caravans

122:7.7The inn was over­crowded, and Joseph ac­cord­ingly sought lodg­ings with dis­tant rel­a­tives, but ev­ery room in Beth­le­hem was filled to over­flow­ing. On re­turn­ing to the court­yard of the inn, he was in­formed that the car­a­van sta­bles, hewn out of the side of the rock and sit­u­ated just be­low the inn, had been cleared of an­i­mals and cleaned up for the re­cep­tion of lodgers. Leav­ing the don­key in the court­yard, Joseph shoul­dered their bags of cloth­ing and pro­vi­sions and with Mary de­scended the stone steps to their lodg­ings be­low. They found them­selves lo­cated in what had been a grain stor­age room to the front of the stalls and mangers. Tent cur­tains had been hung, and they counted them­selves for­tu­nate to have such com­fort­able quar­ters.

133:9.1The car­a­van trip across the desert was not a new ex­pe­ri­ence for these much-trav­eled men. Af­ter Ga­nid had watched his teacher help with the load­ing of their twenty camels and ob­served him vol­un­teer to drive their own an­i­mal, he ex­claimed, “Teacher, is there any­thing that you can­not do?” Je­sus only smiled, say­ing, “The teacher surely is not with­out honor in the eyes of a dili­gent pupil.” And so they set forth for the an­cient city of Ur.

134:1.1Af­ter tak­ing leave of Gonod and Ga­nid at Charax (in De­cem­ber of A.D. 23), Je­sus re­turned by way of Ur to Baby­lon, where he joined a desert car­a­van that was on its way to Da­mas­cus. From Da­mas­cus he went to Naz­a­reth, stop­ping only a few hours at Ca­per­naum, where he paused to call on Zeb­e­dee’s fam­ily. There he met his brother James, who had some­time pre­vi­ously come over to work in his place in Zeb­e­dee’s boat­shop. Af­ter talk­ing with James and Jude (who also chanced to be in Ca­per­naum) and af­ter turn­ing over to his brother James the lit­tle house which John Zeb­e­dee had man­aged to buy, Je­sus went on to Naz­a­reth.

134:1.6About the time Je­sus was prepar­ing to leave Naz­a­reth, the con­duc­tor of a large car­a­van which was pass­ing through the city was taken vi­o­lently ill, and Je­sus, be­ing a lin­guist, vol­un­teered to take his place. Since this trip would ne­ces­si­tate his ab­sence for a year, and inas­much as all his broth­ers were mar­ried and his mother was liv­ing at home with Ruth, Je­sus called a fam­ily con­fer­ence at which he pro­posed that his mother and Ruth go to Ca­per­naum to live in the home which he had so re­cently given to James. Ac­cord­ingly, a few days af­ter Je­sus left with the car­a­van, Mary and Ruth moved to Ca­per­naum, where they lived for the rest of Mary’s life in the home that Je­sus had pro­vided. Joseph and his fam­ily moved into the old Naz­a­reth home.

134:2.1It was the first of April, A.D. 24, when Je­sus left Naz­a­reth on the car­a­van trip to the Caspian Sea re­gion. The car­a­van which Je­sus joined as its con­duc­tor was go­ing from Je­ru­sa­lem by way of Da­mas­cus and Lake Ur­mia through As­syria, Me­dia, and Parthia to the south­east­ern Caspian Sea re­gion. It was a full year be­fore he re­turned from this jour­ney.

134:2.2For Je­sus this car­a­van trip was an­other ad­ven­ture of ex­plo­ration and per­sonal min­istry. He had an in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ence with his car­a­van fam­ily—pas­sen­gers, guards, and camel drivers. Scores of men, women, and chil­dren re­sid­ing along the route fol­lowed by the car­a­van lived richer lives as a re­sult of their con­tact with Je­sus, to them, the ex­traor­di­nary con­duc­tor of a com­mon­place car­a­van. Not all who en­joyed these oc­ca­sions of his per­sonal min­istry prof­ited thereby, but the vast ma­jor­ity of those who met and talked with him were made bet­ter for the re­main­der of their nat­u­ral lives.

134:2.3Of all his world trav­els this Caspian Sea trip car­ried Je­sus near­est to the Ori­ent and en­abled him to gain a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the Far-East­ern peo­ples. He made in­ti­mate and per­sonal con­tact with ev­ery one of the sur­viv­ing races of Uran­tia ex­cept­ing the red. He equally en­joyed his per­sonal min­istry to each of these var­ied races and blended peo­ples, and all of them were re­cep­tive to the liv­ing truth which he brought them. The Eu­ro­peans from the Far West and the Asi­at­ics from the Far East alike gave at­ten­tion to his words of hope and eter­nal life and were equally in­flu­enced by the life of lov­ing ser­vice and spir­i­tual min­istry which he so gra­ciously lived among them.

134:2.4The car­a­van trip was suc­cess­ful in ev­ery way. This was a most in­ter­est­ing episode in the hu­man life of Je­sus, for he func­tioned dur­ing this year in an ex­ec­u­tive ca­pac­ity, be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the ma­te­rial in­trusted to his charge and for the safe con­duct of the trav­el­ers mak­ing up the car­a­van party. And he most faith­fully, ef­fi­ciently, and wisely dis­charged his mul­ti­ple du­ties.

134:2.5On the re­turn from the Caspian re­gion, Je­sus gave up the di­rec­tion of the car­a­van at Lake Ur­mia, where he tar­ried for slightly over two weeks. He re­turned as a pas­sen­ger with a later car­a­van to Da­mas­cus, where the own­ers of the camels be­sought him to re­main in their ser­vice. De­clin­ing this of­fer, he jour­neyed on with the car­a­van train to Ca­per­naum, ar­riv­ing the first of April, A.D. 25. No longer did he re­gard Naz­a­reth as his home. Ca­per­naum had be­come the home of Je­sus, James, Mary, and Ruth. But Je­sus never again lived with his fam­ily; when in Ca­per­naum he made his home with the Zebe­dees.

• Joseph built in 3 B.C.

123:1.6It was mid­sum­mer of this same year that Joseph built a small work­shop close to the vil­lage spring and near the car­a­van tar­ry­ing lot. Af­ter this he did very lit­tle car­pen­ter work by the day. He had as as­so­ciates two of his broth­ers and sev­eral other me­chan­ics, whom he sent out to work while he re­mained at the shop mak­ing yokes and plows and do­ing other wood­work. He also did some work in leather and with rope and can­vas. And Je­sus, as he grew up, when not at school, spent his time about equally be­tween help­ing his mother with home du­ties and watch­ing his fa­ther work at the shop, mean­while lis­ten­ing to the con­ver­sa­tion and gos­sip of the car­a­van con­duc­tors and pas­sen­gers from the four cor­ners of the earth.

• young Jesus spent time in

124:3.3Je­sus spent con­sid­er­able time at the car­a­van sup­ply shop, and by con­vers­ing with the trav­el­ers from all parts of the world, he ac­quired a store of in­for­ma­tion about in­ter­na­tional af­fairs that was amaz­ing, con­sid­er­ing his age. This was the last year in which he en­joyed much free play and youth­ful joy­ous­ness. From this time on dif­fi­cul­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties rapidly mul­ti­plied in the life of this youth.

• taken over by Jesus’ uncle

126:5.8The close work at the car­pen­ter’s bench dur­ing this and sub­se­quent years de­prived Je­sus of the op­por­tu­nity of min­gling with the car­a­van pas­sen­gers. The fam­ily sup­ply shop had al­ready been taken over by his un­cle, and Je­sus worked al­to­gether in the home shop, where he was near to help Mary with the fam­ily. About this time he be­gan send­ing James up to the camel lot to gather in­for­ma­tion about world events, and thus he sought to keep in touch with the news of the day.

• Jesus bought back; final payments

127:3.1In the course of this year all the fam­ily prop­erty, ex­cept the home and gar­den, was dis­posed of. The last piece of Ca­per­naum prop­erty (ex­cept an eq­uity in one other), al­ready mort­gaged, was sold. The pro­ceeds were used for taxes, to buy some new tools for James, and to make a pay­ment on the old fam­ily sup­ply and re­pair shop near the car­a­van lot, which Je­sus now pro­posed to buy back since James was old enough to work at the house shop and help Mary about the home. With the fi­nan­cial pres­sure thus eased for the time be­ing, Je­sus de­cided to take James to the Pass­over. They went up to Je­ru­sa­lem a day early, to be alone, go­ing by way of Samaria. They walked, and Je­sus told James about the his­toric places en route as his fa­ther had taught him on a sim­i­lar jour­ney five years be­fore.

• Jesus bought back; final payments

127:3.7Upon re­turn­ing to Naz­a­reth, Je­sus be­gan work in the old fam­ily re­pair shop and was greatly cheered by be­ing able to meet so many peo­ple each day from all parts of the coun­try and sur­round­ing dis­tricts. Je­sus truly loved peo­ple—just com­mon folks. Each month he made his pay­ments on the shop and, with James’s help, con­tin­ued to pro­vide for the fam­ily.

• Jesus bought back; final payments

128:6.3The fam­ily fi­nances were in the best con­di­tion since the dis­ap­pear­ance of Joseph’s es­tate. The fi­nal pay­ments had been made on the car­a­van re­pair shop; they owed no man and for the first time in years had some funds ahead. This be­ing true, and since he had taken his other broth­ers to Je­ru­sa­lem for their first Pass­over cer­e­monies, Je­sus de­cided to ac­com­pany Jude (who had just grad­u­ated from the syn­a­gogue school) on his first visit to the tem­ple.

• Jesus provided sand and blocks for youngsters in

128:6.11The chil­dren were al­ways wel­come at the re­pair shop. Je­sus pro­vided sand, blocks, and stones by the side of the shop, and be­vies of young­sters flocked there to amuse them­selves. When they tired of their play, the more in­trepid ones would peek into the shop, and if its keeper were not busy, they would make bold to go in and say, “Un­cle Joshua, come out and tell us a big story.” Then they would lead him out by tug­ging at his hands un­til he was seated on the fa­vorite rock by the cor­ner of the shop, with the chil­dren on the ground in a semi­cir­cle be­fore him. And how the lit­tle folks did en­joy their Un­cle Joshua. They were learn­ing to laugh, and to laugh heart­ily. It was cus­tom­ary for one or two of the small­est of the chil­dren to climb upon his knees and sit there, look­ing up in won­der­ment at his ex­pres­sive fea­tures as he told his sto­ries. The chil­dren loved Je­sus, and Je­sus loved the chil­dren.

• Jesus presented full title to James

128:7.13The day af­ter this dou­ble wed­ding Je­sus held an im­por­tant con­fer­ence with James. He told James, con­fi­den­tially, that he was prepar­ing to leave home. He pre­sented full ti­tle to the re­pair shop to James, for­mally and solemnly ab­di­cated as head of Joseph’s house, and most touch­ingly es­tab­lished his brother James as “head and pro­tec­tor of my fa­ther’s house.” He drew up, and they both signed, a se­cret com­pact in which it was stip­u­lated that, in re­turn for the gift of the re­pair shop, James would hence­forth as­sume full fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fam­ily, thus re­leas­ing Je­sus from all fur­ther obli­ga­tions in these mat­ters. Af­ter the con­tract was signed, af­ter the bud­get was so ar­ranged that the ac­tual ex­penses of the fam­ily would be met with­out any con­tri­bu­tion from Je­sus, Je­sus said to James: “But, my son, I will con­tinue to send you some­thing each month un­til my hour shall have come, but what I send shall be used by you as the oc­ca­sion de­mands. Ap­ply my funds to the fam­ily ne­ces­si­ties or plea­sures as you see fit. Use them in case of sick­ness or ap­ply them to meet the un­ex­pected emer­gen­cies which may be­fall any in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of the fam­ily.”

121:2.2Many of the great high­ways join­ing the na­tions of an­tiq­uity passed through Pales­tine, which thus be­came the meet­ing place, or cross­roads, of three con­ti­nents. The travel, trade, and armies of Baby­lo­nia, As­syria, Egypt, Syria, Greece, Parthia, and Rome suc­ces­sively swept over Pales­tine. From time im­memo­rial, many car­a­van routes from the Ori­ent passed through some part of this re­gion to the few good sea­ports of the east­ern end of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, whence ships car­ried their car­goes to all the mar­itime Oc­ci­dent. And more than half of this car­a­van traf­fic passed through or near the lit­tle town of Naz­a­reth in Gal­i­lee.

79:3.7The Dra­vid­i­ans were among the ear­li­est peo­ples to build cities and to en­gage in an ex­ten­sive ex­port and im­port busi­ness, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. camel trains were mak­ing reg­u­lar trips to dis­tant Mes­o­po­ta­mia; Dra­vid­ian ship­ping was push­ing coast­wise across the Ara­bian Sea to the Sume­rian cities of the Per­sian Gulf and was ven­tur­ing on the wa­ters of the Bay of Ben­gal as far as the East In­dies. An al­pha­bet, to­gether with the art of writ­ing, was im­ported from Sume­ria by these sea­far­ers and mer­chants.