Joseph (father of Jesus)

122:1.1Joseph, the hu­man fa­ther of Je­sus (Joshua ben Joseph), was a He­brew of the He­brews, al­beit he car­ried many non-Jew­ish racial strains which had been added to his an­ces­tral tree from time to time by the fe­male lines of his pro­gen­i­tors. The an­ces­try of the fa­ther of Je­sus went back to the days of Abra­ham and through this ven­er­a­ble pa­tri­arch to the ear­lier lines of in­her­i­tance lead­ing to the Sume­ri­ans and Nod­ites and, through the south­ern tribes of the an­cient blue man, to An­don and Fonta. David and Sol­o­mon were not in the di­rect line of Joseph’s an­ces­try, nei­ther did Joseph’s lin­eage go di­rectly back to Adam. Joseph’s im­me­di­ate an­ces­tors were me­chan­ics—builders, car­pen­ters, ma­sons, and smiths. Joseph him­self was a car­pen­ter and later a con­trac­tor. His fam­ily be­longed to a long and il­lus­tri­ous line of the no­bil­ity of the com­mon peo­ple, ac­cen­tu­ated ever and anon by the ap­pear­ance of un­usual in­di­vid­u­als who had dis­tin­guished them­selves in con­nec­tion with the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion on Uran­tia.

122:1.2Mary, the earth mother of Je­sus, was a de­scen­dant of a long line of unique an­ces­tors em­brac­ing many of the most re­mark­able women in the racial his­tory of Uran­tia. Al­though Mary was an av­er­age woman of her day and gen­er­a­tion, pos­sess­ing a fairly nor­mal tem­per­a­ment, she reck­oned among her an­ces­tors such well-known women as An­non, Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, An­sie, Cloa, Eve, Enta, and Ratta. No Jew­ish woman of that day had a more il­lus­tri­ous lin­eage of com­mon pro­gen­i­tors or one ex­tend­ing back to more aus­pi­cious be­gin­nings. Mary’s an­ces­try, like Joseph’s, was char­ac­ter­ized by the pre­dom­i­nance of strong but av­er­age in­di­vid­u­als, re­lieved now and then by nu­mer­ous out­stand­ing per­son­al­i­ties in the march of civ­i­liza­tion and the pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion. Racially con­sid­ered, it is hardly proper to re­gard Mary as a Jew­ess. In cul­ture and be­lief she was a Jew, but in hered­i­tary en­dow­ment she was more a com­pos­ite of Syr­ian, Hit­tite, Phoeni­cian, Greek, and Egyp­tian stocks, her racial in­her­i­tance be­ing more gen­eral than that of Joseph.

122:1.3Of all cou­ples liv­ing in Pales­tine at about the time of Mi­chael’s pro­jected be­stowal, Joseph and Mary pos­sessed the most ideal com­bi­na­tion of wide­spread racial con­nec­tions and su­pe­rior av­er­age of per­son­al­ity en­dow­ments. It was the plan of Mi­chael to ap­pear on earth as an av­er­age man, that the com­mon peo­ple might un­der­stand him and re­ceive him; where­fore Ga­briel se­lected just such per­sons as Joseph and Mary to be­come the be­stowal par­ents.

122:5.1Joseph was a mild-man­nered man, ex­tremely con­sci­en­tious, and in ev­ery way faith­ful to the re­li­gious con­ven­tions and prac­tices of his peo­ple. He talked lit­tle but thought much. The sorry plight of the Jew­ish peo­ple caused Joseph much sad­ness. As a youth, among his eight broth­ers and sis­ters, he had been more cheer­ful, but in the ear­lier years of mar­ried life (dur­ing Je­sus’ child­hood) he was sub­ject to pe­ri­ods of mild spir­i­tual dis­cour­age­ment. These tem­per­a­men­tal man­i­fes­ta­tions were greatly im­proved just be­fore his un­timely death and af­ter the eco­nomic con­di­tion of his fam­ily had been en­hanced by his ad­vance­ment from the rank of car­pen­ter to the role of a pros­per­ous con­trac­tor.

122:5.2Mary’s tem­per­a­ment was quite op­po­site to that of her hus­band. She was usu­ally cheer­ful, was very rarely down­cast, and pos­sessed an ever-sunny dis­po­si­tion. Mary in­dulged in free and fre­quent ex­pres­sion of her emo­tional feel­ings and was never ob­served to be sor­row­ful un­til af­ter the sud­den death of Joseph. And she had hardly re­cov­ered from this shock when she had thrust upon her the anx­i­eties and ques­tion­ings aroused by the ex­traor­di­nary ca­reer of her el­dest son, which was so rapidly un­fold­ing be­fore her as­ton­ished gaze. But through­out all this un­usual ex­pe­ri­ence Mary was com­posed, coura­geous, and fairly wise in her re­la­tion­ship with her strange and lit­tle-un­der­stood first-born son and his sur­viv­ing broth­ers and sis­ters.

122:5.3Je­sus de­rived much of his un­usual gen­tle­ness and mar­velous sym­pa­thetic un­der­stand­ing of hu­man na­ture from his fa­ther; he in­her­ited his gift as a great teacher and his tremen­dous ca­pac­ity for righ­teous in­dig­na­tion from his mother. In emo­tional re­ac­tions to his adult-life en­vi­ron­ment, Je­sus was at one time like his fa­ther, med­i­ta­tive and wor­ship­ful, some­times char­ac­ter­ized by ap­par­ent sad­ness; but more of­ten he drove for­ward in the man­ner of his mother’s op­ti­mistic and de­ter­mined dis­po­si­tion. All in all, Mary’s tem­per­a­ment tended to dom­i­nate the ca­reer of the di­vine Son as he grew up and swung into the mo­men­tous strides of his adult life. In some par­tic­u­lars Je­sus was a blend­ing of his par­ents’ traits; in other re­spects he ex­hib­ited the traits of one in con­trast with those of the other.

122:5.4From Joseph Je­sus se­cured his strict train­ing in the us­ages of the Jew­ish cer­e­mo­ni­als and his un­usual ac­quain­tance with the He­brew scrip­tures; from Mary he de­rived a broader view­point of re­li­gious life and a more lib­eral con­cept of per­sonal spir­i­tual free­dom.

122:5.5The fam­i­lies of both Joseph and Mary were well ed­u­cated for their time. Joseph and Mary were ed­u­cated far above the av­er­age for their day and sta­tion in life. He was a thinker; she was a plan­ner, ex­pert in adap­ta­tion and prac­ti­cal in im­me­di­ate ex­e­cu­tion. Joseph was a black-eyed brunet; Mary, a brown-eyed well-nigh blond type.

122:5.6Had Joseph lived, he un­doubt­edly would have be­come a firm be­liever in the di­vine mis­sion of his el­dest son. Mary al­ter­nated be­tween be­liev­ing and doubt­ing, be­ing greatly in­flu­enced by the po­si­tion taken by her other chil­dren and by her friends and rel­a­tives, but al­ways was she stead­ied in her fi­nal at­ti­tude by the mem­ory of Ga­briel’s ap­pear­ance to her im­me­di­ately af­ter the child was con­ceived.

122:5.7Mary was an ex­pert weaver and more than av­er­agely skilled in most of the house­hold arts of that day; she was a good house­keeper and a su­pe­rior home­maker. Both Joseph and Mary were good teach­ers, and they saw to it that their chil­dren were well versed in the learn­ing of that day.

122:5.8When Joseph was a young man, he was em­ployed by Mary’s fa­ther in the work of build­ing an ad­di­tion to his house, and it was when Mary brought Joseph a cup of wa­ter, dur­ing a noon­time meal, that the court­ship of the pair who were des­tined to be­come the par­ents of Je­sus re­ally be­gan.

122:5.9Joseph and Mary were mar­ried, in ac­cor­dance with Jew­ish cus­tom, at Mary’s home in the en­vi­rons of Naz­a­reth when Joseph was twenty-one years old. This mar­riage con­cluded a nor­mal court­ship of al­most two years’ du­ra­tion. Shortly there­after they moved into their new home in Naz­a­reth, which had been built by Joseph with the as­sis­tance of two of his broth­ers. The house was lo­cated near the foot of the near-by el­e­vated land which so charm­ingly over­looked the sur­round­ing coun­try­side. In this home, es­pe­cially pre­pared, these young and ex­pec­tant par­ents had thought to wel­come the child of prom­ise, lit­tle re­al­iz­ing that this mo­men­tous event of a uni­verse was to tran­spire while they would be ab­sent from home in Beth­le­hem of Judea.

122:5.10The larger part of Joseph’s fam­ily be­came be­liev­ers in the teach­ings of Je­sus, but very few of Mary’s peo­ple ever be­lieved in him un­til af­ter he de­parted from this world. Joseph leaned more to­ward the spir­i­tual con­cept of the ex­pected Mes­siah, but Mary and her fam­ily, es­pe­cially her fa­ther, held to the idea of the Mes­siah as a tem­po­ral de­liv­erer and po­lit­i­cal ruler. Mary’s an­ces­tors had been promi­nently iden­ti­fied with the Mac­cabean ac­tiv­i­ties of the then but re­cent times.

122:5.11Joseph held vig­or­ously to the East­ern, or Baby­lo­nian, views of the Jew­ish re­li­gion; Mary leaned strongly to­ward the more lib­eral and broader West­ern, or Hel­lenis­tic, in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law and the proph­ets.

• perplexed over Gabriel’s message; dream

122:3.2Mary pon­dered this vis­i­ta­tion se­cretly in her heart for many weeks un­til of a cer­tainty she knew she was with child, be­fore she dared to dis­close these un­usual events to her hus­band. When Joseph heard all about this, al­though he had great con­fi­dence in Mary, he was much trou­bled and could not sleep for many nights. At first Joseph had doubts about the Ga­briel vis­i­ta­tion. Then when he be­came well-nigh per­suaded that Mary had re­ally heard the voice and be­held the form of the di­vine mes­sen­ger, he was torn in mind as he pon­dered how such things could be. How could the off­spring of hu­man be­ings be a child of di­vine des­tiny? Never could Joseph rec­on­cile these con­flict­ing ideas un­til, af­ter sev­eral weeks of thought, both he and Mary reached the con­clu­sion that they had been cho­sen to be­come the par­ents of the Mes­siah, though it had hardly been the Jew­ish con­cept that the ex­pected de­liv­erer was to be of di­vine na­ture. Upon ar­riv­ing at this mo­men­tous con­clu­sion, Mary has­tened to de­part for a visit with Eliz­a­beth.

122:4.1Joseph did not be­come rec­on­ciled to the idea that Mary was to be­come the mother of an ex­traor­di­nary child un­til af­ter he had ex­pe­ri­enced a very im­pres­sive dream. In this dream a bril­liant ce­les­tial mes­sen­ger ap­peared to him and, among other things, said: “Joseph, I ap­pear by com­mand of Him who now reigns on high, and I am di­rected to in­struct you con­cern­ing the son whom Mary shall bear, and who shall be­come a great light in the world. In him will be life, and his life shall be­come the light of man­kind. He shall first come to his own peo­ple, but they will hardly re­ceive him; but to as many as shall re­ceive him to them will he re­veal that they are the chil­dren of God.” Af­ter this ex­pe­ri­ence Joseph never again wholly doubted Mary’s story of Ga­briel’s visit and of the prom­ise that the un­born child was to be­come a di­vine mes­sen­ger to the world.

122:4.2In all these vis­i­ta­tions noth­ing was said about the house of David. Noth­ing was ever in­ti­mated about Je­sus’ be­com­ing a “de­liv­erer of the Jews,” not even that he was to be the long-ex­pected Mes­siah. Je­sus was not such a Mes­siah as the Jews had an­tic­i­pated, but he was the world’s de­liv­erer. His mis­sion was to all races and peo­ples, not to any one group.

122:4.3Joseph was not of the line of King David. Mary had more of the Da­vidic an­ces­try than Joseph. True, Joseph did go to the City of David, Beth­le­hem, to be reg­is­tered for the Ro­man cen­sus, but that was be­cause, six gen­er­a­tions pre­vi­ously, Joseph’s pa­ter­nal an­ces­tor of that gen­er­a­tion, be­ing an or­phan, was adopted by one Zadoc, who was a di­rect de­scen­dant of David; hence was Joseph also ac­counted as of the “house of David.”

122:4.4Most of the so-called Mes­sianic prophe­cies of the Old Tes­ta­ment were made to ap­ply to Je­sus long af­ter his life had been lived on earth. For cen­turies the He­brew proph­ets had pro­claimed the com­ing of a de­liv­erer, and these promises had been con­strued by suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions as re­fer­ring to a new Jew­ish ruler who would sit upon the throne of David and, by the re­puted mirac­u­lous meth­ods of Moses, pro­ceed to es­tab­lish the Jews in Pales­tine as a pow­er­ful na­tion, free from all for­eign dom­i­na­tion. Again, many fig­u­ra­tive pas­sages found through­out the He­brew scrip­tures were sub­se­quently mis­ap­plied to the life mis­sion of Je­sus. Many Old Tes­ta­ment say­ings were so dis­torted as to ap­pear to fit some episode of the Mas­ter’s earth life. Je­sus him­self one­time pub­licly de­nied any con­nec­tion with the royal house of David. Even the pas­sage, “a maiden shall bear a son,” was made to read, “a vir­gin shall bear a son.” This was also true of the many ge­nealo­gies of both Joseph and Mary which were con­structed sub­se­quent to Mi­chael’s ca­reer on earth. Many of these lin­eages con­tain much of the Mas­ter’s an­ces­try, but on the whole they are not gen­uine and may not be de­pended upon as fac­tual. The early fol­low­ers of Je­sus all too of­ten suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion to make all the olden pro­phetic ut­ter­ances ap­pear to find ful­fill­ment in the life of their Lord and Mas­ter.

• held spiritual concept of Messiah

123:0.5Mary had never fully given up the idea that Je­sus ought to grow up in Beth­le­hem, the City of David. Joseph did not re­ally be­lieve that their son was to be­come a kingly de­liv­erer of Is­rael. Be­sides, he knew that he him­self was not re­ally a de­scen­dant of David; that his be­ing reck­oned among the off­spring of David was due to the adop­tion of one of his an­ces­tors into the Da­vidic line of de­scent. Mary, of course, thought the City of David the most ap­pro­pri­ate place in which the new can­di­date for David’s throne could be reared, but Joseph pre­ferred to take chances with Herod An­tipas rather than with his brother Archelaus. He en­ter­tained great fears for the child’s safety in Beth­le­hem or in any other city in Judea, and sur­mised that Archelaus would be more likely to pur­sue the men­ac­ing poli­cies of his fa­ther, Herod, than would An­tipas in Gal­i­lee. And be­sides all these rea­sons, Joseph was out­spo­ken in his pref­er­ence for Gal­i­lee as a bet­ter place in which to rear and ed­u­cate the child, but it re­quired three weeks to over­come Mary’s ob­jec­tions.

• never failed fully to discuss Jesus’ questions

123:2.3Je­sus was five years old in Au­gust of this year, and we will, there­fore, re­fer to this as his fifth (cal­en­dar) year of life. In this year, 2 B.C., a lit­tle more than one month be­fore his fifth birth­day an­niver­sary, Je­sus was made very happy by the com­ing of his sis­ter Miriam, who was born on the night of July 11. Dur­ing the evening of the fol­low­ing day Je­sus had a long talk with his fa­ther con­cern­ing the man­ner in which var­i­ous groups of liv­ing things are born into the world as sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als. The most valu­able part of Je­sus’ early ed­u­ca­tion was se­cured from his par­ents in an­swer to his thought­ful and search­ing in­quiries. Joseph never failed to do his full duty in tak­ing pains and spend­ing time an­swer­ing the boy’s nu­mer­ous ques­tions. From the time Je­sus was five years old un­til he was ten, he was one con­tin­u­ous ques­tion mark. While Joseph and Mary could not al­ways an­swer his ques­tions, they never failed fully to dis­cuss his in­quiries and in ev­ery other pos­si­ble way to as­sist him in his ef­forts to reach a sat­is­fac­tory so­lu­tion of the prob­lem which his alert mind had sug­gested.

• explained reasons for family discipline

123:3.9This year Je­sus made great prog­ress in ad­just­ing his strong feel­ings and vig­or­ous im­pulses to the de­mands of fam­ily co-op­er­a­tion and home dis­ci­pline. Mary was a lov­ing mother but a fairly strict dis­ci­plinar­ian. In many ways, how­ever, Joseph ex­erted the greater con­trol over Je­sus as it was his prac­tice to sit down with the boy and fully ex­plain the real and un­der­ly­ing rea­sons for the ne­ces­sity of dis­ci­plinary cur­tail­ment of per­sonal de­sires in def­er­ence to the wel­fare and tran­quil­lity of the en­tire fam­ily. When the sit­u­a­tion had been ex­plained to Je­sus, he was al­ways in­tel­li­gently and will­ingly co-op­er­a­tive with pa­ren­tal wishes and fam­ily reg­u­la­tions.

• held spiritual concept of Messiah

123:6.8In Febru­ary, Na­hor, one of the teach­ers in a Je­ru­sa­lem academy of the rab­bis, came to Naz­a­reth to ob­serve Je­sus, hav­ing been on a sim­i­lar mis­sion to Zach­a­rias’s home near Je­ru­sa­lem. He came to Naz­a­reth at the in­sti­ga­tion of John’s fa­ther. While at first he was some­what shocked by Je­sus’ frank­ness and un­con­ven­tional man­ner of re­lat­ing him­self to things re­li­gious, he at­tributed it to the re­mote­ness of Gal­i­lee from the cen­ters of He­brew learn­ing and cul­ture and ad­vised Joseph and Mary to al­low him to take Je­sus back with him to Je­ru­sa­lem, where he could have the ad­van­tages of ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing at the cen­ter of Jew­ish cul­ture. Mary was half per­suaded to con­sent; she was con­vinced her el­dest son was to be­come the Mes­siah, the Jew­ish de­liv­erer; Joseph hes­i­tated; he was equally per­suaded that Je­sus was to grow up to be­come a man of des­tiny, but what that des­tiny would prove to be he was pro­foundly un­cer­tain. But he never re­ally doubted that his son was to ful­fill some great mis­sion on earth. The more he thought about Na­hor’s ad­vice, the more he ques­tioned the wis­dom of the pro­posed so­journ in Je­ru­sa­lem.

• faithfully discharged parental responsibilities

124:3.2Joseph and Mary were of­ten tempted to show some spe­cial fa­voritism for Je­sus or oth­er­wise to be­tray their knowl­edge that he was a child of prom­ise, a son of des­tiny. But both of his par­ents were ex­traor­di­nar­ily wise and saga­cious in all these mat­ters. The few times they did in any man­ner ex­hibit any pref­er­ence for him, even in the slight­est de­gree, the lad was quick to refuse all such spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.

• angry with Jesus about Scythopolis games

124:3.8The only time Je­sus ever saw his fa­ther an­gry with him was that night in their room at the inn when, in the course of their dis­cus­sions, the boy so far for­got the trends of Jew­ish thought as to sug­gest that they go back home and work for the build­ing of an am­phithe­ater at Naz­a­reth. When Joseph heard his first-born son ex­press such un-Jew­ish sen­ti­ments, he for­got his usual calm de­meanor and, seiz­ing Je­sus by the shoul­der, an­grily ex­claimed, “My son, never again let me hear you give ut­ter­ance to such an evil thought as long as you live.” Je­sus was star­tled by his fa­ther’s dis­play of emo­tion; he had never be­fore been made to feel the per­sonal sting of his fa­ther’s in­dig­na­tion and was as­ton­ished and shocked be­yond ex­pres­sion. He only replied, “Very well, my fa­ther, it shall be so.” And never again did the boy even in the slight­est man­ner al­lude to the games and other ath­letic ac­tiv­i­ties of the Greeks as long as his fa­ther lived.

• faithfully discharged parental responsibilities

124:4.4It was a try­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for Joseph and Mary to un­der­take the rear­ing of this un­prece­dented com­bi­na­tion of di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity, and they de­serve great credit for so faith­fully and suc­cess­fully dis­charg­ing their pa­ren­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. In­creas­ingly Je­sus’ par­ents re­al­ized that there was some­thing super­hu­man res­i­dent within this el­dest son, but they never even faintly dreamed that this son of prom­ise was in­deed and in truth the ac­tual cre­ator of this lo­cal uni­verse of things and be­ings. Joseph and Mary lived and died with­out ever learn­ing that their son Je­sus re­ally was the Uni­verse Cre­ator in­car­nate in mor­tal flesh.

• average person of day and generation

119:7.7Je­sus’ hu­man par­ents were av­er­age peo­ple of their day and gen­er­a­tion, and this in­car­nated Son of God was thus born of woman and was reared in the or­di­nary man­ner of the chil­dren of that race and age.

• marriage to Mary in March, 8 B.C.

122:2.2It was late in the month of June, 8 B.C., about three months af­ter the mar­riage of Joseph and Mary, that Ga­briel ap­peared to Eliz­a­beth at noon­tide one day, just as he later made his pres­ence known to Mary. Said Ga­briel:

• poor at birth of Jesus

122:10.2Joseph was afraid to seek work, and their small sav­ings were rapidly dis­ap­pear­ing. Even at the time of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies at the tem­ple, Joseph deemed him­self suf­fi­ciently poor to war­rant his of­fer­ing for Mary two young pi­geons as Moses had di­rected for the pu­rifi­ca­tion of moth­ers among the poor.

• fluent speaker of Aramaic and Greek

123:3.1Al­ready, with his mother’s help, Je­sus had mas­tered the Galilean di­alect of the Ara­maic tongue; and now his fa­ther be­gan teach­ing him Greek. Mary spoke lit­tle Greek, but Joseph was a flu­ent speaker of both Ara­maic and Greek. The text­book for the study of the Greek lan­guage was the copy of the He­brew scrip­tures—a com­plete ver­sion of the law and the proph­ets, in­clud­ing the Psalms—which had been pre­sented to them on leav­ing Egypt. There were only two com­plete copies of the Scrip­tures in Greek in all Naz­a­reth, and the pos­ses­sion of one of them by the car­pen­ter’s fam­ily made Joseph’s home a much-sought place and en­abled Je­sus, as he grew up, to meet an al­most end­less pro­ces­sion of earnest stu­dents and sin­cere truth seek­ers. Be­fore this year ended, Je­sus had as­sumed cus­tody of this price­less man­u­script, hav­ing been told on his sixth birth­day that the sa­cred book had been pre­sented to him by Alexan­drian friends and rel­a­tives. And in a very short time he could read it read­ily.

• 8 brothers and sisters

123:6.1This was an in­ter­est­ing year at school. Al­though Je­sus was not an un­usual stu­dent, he was a dili­gent pupil and be­longed to the more pro­gres­sive third of the class, do­ing his work so well that he was ex­cused from at­ten­dance one week out of each month. This week he usu­ally spent ei­ther with his fish­er­man un­cle on the shores of the Sea of Gal­i­lee near Mag­dala or on the farm of an­other un­cle (his mother’s brother) five miles south of Naz­a­reth.

• 8 brothers and sisters

128:7.8Je­sus spent a great deal of time this year with the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of his fam­ily. He would take them for long and fre­quent strolls up the hill and through the coun­try­side. Be­fore har­vest he took Jude to the farmer un­cle south of Naz­a­reth, but Jude did not re­main long af­ter the har­vest. He ran away, and Si­mon later found him with the fish­er­men at the lake. When Si­mon brought him back home, Je­sus talked things over with the run­away lad and, since he wanted to be a fish­er­man, went over to Mag­dala with him and put him in the care of a rel­a­tive, a fish­er­man; and Jude worked fairly well and reg­u­larly from that time on un­til his mar­riage, and he con­tin­ued as a fish­er­man af­ter his mar­riage.

122:8.4The sec­ond day af­ter the birth of Je­sus, Mary sent word to Eliz­a­beth that her child had come and re­ceived word in re­turn invit­ing Joseph up to Je­ru­sa­lem to talk over all their af­fairs with Zach­a­rias. The fol­low­ing week Joseph went to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­fer with Zach­a­rias. Both Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth had be­come pos­sessed with the sin­cere con­vic­tion that Je­sus was in­deed to be­come the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, the Mes­siah, and that their son John was to be his chief of aides, his right-hand man of des­tiny. And since Mary held these same ideas, it was not dif­fi­cult to pre­vail upon Joseph to re­main in Beth­le­hem, the City of David, so that Je­sus might grow up to be­come the suc­ces­sor of David on the throne of all Is­rael. Ac­cord­ingly, they re­mained in Beth­le­hem more than a year, Joseph mean­time work­ing some at his car­pen­ter’s trade.

123:3.2The first great shock of Je­sus’ young life oc­curred when he was not quite six years old. It had seemed to the lad that his fa­ther—at least his fa­ther and mother to­gether—knew ev­ery­thing. Imag­ine, there­fore, the sur­prise of this in­quir­ing child, when he asked his fa­ther the cause of a mild earth­quake which had just oc­curred, to hear Joseph say, “My son, I re­ally do not know.” Thus be­gan that long and dis­con­cert­ing dis­il­lu­sion­ment in the course of which Je­sus found out that his earthly par­ents were not all-wise and all-know­ing.

123:3.3Joseph’s first thought was to tell Je­sus that the earth­quake had been caused by God, but a mo­ment’s re­flec­tion ad­mon­ished him that such an an­swer would im­me­di­ately be provoca­tive of fur­ther and still more em­bar­rass­ing in­quiries. Even at an early age it was very dif­fi­cult to an­swer Je­sus’ ques­tions about phys­i­cal or so­cial phe­nom­ena by thought­lessly telling him that ei­ther God or the devil was re­spon­si­ble. In har­mony with the pre­vail­ing be­lief of the Jew­ish peo­ple, Je­sus was long will­ing to ac­cept the doc­trine of good spir­its and evil spir­its as the pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion of men­tal and spir­i­tual phe­nom­ena, but he very early be­came doubt­ful that such un­seen in­flu­ences were re­spon­si­ble for the phys­i­cal hap­pen­ings of the nat­u­ral world.

125:6.4The evening be­fore, Je­sus’ par­ents had heard about this strange youth who so deftly sparred with the ex­pounders of the law, but it had not oc­curred to them that this lad was their son. They had about de­cided to jour­ney out to the home of Zach­a­rias as they thought Je­sus might have gone thither to see Eliz­a­beth and John. Think­ing Zach­a­rias might per­haps be at the tem­ple, they stopped there on their way to the City of Ju­dah. As they strolled through the courts of the tem­ple, imag­ine their sur­prise and amaze­ment when they rec­og­nized the voice of the miss­ing lad and be­held him seated among the tem­ple teach­ers.

125:6.5Joseph was speech­less, but Mary gave vent to her long-pent-up fear and anx­i­ety when, rush­ing up to the lad, now stand­ing to greet his as­ton­ished par­ents, she said: “My child, why have you treated us like this? It is now more than three days that your fa­ther and I have searched for you sor­row­ing. What­ever pos­sessed you to desert us?” It was a tense mo­ment. All eyes were turned on Je­sus to hear what he would say. His fa­ther looked re­prov­ingly at him but said noth­ing.

125:6.6It should be re­mem­bered that Je­sus was sup­posed to be a young man. He had fin­ished the reg­u­lar school­ing of a child, had been rec­og­nized as a son of the law, and had re­ceived con­se­cra­tion as a cit­i­zen of Is­rael. And yet his mother more than mildly up­braided him be­fore all the peo­ple as­sem­bled, right in the midst of the most se­ri­ous and sub­lime ef­fort of his young life, thus bring­ing to an in­glo­ri­ous ter­mi­na­tion one of the great­est op­por­tu­ni­ties ever to be granted him to func­tion as a teacher of truth, a preacher of righ­teous­ness, a re­vealer of the lov­ing char­ac­ter of his Fa­ther in heaven.

125:6.7But the lad was equal to the oc­ca­sion. When you take into fair con­sid­er­a­tion all the fac­tors which com­bined to make up this sit­u­a­tion, you will be bet­ter pre­pared to fathom the wis­dom of the boy’s re­ply to his mother’s un­in­tended re­buke. Af­ter a mo­ment’s thought, Je­sus an­swered his mother, say­ing: “Why is it that you have so long sought me? Would you not ex­pect to find me in my Fa­ther’s house since the time has come when I should be about my Fa­ther’s busi­ness?”

125:6.8Ev­ery­one was as­ton­ished at the lad’s man­ner of speak­ing. Silently they all with­drew and left him stand­ing alone with his par­ents. Pres­ently the young man re­lieved the em­bar­rass­ment of all three when he qui­etly said: “Come, my par­ents, none has done aught but that which he thought best. Our Fa­ther in heaven has or­dained these things; let us de­part for home.”

122:0.3From the three cou­ples nom­i­nated, Ga­briel made the per­sonal choice of Joseph and Mary, sub­se­quently mak­ing his per­sonal ap­pear­ance to Mary, at which time he im­parted to her the glad tid­ings that she had been se­lected to be­come the earth mother of the be­stowal child.

126:2.1All did go well un­til that fate­ful day of Tues­day, Septem­ber 25, when a run­ner from Sep­pho­ris brought to this Naz­a­reth home the tragic news that Joseph had been severely in­jured by the falling of a der­rick while at work on the gov­er­nor’s res­i­dence. The mes­sen­ger from Sep­pho­ris had stopped at the shop on the way to Joseph’s home, in­form­ing Je­sus of his fa­ther’s ac­ci­dent, and they went to­gether to the house to break the sad news to Mary. Je­sus de­sired to go im­me­di­ately to his fa­ther, but Mary would hear to noth­ing but that she must has­ten to her hus­band’s side. She di­rected that James, then ten years of age, should ac­com­pany her to Sep­pho­ris while Je­sus re­mained home with the younger chil­dren un­til she should re­turn, as she did not know how se­ri­ously Joseph had been in­jured. But Joseph died of his in­juries be­fore Mary ar­rived. They brought him to Naz­a­reth, and on the fol­low­ing day he was laid to rest with his fa­thers.

126:2.2Just at the time when prospects were good and the fu­ture looked bright, an ap­par­ently cruel hand struck down the head of this Naz­a­reth house­hold, the af­fairs of this home were dis­rupted, and ev­ery plan for Je­sus and his fu­ture ed­u­ca­tion was de­mol­ished. This car­pen­ter lad, now just past four­teen years of age, awak­ened to the re­al­iza­tion that he had not only to ful­fill the com­mis­sion of his heav­enly Fa­ther to re­veal the di­vine na­ture on earth and in the flesh, but that his young hu­man na­ture must also shoul­der the re­spon­si­bil­ity of car­ing for his wid­owed mother and seven broth­ers and sis­ters—and an­other yet to be born. This lad of Naz­a­reth now be­came the sole sup­port and com­fort of this so sud­denly be­reaved fam­ily. Thus were per­mit­ted those oc­cur­rences of the nat­u­ral or­der of events on Uran­tia which would force this young man of des­tiny so early to as­sume these heavy but highly ed­u­ca­tional and dis­ci­plinary re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at­ten­dant upon be­com­ing the head of a hu­man fam­ily, of be­com­ing fa­ther to his own broth­ers and sis­ters, of sup­port­ing and pro­tect­ing his mother, of func­tion­ing as guard­ian of his fa­ther’s home, the only home he was to know while on this world.

126:2.3Je­sus cheer­fully ac­cepted the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties so sud­denly thrust upon him, and he car­ried them faith­fully to the end. At least one great prob­lem and an­tic­i­pated dif­fi­culty in his life had been trag­i­cally solved—he would not now be ex­pected to go to Je­ru­sa­lem to study un­der the rab­bis. It re­mained al­ways true that Je­sus “sat at no man’s feet.” He was ever will­ing to learn from even the hum­blest of lit­tle chil­dren, but he never de­rived au­thor­ity to teach truth from hu­man sources.

126:2.4Still he knew noth­ing of the Ga­briel visit to his mother be­fore his birth; he only learned of this from John on the day of his bap­tism, at the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry.

126:2.5As the years passed, this young car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth in­creas­ingly mea­sured ev­ery in­sti­tu­tion of so­ci­ety and ev­ery us­age of re­li­gion by the un­vary­ing test: What does it do for the hu­man soul? does it bring God to man? does it bring man to God? While this youth did not wholly ne­glect the recre­ational and so­cial as­pects of life, more and more he de­voted his time and en­er­gies to just two pur­poses: the care of his fam­ily and the prepa­ra­tion to do his Fa­ther’s heav­enly will on earth.

126:2.6This year it be­came the cus­tom for the neigh­bors to drop in dur­ing the win­ter evenings to hear Je­sus play upon the harp, to lis­ten to his sto­ries (for the lad was a mas­ter sto­ry­teller), and to hear him read from the Greek scrip­tures.

126:2.7The eco­nomic af­fairs of the fam­ily con­tin­ued to run fairly smoothly as there was quite a sum of money on hand at the time of Joseph’s death. Je­sus early demon­strated the pos­ses­sion of keen busi­ness judg­ment and fi­nan­cial sagac­ity. He was lib­eral but fru­gal; he was sav­ing but gen­er­ous. He proved to be a wise and ef­fi­cient ad­min­is­tra­tor of his fa­ther’s es­tate.

126:2.8But in spite of all that Je­sus and the Naz­a­reth neigh­bors could do to bring cheer into the home, Mary, and even the chil­dren, were over­cast with sad­ness. Joseph was gone. Joseph was an un­usual hus­band and fa­ther, and they all missed him. And it seemed all the more tragic to think that he died ere they could speak to him or hear his farewell bless­ing.

126:5.11At one time Je­sus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up suf­fi­cient means, pro­vided they could col­lect the con­sid­er­able sum of money due his fa­ther for work on Herod’s palace, to war­rant un­der­tak­ing the pur­chase of a small farm. He had re­ally given se­ri­ous thought to this plan of mov­ing his fam­ily out into the coun­try. But when Herod re­fused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the am­bi­tion of own­ing a home in the coun­try. As it was, they con­trived to en­joy much of the ex­pe­ri­ence of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chick­ens, a don­key, and a dog, in ad­di­tion to the doves. Even the lit­tle tots had their reg­u­lar du­ties to per­form in the well-reg­u­lated scheme of man­age­ment which char­ac­ter­ized the home life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily.

185:4.1When Herod An­tipas stopped in Je­ru­sa­lem, he dwelt in the old Mac­cabean palace of Herod the Great, and it was to this home of the for­mer king that Je­sus was now taken by the tem­ple guards, and he was fol­lowed by his ac­cusers and an in­creas­ing mul­ti­tude. Herod had long heard of Je­sus, and he was very cu­ri­ous about him. When the Son of Man stood be­fore him, on this Fri­day morn­ing, the wicked Idumean never for one mo­ment re­called the lad of for­mer years who had ap­peared be­fore him in Sep­pho­ris plead­ing for a just de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the money due his fa­ther, who had been ac­ci­den­tally killed while at work on one of the pub­lic build­ings. As far as Herod knew, he had never seen Je­sus, al­though he had wor­ried a great deal about him when his work had been cen­tered in Gal­i­lee. Now that he was in cus­tody of Pi­late and the Judeans, Herod was de­sirous of see­ing him, feel­ing se­cure against any trou­ble from him in the fu­ture. Herod had heard much about the mir­a­cles wrought by Je­sus, and he re­ally hoped to see him do some won­der.

124:1.4But trou­ble was again stirred up at school when one of the more back­ward pupils dis­cov­ered Je­sus draw­ing a char­coal pic­ture of the teacher on the floor of the school­room. There it was, plain as day, and many of the el­ders had viewed it be­fore the com­mit­tee went to call on Joseph to de­mand that some­thing be done to sup­press the law­less­ness of his el­dest son. And though this was not the first time com­plaints had come to Joseph and Mary about the do­ings of their ver­sa­tile and ag­gres­sive child, this was the most se­ri­ous of all the ac­cu­sa­tions which had thus far been lodged against him. Je­sus lis­tened to the in­dict­ment of his artis­tic ef­forts for some time, be­ing seated on a large stone just out­side the back door. He re­sented their blam­ing his fa­ther for his al­leged mis­deeds; so in he marched, fear­lessly con­fronting his ac­cusers. The el­ders were thrown into con­fu­sion. Some were in­clined to view the episode hu­mor­ously, while one or two seemed to think the boy was sac­ri­le­gious if not blas­phe­mous. Joseph was non­plused, Mary in­dig­nant, but Je­sus in­sisted on be­ing heard. He had his say, coura­geously de­fended his view­point, and with con­sum­mate self-con­trol an­nounced that he would abide by the de­ci­sion of his fa­ther in this as in all other mat­ters con­tro­ver­sial. And the com­mit­tee of el­ders de­parted in si­lence.

124:1.5Mary en­deav­ored to in­flu­ence Joseph to per­mit Je­sus to model in clay at home, pro­vided he prom­ised not to carry on any of these ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ties at school, but Joseph felt im­pelled to rule that the rab­bini­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the sec­ond com­mand­ment should pre­vail. And so Je­sus no more drew or mod­eled the like­ness of any­thing from that day as long as he lived in his fa­ther’s house. But he was un­con­vinced of the wrong of what he had done, and to give up such a fa­vorite pas­time con­sti­tuted one of the great tri­als of his young life.

122:7.4Joseph and Mary were poor, and since they had only one beast of bur­den, Mary, be­ing large with child, rode on the an­i­mal with the pro­vi­sions while Joseph walked, lead­ing the beast. The build­ing and fur­nish­ing of a home had been a great drain on Joseph since he had also to con­tribute to the sup­port of his par­ents, as his fa­ther had been re­cently dis­abled. And so this Jew­ish cou­ple went forth from their hum­ble home early on the morn­ing of Au­gust 18, 7 B.C., on their jour­ney to Beth­le­hem.

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.

125:3.2The Naz­a­reth trav­el­ers did not miss Je­sus be­cause Mary sur­mised he jour­neyed with the men, while Joseph thought he trav­eled with the women since he had gone up to Je­ru­sa­lem with the women, lead­ing Mary’s don­key. They did not dis­cover his ab­sence un­til they reached Jeri­cho and pre­pared to tarry for the night. Af­ter mak­ing in­quiry of the last of the party to reach Jeri­cho and learn­ing that none of them had seen their son, they spent a sleep­less night, turn­ing over in their minds what might have hap­pened to him, re­count­ing many of his un­usual re­ac­tions to the events of Pass­over week, and mildly chid­ing each other for not see­ing to it that he was in the group be­fore they left Je­ru­sa­lem.

126:3.1By the mid­dle of this fif­teenth year—and we are reck­on­ing time in ac­cor­dance with the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury cal­en­dar, not by the Jew­ish year—Je­sus had taken a firm grasp upon the man­age­ment of his fam­ily. Be­fore this year had passed, their sav­ings had about dis­ap­peared, and they were face to face with the ne­ces­sity of dis­pos­ing of one of the Naz­a­reth houses which Joseph and his neigh­bor Ja­cob owned in part­ner­ship.

126:1.4Early this year Joseph ar­ranged to set aside the in­come from his Naz­a­reth and Ca­per­naum prop­erty to pay for Je­sus’ long course of study at Je­ru­sa­lem, it hav­ing been planned that he should go to Je­ru­sa­lem in Au­gust of the fol­low­ing year when he would be fif­teen years of age.

124:4.7Dur­ing his last year at school, when he was twelve years old, Je­sus re­mon­strated with his fa­ther about the Jew­ish cus­tom of touch­ing the bit of parch­ment nailed upon the door­post each time on go­ing into, or com­ing out of, the house and then kiss­ing the fin­ger that touched the parch­ment. As a part of this rit­ual it was cus­tom­ary to say, “The Lord shall pre­serve our go­ing out and our com­ing in, from this time forth and even forever­more.” Joseph and Mary had re­peat­edly in­structed Je­sus as to the rea­sons for not mak­ing im­ages or draw­ing pic­tures, ex­plain­ing that such cre­ations might be used for idol­a­trous pur­poses. Though Je­sus failed fully to grasp their pro­scrip­tions against im­ages and pic­tures, he pos­sessed a high con­cept of con­sis­tency and there­fore pointed out to his fa­ther the es­sen­tially idol­a­trous na­ture of this ha­bit­ual obei­sance to the door­post parch­ment. And Joseph re­moved the parch­ment af­ter Je­sus had thus re­mon­strated with him.

123:5.12Naz­a­reth was one of the twenty-four priest cen­ters of the He­brew na­tion. But the Galilean priest­hood was more lib­eral in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the tra­di­tional laws than were the Judean scribes and rab­bis. And at Naz­a­reth they were also more lib­eral re­gard­ing the ob­ser­vance of the Sab­bath. It was there­fore the cus­tom for Joseph to take Je­sus out for walks on Sab­bath af­ter­noons, one of their fa­vorite jaunts be­ing to climb the high hill near their home, from which they could ob­tain a panoramic view of all Gal­i­lee. To the north­west, on clear days, they could see the long ridge of Mount Carmel run­ning down to the sea; and many times Je­sus heard his fa­ther re­late the story of Eli­jah, one of the first of that long line of He­brew proph­ets, who re­proved Ahab and ex­posed the priests of Baal. To the north Mount Her­mon raised its snowy peak in ma­jes­tic splen­dor and mo­nop­o­lized the sky­line, al­most 3,000 feet of the up­per slopes glis­ten­ing white with per­pet­ual snow. Far to the east they could dis­cern the Jor­dan val­ley and, far be­yond, the rocky hills of Moab. Also to the south and the east, when the sun shone upon their mar­ble walls, they could see the Greco-Ro­man cities of the De­capo­lis, with their am­phithe­aters and pre­ten­tious tem­ples. And when they lin­gered to­ward the go­ing down of the sun, to the west they could make out the sail­ing ves­sels on the dis­tant Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

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.

123:3.6Dur­ing this year Joseph and Mary had trou­ble with Je­sus about his prayers. He in­sisted on talk­ing to his heav­enly Fa­ther much as he would talk to Joseph, his earthly fa­ther. This de­par­ture from the more solemn and rev­er­ent modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with De­ity was a bit dis­con­cert­ing to his par­ents, es­pe­cially to his mother, but there was no per­suad­ing him to change; he would say his prayers just as he had been taught, af­ter which he in­sisted on hav­ing “just a lit­tle talk with my Fa­ther in heaven.”

124:4.6Joseph en­ter­tained a grow­ing be­lief in the spir­i­tual na­ture of Je­sus’ mis­sion. And but for other and more im­por­tant rea­sons it does seem un­for­tu­nate that he could not have lived to see the ful­fill­ment of his con­cept of Je­sus’ be­stowal on earth.

• employed as foreman in Alexandria

123:0.1Ow­ing to the un­cer­tain­ties and anx­i­eties of their so­journ in Beth­le­hem, Mary did not wean the babe un­til they had ar­rived safely in Alexan­dria, where the fam­ily was able to set­tle down to a nor­mal life. They lived with kins­folk, and Joseph was well able to sup­port his fam­ily as he se­cured work shortly af­ter their ar­rival. He was em­ployed as a car­pen­ter for sev­eral months and then el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of fore­man of a large group of work­men em­ployed on one of the pub­lic build­ings then in pro­cess of con­struc­tion. This new ex­pe­ri­ence gave him the idea of be­com­ing a con­trac­tor and builder af­ter their re­turn to Naz­a­reth.

• became builder; trebled family income

123:3.7In June of this year Joseph turned the shop in Naz­a­reth over to his broth­ers and for­mally en­tered upon his work as a builder. Be­fore the year was over, the fam­ily in­come had more than tre­bled. Never again, un­til af­ter Joseph’s death, did the Naz­a­reth fam­ily feel the pinch of pov­erty. The fam­ily grew larger and larger, and they spent much money on ex­tra ed­u­ca­tion and travel, but al­ways Joseph’s in­creas­ing in­come kept pace with the grow­ing ex­penses.

• in Sepphoris

124:5.5Fri­day of the week be­fore, Joseph had come over from Sep­pho­ris, where he was in charge of the work on a new pub­lic build­ing, to be pres­ent on this glad oc­ca­sion. Je­sus’ teacher con­fi­dently be­lieved that his alert and dili­gent pupil was des­tined to some out­stand­ing ca­reer, some dis­tin­guished mis­sion. The el­ders, not­with­stand­ing all their trou­ble with Je­sus’ non­con­formist ten­den­cies, were very proud of the lad and had al­ready be­gun lay­ing plans which would en­able him to go to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­tinue his ed­u­ca­tion in the renowned He­brew academies.