­ing year he also learned to make cheese and to weave. When he was ten years of age, he was an ex­pert loom op­er­a­tor. It was about this time that Je­sus and the neigh­bor boy Ja­cob be­came great friends of the pot­ter who worked near the flow­ing spring; and as they watched Nathan’s deft fin­gers mold the clay on the pot­ter’s wheel, many times both of them de­ter­mined to be pot­ters when they grew up. Nathan was very fond of the lads and of­ten gave them clay to play with, seek­ing to stim­u­late their cre­ative imag­i­na­tions by sug­gest­ing com­pet­i­tive ef­forts in mod­el­ing var­i­ous ob­jects and an­i­mals.