The Later Adult Life of Jesus

129:2.1In March, A.D. 22, Je­sus took leave of Zeb­e­dee and of Ca­per­naum. He asked for a small sum of money to de­fray his ex­penses to Je­ru­sa­lem. While work­ing with Zeb­e­dee he had drawn only small sums of money, which each month he would send to the fam­ily at Naz­a­reth. One month Joseph would come down to Ca­per­naum for the money; the next month Jude would come over to Ca­per­naum, get the money from Je­sus, and take it up to Naz­a­reth. Jude’s fish­ing head­quar­ters was only a few miles south of Ca­per­naum.

129:2.2When Je­sus took leave of Zeb­e­dee’s fam­ily, he agreed to re­main in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til Pass­over time, and they all prom­ised to be pres­ent for that event. They even ar­ranged to cel­e­brate the Pass­over sup­per to­gether. They all sor­rowed when Je­sus left them, es­pe­cially the daugh­ters of Zeb­e­dee.

129:2.3Be­fore leav­ing Ca­per­naum, Je­sus had a long talk with his new-found friend and close com­pan­ion, John Zeb­e­dee. He told John that he con­tem­plated trav­el­ing ex­ten­sively un­til “my hour shall come” and asked John to act in his stead in the mat­ter of send­ing some money to the fam­ily at Naz­a­reth each month un­til the funds due him should be ex­hausted. And John made him this prom­ise: “My Teacher, go about your busi­ness, do your work in the world; I will act for you in this or any other mat­ter, and I will watch over your fam­ily even as I would fos­ter my own mother and care for my own broth­ers and sis­ters. I will dis­burse your funds which my fa­ther holds as you have di­rected and as they may be needed, and when your money has been ex­pended, if I do not re­ceive more from you, and if your mother is in need, then will I share my own earn­ings with her. Go your way in peace. I will act in your stead in all these mat­ters.”

129:2.4There­fore, af­ter Je­sus had de­parted for Je­ru­sa­lem, John con­sulted with his fa­ther, Zeb­e­dee, re­gard­ing the money due Je­sus, and he was sur­prised that it was such a large sum. As Je­sus had left the mat­ter so en­tirely in their hands, they agreed that it would be the bet­ter plan to in­vest these funds in prop­erty and use the in­come for as­sist­ing the fam­ily at Naz­a­reth; and since Zeb­e­dee knew of a lit­tle house in Ca­per­naum which car­ried a mort­gage and was for sale, he di­rected John to buy this house with Je­sus’ money and hold the ti­tle in trust for his friend. And John did as his fa­ther ad­vised him. For two years the rent of this house was ap­plied on the mort­gage, and this, aug­mented by a cer­tain large fund which Je­sus pres­ently sent up to John to be used as needed by the fam­ily, al­most equaled the amount of this obli­ga­tion; and Zeb­e­dee sup­plied the dif­fer­ence, so that John paid up the re­main­der of the mort­gage when it fell due, thereby se­cur­ing clear ti­tle to this two-room house. In this way Je­sus be­came the owner of a house in Ca­per­naum, but he had not been told about it.

129:2.5When the fam­ily at Naz­a­reth heard that Je­sus had de­parted from Ca­per­naum, they, not know­ing of this fi­nan­cial ar­range­ment with John, be­lieved the time had come for them to get along with­out any fur­ther help from Je­sus. James re­mem­bered his con­tract with Je­sus and, with the help of his broth­ers, forth­with as­sumed full re­spon­si­bil­ity for the care of the fam­ily.

129:2.6But let us go back to ob­serve Je­sus in Je­ru­sa­lem. For al­most two months he spent the greater part of his time lis­ten­ing to the tem­ple dis­cus­sions with oc­ca­sional vis­its to the var­i­ous schools of the rab­bis. Most of the Sab­bath days he spent at Beth­any.

129:2.7Je­sus had car­ried with him to Je­ru­sa­lem a let­ter from Sa­lome, Zeb­e­dee’s wife, in­tro­duc­ing him to the for­mer high priest, An­nas, as “one, the same as my own son.” An­nas spent much time with him, per­son­ally tak­ing him to visit the many academies of the Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious teach­ers. While Je­sus thor­oughly in­spected these schools and care­fully ob­served their meth­ods of teach­ing, he never so much as asked a sin­gle ques­tion in pub­lic. Al­though An­nas looked upon Je­sus as a great man, he was puz­zled as to how to ad­vise him. He rec­og­nized the fool­ish­ness of sug­gest­ing that he en­ter any of the schools of Je­ru­sa­lem as a stu­dent, and yet he well knew Je­sus would never be ac­corded the sta­tus of a reg­u­lar teacher inas­much as he had never been trained in these schools.

129:2.8Pres­ently the time of the Pass­over drew near, and along with the throngs from ev­ery quar­ter there ar­rived at Je­ru­sa­lem from Ca­per­naum, Zeb­e­dee and his en­tire fam­ily. They all stopped at the spa­cious home of An­nas, where they cel­e­brated the Pass­over as one happy fam­ily.

129:2.9Be­fore the end of this Pass­over week, by ap­par­ent chance, Je­sus met a wealthy trav­eler and his son, a young man about sev­en­teen years of age. These trav­el­ers hailed from In­dia, and be­ing on their way to visit Rome and var­i­ous other points on the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, they had ar­ranged to ar­rive in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the Pass­over, hop­ing to find some­one whom they could en­gage as in­ter­preter for both and tu­tor for the son. The fa­ther was in­sis­tent that Je­sus con­sent to travel with them. Je­sus told him about his fam­ily and that it was hardly fair to go away for al­most two years, dur­ing which time they might find them­selves in need. Where­upon, this trav­eler from the Ori­ent pro­posed to ad­vance to Je­sus the wages of one year so that he could in­trust such funds to his friends for the safe­guard­ing of his fam­ily against want. And Je­sus agreed to make the trip.

129:2.10Je­sus turned this large sum over to John the son of Zeb­e­dee. And you have been told how John ap­plied this money to­ward the liq­ui­da­tion of the mort­gage on the Ca­per­naum prop­erty. Je­sus took Zeb­e­dee fully into his con­fi­dence re­gard­ing this Med­i­ter­ra­nean jour­ney, but he en­joined him to tell no man, not even his own flesh and blood, and Zeb­e­dee never did dis­close his knowl­edge of Je­sus’ where­abouts dur­ing this long pe­riod of al­most two years. Be­fore Je­sus’ re­turn from this trip the fam­ily at Naz­a­reth had just about given him up as dead. Only the as­sur­ances of Zeb­e­dee, who went up to Naz­a­reth with his son John on sev­eral oc­ca­sions, kept hope alive in Mary’s heart.

129:2.11Dur­ing this time the Naz­a­reth fam­ily got along very well; Jude had con­sid­er­ably in­creased his quota and kept up this ex­tra con­tri­bu­tion un­til he was mar­ried. Not­with­stand­ing that they re­quired lit­tle as­sis­tance, it was the prac­tice of John Zeb­e­dee to take pres­ents each month to Mary and Ruth, as Je­sus had in­structed him.