The Later Adult Life of Jesus

129:1.1In Jan­uary of this year, A.D. 21, on a rainy Sun­day morn­ing, Je­sus took un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous leave of his fam­ily, only ex­plain­ing that he was go­ing over to Tiberias and then on a visit to other cities about the Sea of Gal­i­lee. And thus he left them, never again to be a reg­u­lar mem­ber of that house­hold.

129:1.2He spent one week at Tiberias, the new city which was soon to suc­ceed Sep­pho­ris as the cap­i­tal of Gal­i­lee; and find­ing lit­tle to in­ter­est him, he passed on suc­ces­sively through Mag­dala and Beth­saida to Ca­per­naum, where he stopped to pay a visit to his fa­ther’s friend Zeb­e­dee. Zeb­e­dee’s sons were fish­er­men; he him­self was a boat­builder. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was an ex­pert in both de­sign­ing and build­ing; he was a mas­ter at work­ing with wood; and Zeb­e­dee had long known of the skill of the Naz­a­reth crafts­man. For a long time Zeb­e­dee had con­tem­plated mak­ing im­proved boats; he now laid his plans be­fore Je­sus and in­vited the vis­it­ing car­pen­ter to join him in the en­ter­prise, and Je­sus read­ily con­sented.

129:1.3Je­sus worked with Zeb­e­dee only a lit­tle more than one year, but dur­ing that time he cre­ated a new style of boat and es­tab­lished en­tirely new meth­ods of boat­mak­ing. By su­pe­rior tech­nique and greatly im­proved meth­ods of steam­ing the boards, Je­sus and Zeb­e­dee be­gan to build boats of a very su­pe­rior type, craft which were far more safe for sail­ing the lake than were the older types. For sev­eral years Zeb­e­dee had more work, turn­ing out these new-style boats, than his small es­tab­lish­ment could han­dle; in less than five years prac­ti­cally all the craft on the lake had been built in the shop of Zeb­e­dee at Ca­per­naum. Je­sus be­came well known to the Galilean fish­er­folk as the de­signer of the new boats.

129:1.4Zeb­e­dee was a mod­er­ately well-to-do man; his boat­build­ing shops were on the lake to the south of Ca­per­naum, and his home was sit­u­ated down the lake shore near the fish­ing head­quar­ters of Beth­saida. Je­sus lived in the home of Zeb­e­dee dur­ing the year and more he re­mained at Ca­per­naum. He had long worked alone in the world, that is, with­out a fa­ther, and greatly en­joyed this pe­riod of work­ing with a fa­ther-part­ner.

129:1.5Zeb­e­dee’s wife, Sa­lome, was a rel­a­tive of An­nas, one­time high priest at Je­ru­sa­lem and still the most in­flu­en­tial of the Sad­ducean group, hav­ing been de­posed only eight years pre­vi­ously. Sa­lome be­came a great ad­mirer of Je­sus. She loved him as she loved her own sons, James, John, and David, while her four daugh­ters looked upon Je­sus as their el­der brother. Je­sus of­ten went out fish­ing with James, John, and David, and they learned that he was an ex­pe­ri­enced fish­er­man as well as an ex­pert boat­builder.

129:1.6All this year Je­sus sent money each month to James. He re­turned to Naz­a­reth in Oc­to­ber to at­tend Martha’s wed­ding, and he was not again in Naz­a­reth for over two years, when he re­turned shortly be­fore the dou­ble wed­ding of Si­mon and Jude.

129:1.7Through­out this year Je­sus built boats and con­tin­ued to ob­serve how men lived on earth. Fre­quently he would go down to visit at the car­a­van sta­tion, Ca­per­naum be­ing on the di­rect travel route from Da­mas­cus to the south. Ca­per­naum was a strong Ro­man mil­i­tary post, and the gar­ri­son’s com­mand­ing of­fi­cer was a gen­tile be­liever in Yah­weh, “a de­vout man,” as the Jews were wont to des­ig­nate such pros­e­lytes. This of­fi­cer be­longed to a wealthy Ro­man fam­ily, and he took it upon him­self to build a beau­ti­ful syn­a­gogue in Ca­per­naum, which had been pre­sented to the Jews a short time be­fore Je­sus came to live with Zeb­e­dee. Je­sus con­ducted the ser­vices in this new syn­a­gogue more than half the time this year, and some of the car­a­van peo­ple who chanced to at­tend re­mem­bered him as the car­pen­ter from Naz­a­reth.

129:1.8When it came to the pay­ment of taxes, Je­sus reg­is­tered him­self as a “skilled crafts­man of Ca­per­naum.” From this day on to the end of his earth life he was known as a res­i­dent of Ca­per­naum. He never claimed any other le­gal res­i­dence, al­though he did, for var­i­ous rea­sons, per­mit oth­ers to as­sign his res­i­dence to Da­mas­cus, Beth­any, Naz­a­reth, and even Alexan­dria.

129:1.9At the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue he found many new books in the li­brary chests, and he spent at least five evenings a week at in­tense study. One evening he de­voted to so­cial life with the older folks, and one evening he spent with the young peo­ple. There was some­thing gra­cious and in­spir­ing about the per­son­al­ity of Je­sus which in­vari­ably at­tracted young peo­ple. He al­ways made them feel at ease in his pres­ence. Per­haps his great se­cret in get­ting along with them con­sisted in the two­fold fact that he was al­ways in­ter­ested in what they were do­ing, while he sel­dom of­fered them ad­vice un­less they asked for it.

129:1.10The Zeb­e­dee fam­ily al­most wor­shiped Je­sus, and they never failed to at­tend the con­fer­ences of ques­tions and an­swers which he con­ducted each evening af­ter sup­per be­fore he de­parted for the syn­a­gogue to study. The youth­ful neigh­bors also came in fre­quently to at­tend these af­ter-sup­per meet­ings. To these lit­tle gath­er­ings Je­sus gave var­ied and ad­vanced in­struc­tion, just as ad­vanced as they could com­pre­hend. He talked quite freely with them, ex­press­ing his ideas and ide­als about pol­i­tics, so­ci­ol­ogy, sci­ence, and phi­los­o­phy, but never pre­sumed to speak with au­thor­i­ta­tive fi­nal­ity ex­cept when dis­cussing re­li­gion—the re­la­tion of man to God.

129:1.11Once a week Je­sus held a meet­ing with the en­tire house­hold, shop, and shore helpers, for Zeb­e­dee had many em­ploy­ees. And it was among these work­ers that Je­sus was first called “the Mas­ter.” They all loved him. He en­joyed his labors with Zeb­e­dee in Ca­per­naum, but he missed the chil­dren play­ing out by the side of the Naz­a­reth car­pen­ter shop.

129:1.12Of the sons of Zeb­e­dee, James was the most in­ter­ested in Je­sus as a teacher, as a philoso­pher. John cared most for his re­li­gious teach­ing and opin­ions. David re­spected him as a me­chanic but took lit­tle stock in his re­li­gious views and philo­sophic teach­ings.

129:1.13Fre­quently Jude came over on the Sab­bath to hear Je­sus talk in the syn­a­gogue and would tarry to visit with him. And the more Jude saw of his el­dest brother, the more he be­came con­vinced that Je­sus was a truly great man.

129:1.14This year Je­sus made great ad­vances in the as­cen­dant mas­tery of his hu­man mind and at­tained new and high lev­els of con­scious con­tact with his in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster.

129:1.15This was the last year of his set­tled life. Never again did Je­sus spend a whole year in one place or at one un­der­tak­ing. The days of his earth pil­grim­ages were rapidly ap­proach­ing. Pe­ri­ods of in­tense ac­tiv­ity were not far in the fu­ture, but there were now about to in­ter­vene be­tween his sim­ple but in­tensely ac­tive life of the past and his still more in­tense and stren­u­ous pub­lic min­istry, a few years of ex­ten­sive travel and highly di­ver­si­fied per­sonal ac­tiv­ity. His train­ing as a man of the realm had to be com­pleted be­fore he could en­ter upon his ca­reer of teach­ing and preach­ing as the per­fected God-man of the di­vine and posthu­man phases of his Uran­tia be­stowal.