The Later Childhood of Jesus

124:2.1It was the fifth of July, the first Sab­bath of the month, when Je­sus, while strolling through the coun­try­side with his fa­ther, first gave ex­pres­sion to feel­ings and ideas which in­di­cated that he was be­com­ing self-con­scious of the un­usual na­ture of his life mis­sion. Joseph lis­tened at­ten­tively to the mo­men­tous words of his son but made few com­ments; he vol­un­teered no in­for­ma­tion. The next day Je­sus had a sim­i­lar but longer talk with his mother. Mary like­wise lis­tened to the pro­nounce­ments of the lad, but nei­ther did she vol­un­teer any in­for­ma­tion. It was al­most two years be­fore Je­sus again spoke to his par­ents con­cern­ing this in­creas­ing rev­e­la­tion within his own con­scious­ness re­gard­ing the na­ture of his per­son­al­ity and the char­ac­ter of his mis­sion on earth.

124:2.2He en­tered the ad­vanced school of the syn­a­gogue in Au­gust. At school he was con­stantly cre­at­ing trou­ble by the ques­tions he per­sisted in ask­ing. In­creas­ingly he kept all Naz­a­reth in more or less of a hub­bub. His par­ents were loath to for­bid his ask­ing these dis­qui­et­ing ques­tions, and his chief teacher was greatly in­trigued by the lad’s cu­rios­ity, in­sight, and hunger for knowl­edge.

124:2.3Je­sus’ play­mates saw noth­ing super­nat­u­ral in his con­duct; in most ways he was al­to­gether like them­selves. His in­ter­est in study was some­what above the av­er­age but not wholly un­usual. He did ask more ques­tions at school than oth­ers in his class.

124:2.4Per­haps his most un­usual and out­stand­ing trait was his un­will­ing­ness to fight for his rights. Since he was such a well-de­vel­oped lad for his age, it seemed strange to his playfel­lows that he was dis­in­clined to de­fend him­self even from in­jus­tice or when sub­jected to per­sonal abuse. As it hap­pened, he did not suf­fer much on ac­count of this trait be­cause of the friend­ship of Ja­cob, a neigh­bor boy, who was one year older. He was the son of the stone ma­son, a busi­ness as­so­ciate of Joseph. Ja­cob was a great ad­mirer of Je­sus and made it his busi­ness to see that no one was per­mit­ted to im­pose upon Je­sus be­cause of his aver­sion to phys­i­cal com­bat. Sev­eral times older and un­couth youths at­tacked Je­sus, re­ly­ing upon his re­puted docil­ity, but they al­ways suf­fered swift and cer­tain ret­ri­bu­tion at the hands of his self-ap­pointed cham­pion and ever-ready de­fender, Ja­cob the stone ma­son’s son.

124:2.5Je­sus was the gen­er­ally ac­cepted leader of the Naz­a­reth lads who stood for the higher ide­als of their day and gen­er­a­tion. He was re­ally loved by his youth­ful as­so­ciates, not only be­cause he was fair, but also be­cause he pos­sessed a rare and un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy that be­to­kened love and bor­dered on dis­creet com­pas­sion.

124:2.6This year he be­gan to show a marked pref­er­ence for the com­pany of older per­sons. He de­lighted in talk­ing over things cul­tural, ed­u­ca­tional, so­cial, eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal, and re­li­gious with older minds, and his depth of rea­son­ing and keen­ness of ob­ser­va­tion so charmed his adult as­so­ciates that they were al­ways more than will­ing to visit with him. Un­til he be­came re­spon­si­ble for the sup­port of the home, his par­ents were con­stantly seek­ing to in­flu­ence him to as­so­ciate with those of his own age, or more nearly his age, rather than with older and bet­ter-in­formed in­di­vid­u­als for whom he evinced such a pref­er­ence.

124:2.7Late this year he had a fish­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of two months with his un­cle on the Sea of Gal­i­lee, and he was very suc­cess­ful. Be­fore at­tain­ing man­hood, he had be­come an ex­pert fish­er­man.

124:2.8His phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ued; he was an ad­vanced and priv­i­leged pupil at school; he got along fairly well at home with his younger broth­ers and sis­ters, hav­ing the ad­van­tage of be­ing three and one-half years older than the old­est of the other chil­dren. He was well thought of in Naz­a­reth ex­cept by the par­ents of some of the duller chil­dren, who of­ten spoke of Je­sus as be­ing too pert, as lack­ing in proper hu­mil­ity and youth­ful re­serve. He man­i­fested a grow­ing ten­dency to di­rect the play ac­tiv­i­ties of his youth­ful as­so­ciates into more se­ri­ous and thought­ful chan­nels. He was a born teacher and sim­ply could not re­frain from so func­tion­ing, even when sup­pos­edly en­gaged in play.

124:2.9Joseph early be­gan to in­struct Je­sus in the di­verse means of gain­ing a liveli­hood, ex­plain­ing the ad­van­tages of agri­cul­ture over in­dus­try and trade. Gal­i­lee was a more beau­ti­ful and pros­per­ous dis­trict than Judea, and it cost only about one fourth as much to live there as in Je­ru­sa­lem and Judea. It was a prov­ince of ag­ri­cul­tural vil­lages and thriv­ing in­dus­trial cities, con­tain­ing more than two hun­dred towns of over five thou­sand pop­u­la­tion and thirty of over fif­teen thou­sand.

124:2.10When on his first trip with his fa­ther to ob­serve the fish­ing in­dus­try on the lake of Gal­i­lee, Je­sus had just about made up his mind to be­come a fish­er­man; but close as­so­ci­a­tion with his fa­ther’s vo­ca­tion later on in­flu­enced him to be­come a car­pen­ter, while still later a com­bi­na­tion of in­flu­ences led him to the fi­nal choice of be­com­ing a re­li­gious teacher of a new or­der.