Jesus’ Early Manhood

128:5.1This was Je­sus’ first year of com­par­a­tive free­dom from fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity. James was very suc­cess­ful in man­ag­ing the home with Je­sus’ help in coun­sel and fi­nances.

128:5.2The week fol­low­ing the Pass­over of this year a young man from Alexan­dria came down to Naz­a­reth to ar­range for a meet­ing, later in the year, be­tween Je­sus and a group of Alexan­drian Jews at some point on the Pales­tinian coast. This con­fer­ence was set for the mid­dle of June, and Je­sus went over to Cae­sarea to meet with five promi­nent Jews of Alexan­dria, who be­sought him to es­tab­lish him­self in their city as a re­li­gious teacher, of­fer­ing as an in­duce­ment to be­gin with, the po­si­tion of as­sis­tant to the chazan in their chief syn­a­gogue.

128:5.3The spokes­men for this com­mit­tee ex­plained to Je­sus that Alexan­dria was des­tined to be­come the head­quar­ters of Jew­ish cul­ture for the en­tire world; that the Hel­lenis­tic trend of Jew­ish af­fairs had vir­tu­ally out­dis­tanced the Baby­lo­nian school of thought. They re­minded Je­sus of the omi­nous rum­blings of re­bel­lion in Je­ru­sa­lem and through­out Pales­tine and as­sured him that any up­ris­ing of the Pales­tinian Jews would be equiv­a­lent to na­tional sui­cide, that the iron hand of Rome would crush the re­bel­lion in three months, and that Je­ru­sa­lem would be de­stroyed and the tem­ple de­mol­ished, that not one stone would be left upon an­other.

128:5.4Je­sus lis­tened to all they had to say, thanked them for their con­fi­dence, and, in de­clin­ing to go to Alexan­dria, in sub­stance said, “My hour has not yet come.” They were non­plused by his ap­par­ent in­dif­fer­ence to the honor they had sought to con­fer upon him. Be­fore tak­ing leave of Je­sus, they pre­sented him with a purse in to­ken of the es­teem of his Alexan­drian friends and in com­pen­sa­tion for the time and ex­pense of com­ing over to Cae­sarea to con­fer with them. But he like­wise re­fused the money, say­ing: “The house of Joseph has never re­ceived alms, and we can­not eat an­other’s bread as long as I have strong arms and my broth­ers can la­bor.”

128:5.5His friends from Egypt set sail for home, and in sub­se­quent years, when they heard ru­mors of the Ca­per­naum boat­builder who was cre­at­ing such a com­mo­tion in Pales­tine, few of them sur­mised that he was the babe of Beth­le­hem grown up and the same strange-act­ing Galilean who had so un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion to be­come a great teacher in Alexan­dria.

128:5.6Je­sus re­turned to Naz­a­reth. The re­main­der of this year was the most un­event­ful six months of his whole ca­reer. He en­joyed this tem­po­rary respite from the usual pro­gram of prob­lems to solve and dif­fi­cul­ties to sur­mount. He com­muned much with his Fa­ther in heaven and made tremen­dous prog­ress in the mas­tery of his hu­man mind.

128:5.7But hu­man af­fairs on the worlds of time and space do not run smoothly for long. In De­cem­ber James had a pri­vate talk with Je­sus, ex­plain­ing that he was much in love with Esta, a young woman of Naz­a­reth, and that they would some­time like to be mar­ried if it could be ar­ranged. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that Joseph would soon be eigh­teen years old, and that it would be a good ex­pe­ri­ence for him to have a chance to serve as the act­ing head of the fam­ily. Je­sus gave con­sent for James’s mar­riage two years later, pro­vided he had, dur­ing the in­ter­ven­ing time, prop­erly trained Joseph to as­sume di­rec­tion of the home.

128:5.8And now things be­gan to hap­pen—mar­riage was in the air. James’s suc­cess in gain­ing Je­sus’ as­sent to his mar­riage em­bold­ened Miriam to ap­proach her brother-fa­ther with her plans. Ja­cob, the younger stone ma­son, one­time self-ap­pointed cham­pion of Je­sus, now busi­ness as­so­ciate of James and Joseph, had long sought to gain Miriam’s hand in mar­riage. Af­ter Miriam had laid her plans be­fore Je­sus, he di­rected that Ja­cob should come to him mak­ing for­mal re­quest for her and prom­ised his bless­ing for the mar­riage just as soon as she felt that Martha was com­pe­tent to as­sume her du­ties as el­dest daugh­ter.

128:5.9When at home, he con­tin­ued to teach the evening school three times a week, read the Scrip­tures of­ten in the syn­a­gogue on the Sab­bath, vis­ited with his mother, taught the chil­dren, and in gen­eral con­ducted him­self as a wor­thy and re­spected cit­i­zen of Naz­a­reth in the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael.