The Later Childhood of Jesus

124:1.1Though it could hardly be said that Je­sus was ever se­ri­ously ill, he did have some of the mi­nor ail­ments of child­hood this year, along with his broth­ers and baby sis­ter.

124:1.2School went on and he was still a fa­vored pupil, hav­ing one week each month at lib­erty, and he con­tin­ued to di­vide his time about equally be­tween trips to neigh­bor­ing cities with his fa­ther, so­journs on his un­cle’s farm south of Naz­a­reth, and fish­ing ex­cur­sions out from Mag­dala.

124:1.3The most se­ri­ous trou­ble as yet to come up at school oc­curred in late win­ter when Je­sus dared to chal­lenge the chazan re­gard­ing the teach­ing that all im­ages, pic­tures, and draw­ings were idol­a­trous in na­ture. Je­sus de­lighted in draw­ing land­scapes as well as in mod­el­ing a great va­ri­ety of ob­jects in pot­ter’s clay. Ev­ery­thing of that sort was strictly for­bid­den by Jew­ish law, but up to this time he had man­aged to dis­arm his par­ents’ ob­jec­tion to such an ex­tent that they had per­mit­ted him to con­tinue in these ac­tiv­i­ties.

124:1.4But trou­ble was again stirred up at school when one of the more back­ward pupils dis­cov­ered Je­sus draw­ing a char­coal pic­ture of the teacher on the floor of the school­room. There it was, plain as day, and many of the el­ders had viewed it be­fore the com­mit­tee went to call on Joseph to de­mand that some­thing be done to sup­press the law­less­ness of his el­dest son. And though this was not the first time com­plaints had come to Joseph and Mary about the do­ings of their ver­sa­tile and ag­gres­sive child, this was the most se­ri­ous of all the ac­cu­sa­tions which had thus far been lodged against him. Je­sus lis­tened to the in­dict­ment of his artis­tic ef­forts for some time, be­ing seated on a large stone just out­side the back door. He re­sented their blam­ing his fa­ther for his al­leged mis­deeds; so in he marched, fear­lessly con­fronting his ac­cusers. The el­ders were thrown into con­fu­sion. Some were in­clined to view the episode hu­mor­ously, while one or two seemed to think the boy was sac­ri­le­gious if not blas­phe­mous. Joseph was non­plused, Mary in­dig­nant, but Je­sus in­sisted on be­ing heard. He had his say, coura­geously de­fended his view­point, and with con­sum­mate self-con­trol an­nounced that he would abide by the de­ci­sion of his fa­ther in this as in all other mat­ters con­tro­ver­sial. And the com­mit­tee of el­ders de­parted in si­lence.

124:1.5Mary en­deav­ored to in­flu­ence Joseph to per­mit Je­sus to model in clay at home, pro­vided he prom­ised not to carry on any of these ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ties at school, but Joseph felt im­pelled to rule that the rab­bini­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the sec­ond com­mand­ment should pre­vail. And so Je­sus no more drew or mod­eled the like­ness of any­thing from that day as long as he lived in his fa­ther’s house. But he was un­con­vinced of the wrong of what he had done, and to give up such a fa­vorite pas­time con­sti­tuted one of the great tri­als of his young life.

124:1.6In the lat­ter part of June, Je­sus, in com­pany with his fa­ther, first climbed to the sum­mit of Mount Ta­bor. It was a clear day and the view was su­perb. It seemed to this nine-year-old lad that he had re­ally gazed upon the en­tire world ex­cept­ing In­dia, Africa, and Rome.

124:1.7Je­sus’ sec­ond sis­ter, Martha, was born Thurs­day night, Septem­ber 13. Three weeks af­ter the com­ing of Martha, Joseph, who was home for awhile, started the build­ing of an ad­di­tion to their house, a com­bined work­shop and bed­room. A small work­bench was built for Je­sus, and for the first time he pos­sessed tools of his own. At odd times for many years he worked at this bench and be­came highly ex­pert in the mak­ing of yokes.

124:1.8This win­ter and the next were the cold­est in Naz­a­reth for many decades. Je­sus had seen snow on the moun­tains, and sev­eral times it had fallen in Naz­a­reth, re­main­ing on the ground only a short time; but not un­til this win­ter had he seen ice. The fact that wa­ter could be had as a solid, a liq­uid, and a va­por—he had long pon­dered over the es­cap­ing steam from the boil­ing pots—caused the lad to think a great deal about the phys­i­cal world and its con­sti­tu­tion; and yet the per­son­al­ity em­bod­ied in this grow­ing youth was all this while the ac­tual cre­ator and or­ga­nizer of all these things through­out a far-flung uni­verse.

124:1.9The cli­mate of Naz­a­reth was not se­vere. Jan­uary was the cold­est month, the tem­per­a­ture av­er­ag­ing around 50° F. Dur­ing July and Au­gust, the hottest months, the tem­per­a­ture would vary from 75° to 90° F. From the moun­tains to the Jor­dan and the Dead Sea val­ley the cli­mate of Pales­tine ranged from the frigid to the tor­rid. And so, in a way, the Jews were pre­pared to live in about any and all of the world’s vary­ing cli­mates.

124:1.10Even dur­ing the warmest sum­mer months a cool sea breeze usu­ally blew from the west from 10:00 A.M. un­til about 10:00 P.M. But ev­ery now and then ter­rific hot winds from the east­ern desert would blow across all Pales­tine. These hot blasts usu­ally came in Febru­ary and March, near the end of the rainy sea­son. In those days the rain fell in re­fresh­ing show­ers from Novem­ber to April, but it did not rain steadily. There were only two sea­sons in Pales­tine, sum­mer and win­ter, the dry and rainy sea­sons. In Jan­uary the flow­ers be­gan to bloom, and by the end of April the whole land was one vast flower gar­den.

124:1.11In May of this year, on his un­cle’s farm, Je­sus for the first time helped with the har­vest of the grain. Be­fore he was thir­teen, he had man­aged to find out some­thing about prac­ti­cally ev­ery­thing that men and women worked at around Naz­a­reth ex­cept metal work­ing, and he spent sev­eral months in a smith’s shop when older, af­ter the death of his fa­ther.

124:1.12When work and car­a­van travel were slack, Je­sus made many trips with his fa­ther on plea­sure or busi­ness to near-by Cana, En­dor, and Nain. Even as a lad he fre­quently vis­ited Sep­pho­ris, only a lit­tle over three miles from Naz­a­reth to the north­west, and from 4 B.C. to about A.D. 25 the cap­i­tal of Gal­i­lee and one of the res­i­dences of Herod An­tipas.

124:1.13Je­sus con­tin­ued to grow phys­i­cally, in­tel­lec­tu­ally, so­cially, and spir­i­tu­ally. His trips away from home did much to give him a bet­ter and more gen­er­ous un­der­stand­ing of his own fam­ily, and by this time even his par­ents were be­gin­ning to learn from him as well as to teach him. Je­sus was an orig­i­nal thinker and a skill­ful teacher, even in his youth. He was in con­stant col­li­sion with the so-called “oral law,” but he al­ways sought to adapt him­self to the prac­tices of his fam­ily. He got along fairly well with the chil­dren of his age, but he of­ten grew dis­cour­aged with their slow-act­ing minds. Be­fore he was ten years old, he had be­come the leader of a group of seven lads who formed them­selves into a so­ci­ety for pro­mot­ing the ac­quire­ments of man­hood—phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, and re­li­gious. Among these boys Je­sus suc­ceeded in in­tro­duc­ing many new games and var­i­ous im­proved meth­ods of phys­i­cal recre­ation.