The Early Childhood of Jesus

123:6.1This was an in­ter­est­ing year at school. Al­though Je­sus was not an un­usual stu­dent, he was a dili­gent pupil and be­longed to the more pro­gres­sive third of the class, do­ing his work so well that he was ex­cused from at­ten­dance one week out of each month. This week he usu­ally spent ei­ther with his fish­er­man un­cle on the shores of the Sea of Gal­i­lee near Mag­dala or on the farm of an­other un­cle (his mother’s brother) five miles south of Naz­a­reth.

123:6.2Al­though his mother had be­come un­duly anx­ious about his health and safety, she grad­u­ally be­came rec­on­ciled to these trips away from home. Je­sus’ un­cles and aunts were all very fond of him, and there en­sued a lively com­pe­ti­tion among them to se­cure his com­pany for these monthly vis­its through­out this and im­me­di­ately sub­se­quent years. His first week’s so­journ on his un­cle’s farm (since in­fancy) was in Jan­uary of this year; the first week’s fish­ing ex­pe­ri­ence on the Sea of Gal­i­lee oc­curred in the month of May.

123:6.3About this time Je­sus met a teacher of math­e­mat­ics from Da­mas­cus, and learn­ing some new tech­niques of num­bers, he spent much time on math­e­mat­ics for sev­eral years. He de­vel­oped a keen sense of num­bers, dis­tances, and pro­por­tions.

123:6.4Je­sus be­gan to en­joy his brother James very much and by the end of this year had be­gun to teach him the al­pha­bet.

123:6.5This year Je­sus made ar­range­ments to ex­change dairy prod­ucts for lessons on the harp. He had an un­usual lik­ing for ev­ery­thing mu­si­cal. Later on he did much to pro­mote an in­ter­est in vo­cal mu­sic among his youth­ful as­so­ciates. By the time he was eleven years of age, he was a skill­ful harpist and greatly en­joyed en­ter­tain­ing both fam­ily and friends with his ex­traor­di­nary in­ter­pre­ta­tions and able im­pro­vi­sa­tions.

123:6.6While Je­sus con­tin­ued to make en­vi­able prog­ress at school, all did not run smoothly for ei­ther par­ents or teach­ers. He per­sisted in ask­ing many em­bar­rass­ing ques­tions con­cern­ing both sci­ence and re­li­gion, par­tic­u­larly re­gard­ing ge­og­ra­phy and as­tron­omy. He was es­pe­cially in­sis­tent on find­ing out why there was a dry sea­son and a rainy sea­son in Pales­tine. Re­peat­edly he sought the ex­pla­na­tion for the great dif­fer­ence be­tween the tem­per­a­tures of Naz­a­reth and the Jor­dan val­ley. He sim­ply never ceased to ask such in­tel­li­gent but per­plex­ing ques­tions.

123:6.7His third brother, Si­mon, was born on Fri­day evening, April 14, of this year, A.D. 2.

123:6.8In Febru­ary, Na­hor, one of the teach­ers in a Je­ru­sa­lem academy of the rab­bis, came to Naz­a­reth to ob­serve Je­sus, hav­ing been on a sim­i­lar mis­sion to Zach­a­rias’s home near Je­ru­sa­lem. He came to Naz­a­reth at the in­sti­ga­tion of John’s fa­ther. While at first he was some­what shocked by Je­sus’ frank­ness and un­con­ven­tional man­ner of re­lat­ing him­self to things re­li­gious, he at­tributed it to the re­mote­ness of Gal­i­lee from the cen­ters of He­brew learn­ing and cul­ture and ad­vised Joseph and Mary to al­low him to take Je­sus back with him to Je­ru­sa­lem, where he could have the ad­van­tages of ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing at the cen­ter of Jew­ish cul­ture. Mary was half per­suaded to con­sent; she was con­vinced her el­dest son was to be­come the Mes­siah, the Jew­ish de­liv­erer; Joseph hes­i­tated; he was equally per­suaded that Je­sus was to grow up to be­come a man of des­tiny, but what that des­tiny would prove to be he was pro­foundly un­cer­tain. But he never re­ally doubted that his son was to ful­fill some great mis­sion on earth. The more he thought about Na­hor’s ad­vice, the more he ques­tioned the wis­dom of the pro­posed so­journ in Je­ru­sa­lem.

123:6.9Be­cause of this dif­fer­ence of opin­ion be­tween Joseph and Mary, Na­hor re­quested per­mis­sion to lay the whole mat­ter be­fore Je­sus. Je­sus lis­tened at­ten­tively, talked with Joseph, Mary, and a neigh­bor, Ja­cob the stone ma­son, whose son was his fa­vorite play­mate, and then, two days later, re­ported that since there was such a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion among his par­ents and ad­vis­ers, and since he did not feel com­pe­tent to as­sume the re­spon­si­bil­ity for such a de­ci­sion, not feel­ing strongly one way or the other, in view of the whole sit­u­a­tion, he had fi­nally de­cided to “talk with my Fa­ther who is in heaven”; and while he was not per­fectly sure about the an­swer, he rather felt he should re­main at home “with my fa­ther and mother,” adding, “they who love me so much should be able to do more for me and guide me more safely than strangers who can only view my body and ob­serve my mind but can hardly truly know me.” They all mar­veled, and Na­hor went his way, back to Je­ru­sa­lem. And it was many years be­fore the sub­ject of Je­sus’ go­ing away from home again came up for con­sid­er­a­tion.