Nazareth

• Nazareth

138:1.4It had been ar­ranged that the six were to la­bor for two weeks, af­ter which they were to re­turn to the home of Zeb­e­dee for a con­fer­ence. Mean­time Je­sus went over to Naz­a­reth to visit with Joseph and Si­mon and other mem­bers of his fam­ily liv­ing in that vicin­ity. Je­sus did ev­ery­thing hu­manly pos­si­ble, con­sis­tent with his ded­i­ca­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will, to re­tain the con­fi­dence and af­fec­tion of his fam­ily. In this mat­ter he did his full duty and more.

123:5.7Naz­a­reth was a car­a­van way sta­tion and cross­roads of travel and largely gen­tile in pop­u­la­tion; at the same time it was widely known as a cen­ter of lib­eral in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Jew­ish tra­di­tional law. In Gal­i­lee the Jews min­gled more freely with the gen­tiles than was their prac­tice in Judea. And of all the cities of Gal­i­lee, the Jews of Naz­a­reth were most lib­eral in their in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the so­cial re­stric­tions based on the fears of con­tam­i­na­tion as a re­sult of con­tact with the gen­tiles. And these con­di­tions gave rise to the com­mon say­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem, “Can any good thing come out of Naz­a­reth?”

125:4.3At the sec­ond con­fer­ence Je­sus had made bold to ask ques­tions, and in a very amaz­ing way he par­tic­i­pated in the tem­ple dis­cus­sions but al­ways in a man­ner con­sis­tent with his youth. Some­times his pointed ques­tions were some­what em­bar­rass­ing to the learned teach­ers of the Jew­ish law, but he evinced such a spirit of can­did fair­ness, cou­pled with an ev­i­dent hunger for knowl­edge, that the ma­jor­ity of the tem­ple teach­ers were dis­posed to treat him with ev­ery con­sid­er­a­tion. But when he pre­sumed to ques­tion the jus­tice of putting to death a drunken gen­tile who had wan­dered out­side the court of the gen­tiles and un­wit­tingly en­tered the for­bid­den and re­put­edly sa­cred precincts of the tem­ple, one of the more in­tol­er­ant teach­ers grew im­pa­tient with the lad’s im­plied crit­i­cisms and, glow­er­ing down upon him, asked how old he was. Je­sus replied, “thir­teen years lack­ing a tri­fle more than four months.” “Then,” re­joined the now irate teacher, “why are you here, since you are not of age as a son of the law?” And when Je­sus ex­plained that he had re­ceived con­se­cra­tion dur­ing the Pass­over, and that he was a fin­ished stu­dent of the Naz­a­reth schools, the teach­ers with one ac­cord de­ri­sively replied, “We might have known; he is from Naz­a­reth.” But the leader in­sisted that Je­sus was not to be blamed if the rulers of the syn­a­gogue at Naz­a­reth had grad­u­ated him, tech­ni­cally, when he was twelve in­stead of thir­teen; and not­with­stand­ing that sev­eral of his de­trac­tors got up and left, it was ruled that the lad might con­tinue undis­turbed as a pupil of the tem­ple dis­cus­sions.

137:2.2That day, as Je­sus and his four dis­ci­ple-apos­tles de­parted for Gal­i­lee, there was a great tu­mult in the camp of John’s fol­low­ers. The first great di­vi­sion was about to take place. The day be­fore, John had made his pos­i­tive pro­nounce­ment to An­drew and Ezra that Je­sus was the De­liv­erer. An­drew de­cided to fol­low Je­sus, but Ezra re­jected the mild-man­nered car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth, pro­claim­ing to his as­so­ciates: “The Prophet Daniel de­clares that the Son of Man will come with the clouds of heaven, in power and great glory. This Galilean car­pen­ter, this Ca­per­naum boat­builder, can­not be the De­liv­erer. Can such a gift of God come out of Naz­a­reth? This Je­sus is a rel­a­tive of John, and through much kind­ness of heart has our teacher been de­ceived. Let us re­main aloof from this false Mes­siah.” When John re­buked Ezra for these ut­ter­ances, he drew away with many dis­ci­ples and has­tened south. And this group con­tin­ued to bap­tize in John’s name and even­tu­ally founded a sect of those who be­lieved in John but re­fused to ac­cept Je­sus. A rem­nant of this group per­sists in Mes­o­po­ta­mia even to this day.

137:2.6Philip now mo­tioned to the group to re­main where they were while he hur­ried back to break the news of his de­ci­sion to his friend Na­than­iel, who still tar­ried be­hind un­der the mul­berry tree, turn­ing over in his mind the many things which he had heard con­cern­ing John the Bap­tist, the com­ing king­dom, and the ex­pected Mes­siah. Philip broke in upon these med­i­ta­tions, ex­claim­ing, “I have found the De­liv­erer, him of whom Moses and the proph­ets wrote and whom John has pro­claimed.” Na­than­iel, look­ing up, in­quired, “Whence comes this teacher?” And Philip replied, “He is Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, the son of Joseph, the car­pen­ter, more re­cently re­sid­ing at Ca­per­naum.” And then, some­what shocked, Na­than­iel asked, “Can any such good thing come out of Naz­a­reth?” But Philip, tak­ing him by the arm, said, “Come and see.”

139:6.3Je­sus did not him­self give Na­than­iel a nick­name, but the twelve soon be­gan to speak of him in terms that sig­ni­fied hon­esty, sin­cer­ity. He was “with­out guile.” And this was his great virtue; he was both hon­est and sin­cere. The weak­ness of his char­ac­ter was his pride; he was very proud of his fam­ily, his city, his rep­u­ta­tion, and his na­tion, all of which is com­mend­able if it is not car­ried too far. But Na­than­iel was in­clined to go to ex­tremes with his per­sonal prej­u­dices. He was dis­posed to pre­judge in­di­vid­u­als in ac­cor­dance with his per­sonal opin­ions. He was not slow to ask the ques­tion, even be­fore he had met Je­sus, “Can any good thing come out of Naz­a­reth?” But Na­than­iel was not ob­sti­nate, even if he was proud. He was quick to re­verse him­self when he once looked into Je­sus’ face.

187:2.5Af­ter the Mas­ter was hoisted on the cross, the cap­tain nailed the ti­tle up above his head, and it read in three lan­guages, “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth—the King of the Jews.” The Jews were in­fu­ri­ated by this be­lieved in­sult. But Pi­late was chafed by their dis­re­spect­ful man­ner; he felt he had been in­tim­i­dated and hu­mil­i­ated, and he took this method of ob­tain­ing petty re­venge. He could have writ­ten “Je­sus, a rebel.” But he well knew how these Je­ru­sa­lem Jews de­tested the very name of Naz­a­reth, and he was de­ter­mined thus to hu­mil­i­ate them. He knew that they would also be cut to the very quick by see­ing this ex­e­cuted Galilean called “The King of the Jews.”

123:5.8Je­sus re­ceived his moral train­ing and spir­i­tual cul­ture chiefly in his own home. He se­cured much of his in­tel­lec­tual and the­o­log­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion from the chazan. But his real ed­u­ca­tion—that equip­ment of mind and heart for the ac­tual test of grap­pling with the dif­fi­cult prob­lems of life—he ob­tained by min­gling with his fel­low men. It was this close as­so­ci­a­tion with his fel­low men, young and old, Jew and gen­tile, that af­forded him the op­por­tu­nity to know the hu­man race. Je­sus was highly ed­u­cated in that he thor­oughly un­der­stood men and de­vot­edly loved them.

123:5.9Through­out his years at the syn­a­gogue he was a bril­liant stu­dent, pos­sess­ing a great ad­van­tage since he was con­ver­sant with three lan­guages. The Naz­a­reth chazan, on the oc­ca­sion of Je­sus’ fin­ish­ing the course in his school, re­marked to Joseph that he feared he “had learned more from Je­sus’ search­ing ques­tions” than he had “been able to teach the lad.”

123:5.10Through­out his course of study Je­sus learned much and de­rived great in­spi­ra­tion from the reg­u­lar Sab­bath ser­mons in the syn­a­gogue. It was cus­tom­ary to ask dis­tin­guished vis­i­tors, stop­ping over the Sab­bath in Naz­a­reth, to ad­dress the syn­a­gogue. As Je­sus grew up, he heard many great thinkers of the en­tire Jew­ish world ex­pound their views, and many also who were hardly or­tho­dox Jews since the syn­a­gogue of Naz­a­reth was an ad­vanced and lib­eral cen­ter of He­brew thought and cul­ture.

123:5.11When en­ter­ing school at seven years (at this time the Jews had just in­au­gu­rated a com­pul­sory ed­u­ca­tion law), it was cus­tom­ary for the pupils to choose their “birth­day text,” a sort of golden rule to guide them through­out their stud­ies, one upon which they of­ten ex­pa­ti­ated at their grad­u­a­tion when thir­teen years old. The text which Je­sus chose was from the Prophet Isa­iah: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives, and to set the spir­i­tual pris­on­ers free.”

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.

124:4.8As time passed, Je­sus did much to mod­ify their prac­tice of re­li­gious forms, such as the fam­ily prayers and other cus­toms. And it was pos­si­ble to do many such things at Naz­a­reth, for its syn­a­gogue was un­der the in­flu­ence of a lib­eral school of rab­bis, ex­em­pli­fied by the renowned Naz­a­reth teacher, Jose.

124:1.9The cli­mate of Naz­a­reth was not se­vere. Jan­uary was the cold­est month, the tem­per­a­ture av­er­ag­ing around 50° F. Dur­ing July and Au­gust, the hottest months, the tem­per­a­ture would vary from 75° to 90° F. From the moun­tains to the Jor­dan and the Dead Sea val­ley the cli­mate of Pales­tine ranged from the frigid to the tor­rid. And so, in a way, the Jews were pre­pared to live in about any and all of the world’s vary­ing cli­mates.

150:7.2The peo­ple of Naz­a­reth were never re­puted for piety and righ­teous liv­ing. As the years passed, this vil­lage be­came in­creas­ingly con­tam­i­nated by the low moral stan­dards of near-by Sep­pho­ris. Through­out Je­sus’ youth and young man­hood there had been a di­vi­sion of opin­ion in Naz­a­reth re­gard­ing him; there was much re­sent­ment when he moved to Ca­per­naum. While the in­hab­i­tants of Naz­a­reth had heard much about the do­ings of their for­mer car­pen­ter, they were of­fended that he had never in­cluded his na­tive vil­lage in any of his ear­lier preach­ing tours. They had in­deed heard of Je­sus’ fame, but the ma­jor­ity of the cit­i­zens were an­gry be­cause he had done none of his great works in the city of his youth. For months the peo­ple of Naz­a­reth had dis­cussed Je­sus much, but their opin­ions were, on the whole, un­fa­vor­able to him.

162:3.4This woman, once comely, was the wife of an in­fe­rior cit­i­zen of Naz­a­reth, a man who had been a trou­ble­maker for Je­sus through­out his youth­ful days. The man, hav­ing mar­ried this woman, did most shame­fully force her to earn their liv­ing by mak­ing com­merce of her body. He had come up to the feast at Je­ru­sa­lem that his wife might thus pros­ti­tute her phys­i­cal charms for fi­nan­cial gain. He had en­tered into a bar­gain with the hire­lings of the Jew­ish rulers thus to be­tray his own wife in her com­mer­cial­ized vice. And so they came with the woman and her com­pan­ion in trans­gres­sion for the pur­pose of en­snar­ing Je­sus into mak­ing some state­ment which could be used against him in case of his ar­rest.

126:1.2This hill, a lit­tle more than one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously, had been the “high place of Baal,” and now it was the site of the tomb of Sim­eon, a re­puted holy man of Is­rael. From the sum­mit of this hill of Sim­eon, Je­sus looked out over Naz­a­reth and the sur­round­ing coun­try. He would gaze upon Megiddo and re­call the story of the Egyp­tian army win­ning its first great vic­tory in Asia; and how, later on, an­other such army de­feated the Judean king Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deb­o­rah and Barak de­feated Sis­era. In the dis­tance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he had been taught Joseph’s breth­ren sold him into Egyp­tian slav­ery. He then would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Ger­izim and re­count to him­self the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Ja­cob, and Abim­elech. And thus he re­called and turned over in his mind the his­toric and tra­di­tional events of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple.

• early childhood in

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.

122:6.1The home of Je­sus was not far from the high hill in the northerly part of Naz­a­reth, some dis­tance from the vil­lage spring, which was in the east­ern sec­tion of the town. Je­sus’ fam­ily dwelt in the out­skirts of the city, and this made it all the eas­ier for him sub­se­quently to en­joy fre­quent strolls in the coun­try and to make trips up to the top of this near-by high­land, the high­est of all the hills of south­ern Gal­i­lee save the Mount Ta­bor range to the east and the hill of Nain, which was about the same height. Their home was lo­cated a lit­tle to the south and east of the south­ern promon­tory of this hill and about mid­way be­tween the base of this el­e­va­tion and the road lead­ing out of Naz­a­reth to­ward Cana. Aside from climb­ing the hill, Je­sus’ fa­vorite stroll was to fol­low a nar­row trail wind­ing about the base of the hill in a north­east­erly di­rec­tion to a point where it joined the road to Sep­pho­ris.

122:6.2The home of Joseph and Mary was a one-room stone struc­ture with a flat roof and an ad­join­ing build­ing for hous­ing the an­i­mals. The fur­ni­ture con­sisted of a low stone ta­ble, earth­en­ware and stone dishes and pots, a loom, a lamp­stand, sev­eral small stools, and mats for sleep­ing on the stone floor. In the back yard, near the an­i­mal an­nex, was the shel­ter which cov­ered the oven and the mill for grind­ing grain. It re­quired two per­sons to op­er­ate this type of mill, one to grind and an­other to feed the grain. As a small boy Je­sus of­ten fed grain to this mill while his mother turned the grinder.

122:6.3In later years, as the fam­ily grew in size, they would all squat about the en­larged stone ta­ble to en­joy their meals, help­ing them­selves from a com­mon dish, or pot, of food. Dur­ing the win­ter, at the evening meal the ta­ble would be lighted by a small, flat clay lamp, which was filled with olive oil. Af­ter the birth of Martha, Joseph built an ad­di­tion to this house, a large room, which was used as a car­pen­ter shop dur­ing the day and as a sleep­ing room at night.

123:1.1On the fourth day of the jour­ney the party reached its des­ti­na­tion in safety. They ar­rived unan­nounced at the Naz­a­reth home, which had been oc­cu­pied for more than three years by one of Joseph’s mar­ried broth­ers, who was in­deed sur­prised to see them; so qui­etly had they gone about their busi­ness that nei­ther the fam­ily of Joseph nor that of Mary knew they had even left Alexan­dria. The next day Joseph’s brother moved his fam­ily, and Mary, for the first time since Je­sus’ birth, set­tled down with her lit­tle fam­ily to en­joy life in their own home. In less than a week Joseph se­cured work as a car­pen­ter, and they were su­premely happy.

123:1.2Je­sus was about three years and two months old at the time of their re­turn to Naz­a­reth. He had stood all these trav­els very well and was in ex­cel­lent health and full of child­ish glee and ex­cite­ment at hav­ing premises of his own to run about in and to en­joy. But he greatly missed the as­so­ci­a­tion of his Alexan­drian play­mates.

123:1.3On the way to Naz­a­reth Joseph had per­suaded Mary that it would be un­wise to spread the word among their Galilean friends and rel­a­tives that Je­sus was a child of prom­ise. They agreed to re­frain from all men­tion of these mat­ters to any­one. And they were both very faith­ful in keep­ing this prom­ise.

123:1.4Je­sus’ en­tire fourth year was a pe­riod of nor­mal phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and of un­usual men­tal ac­tiv­ity. Mean­time he had formed a very close at­tach­ment for a neigh­bor boy about his own age named Ja­cob. Je­sus and Ja­cob were al­ways happy in their play, and they grew up to be great friends and loyal com­pan­ions.

123:1.5The next im­por­tant event in the life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily was the birth of the sec­ond child, James, in the early morn­ing hours of April 2, 3 B.C. Je­sus was thrilled by the thought of hav­ing a baby brother, and he would stand around by the hour just to ob­serve the baby’s early ac­tiv­i­ties.

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.

123:1.7In July of this year, one month be­fore Je­sus was four years old, an out­break of ma­lig­nant in­testi­nal trou­ble spread over all Naz­a­reth from con­tact with the car­a­van trav­el­ers. Mary be­came so alarmed by the dan­ger of Je­sus be­ing ex­posed to this epi­demic of dis­ease that she bun­dled up both her chil­dren and fled to the coun­try home of her brother, sev­eral miles south of Naz­a­reth on the Megiddo road near Sarid. They did not re­turn to Naz­a­reth for more than two months; Je­sus greatly en­joyed this, his first ex­pe­ri­ence on a farm.

• early childhood in

123:2.14Though Joseph was now as­sum­ing the di­rect re­spon­si­bil­ity for Je­sus’ in­tel­lec­tual and re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion, his mother still in­ter­ested her­self in his home train­ing. She taught him to know and care for the vines and flow­ers grow­ing about the gar­den walls which com­pletely sur­rounded the home plot. She also pro­vided on the roof of the house (the sum­mer bed­room) shal­low boxes of sand in which Je­sus worked out maps and did much of his early prac­tice at writ­ing Ara­maic, Greek, and later on, He­brew, for in time he learned to read, write, and speak, flu­ently, all three lan­guages.

• read Scriptures at synagogue

123:5.4Je­sus early be­came a mas­ter of He­brew, and as a young man, when no vis­i­tor of promi­nence hap­pened to be so­journ­ing in Naz­a­reth, he would of­ten be asked to read the He­brew scrip­tures to the faith­ful as­sem­bled in the syn­a­gogue at the reg­u­lar Sab­bath ser­vices.

• graduation from synagogue

124:5.4On the first day of the week, March 20, A.D. 7, Je­sus grad­u­ated from the course of train­ing in the lo­cal school con­nected with the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue. This was a great day in the life of any am­bi­tious Jew­ish fam­ily, the day when the first-born son was pro­nounced a “son of the com­mand­ment” and the ran­somed first-born of the Lord God of Is­rael, a “child of the Most High” and ser­vant of the Lord of all the earth.

126:4.1With the com­ing of his fif­teenth birth­day, Je­sus could of­fi­cially oc­cupy the syn­a­gogue pul­pit on the Sab­bath day. Many times be­fore, in the ab­sence of speak­ers, Je­sus had been asked to read the Scrip­tures, but now the day had come when, ac­cord­ing to law, he could con­duct the ser­vice. There­fore on the first Sab­bath af­ter his fif­teenth birth­day the chazan ar­ranged for Je­sus to con­duct the morn­ing ser­vice of the syn­a­gogue. And when all the faith­ful in Naz­a­reth had as­sem­bled, the young man, hav­ing made his se­lec­tion of Scrip­tures, stood up and be­gan to read:

126:4.2“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives, and to set the spir­i­tual pris­on­ers free; to pro­claim the year of God’s fa­vor and the day of our God’s reck­on­ing; to com­fort all mourn­ers, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy in the place of mourn­ing, a song of praise in­stead of the spirit of sor­row, that they may be called trees of righ­teous­ness, the plant­ing of the Lord, where­with he may be glo­ri­fied.

126:4.3“Seek good and not evil that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you. Hate the evil and love the good; es­tab­lish judg­ment in the gate. Per­haps the Lord God will be gra­cious to the rem­nant of Joseph.

126:4.4“Wash your­selves, make your­selves clean; put away the evil of your do­ings from be­fore my eyes; cease to do evil and learn to do good; seek jus­tice, re­lieve the op­pressed. De­fend the fa­ther­less and plead for the widow.

126:4.5“Where­with shall I come be­fore the Lord, to bow my­self be­fore the Lord of all the earth? Shall I come be­fore him with burnt of­fer­ings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thou­sands of rams, ten thou­sands of sheep, or with rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my trans­gres­sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? No! for the Lord has showed us, O men, what is good. And what does the Lord re­quire of you but to deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

126:4.6“To whom, then, will you liken God who sits upon the cir­cle of the earth? Lift up your eyes and be­hold who has cre­ated all these worlds, who brings forth their host by num­ber and calls them all by their names. He does all these things by the great­ness of his might, and be­cause he is strong in power, not one fails. He gives power to the weak, and to those who are weary he in­creases strength. Fear not, for I am with you; be not dis­mayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and I will help you; yes, I will up­hold you with the right hand of my righ­teous­ness, for I am the Lord your God. And I will hold your right hand, say­ing to you, fear not, for I will help you.

126:4.7“And you are my wit­ness, says the Lord, and my ser­vant whom I have cho­sen that all may know and be­lieve me and un­der­stand that I am the Eter­nal. I, even I, am the Lord, and be­side me there is no sav­ior.”

126:4.8And when he had thus read, he sat down, and the peo­ple went to their homes, pon­der­ing over the words which he had so gra­ciously read to them. Never had his towns­peo­ple seen him so mag­nif­i­cently solemn; never had they heard his voice so earnest and so sin­cere; never had they ob­served him so manly and de­ci­sive, so au­thor­i­ta­tive.

126:4.9This Sab­bath af­ter­noon Je­sus climbed the Naz­a­reth hill with James and, when they re­turned home, wrote out the Ten Com­mand­ments in Greek on two smooth boards in char­coal. Sub­se­quently Martha col­ored and dec­o­rated these boards, and for long they hung on the wall over James’s small work­bench.

• early childhood in

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.

• fell from favor in

127:2.10The cri­sis for the time be­ing was over, but never was this in­ci­dent for­got­ten in Naz­a­reth. The ag­i­ta­tion per­sisted; not again was Je­sus in uni­ver­sal fa­vor; the di­vi­sion of sen­ti­ment was never fully over­come. And this, aug­mented by other and sub­se­quent oc­cur­rences, was one of the chief rea­sons why he moved to Ca­per­naum in later years. Hence­forth Naz­a­reth main­tained a di­vi­sion of sen­ti­ment re­gard­ing the Son of Man.

• read Scriptures at synagogue

127:3.8Sev­eral times a year, when vis­i­tors were not pres­ent thus to func­tion, Je­sus con­tin­ued to read the Sab­bath scrip­tures at the syn­a­gogue and many times of­fered com­ments on the les­son, but usu­ally he so se­lected the pas­sages that com­ment was un­nec­es­sary. He was skill­ful, so ar­rang­ing the or­der of the read­ing of the var­i­ous pas­sages that the one would il­lu­mi­nate the other. He never failed, weather per­mit­ting, to take his broth­ers and sis­ters out on Sab­bath af­ter­noons for their na­ture strolls.

• read Scriptures at synagogue

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.

• told apostles to remain away from N.

145:5.8When Je­sus had spo­ken, An­drew and his fel­low apos­tles sor­row­fully made their way back to Zeb­e­dee’s house, dis­missed the as­sem­bled mul­ti­tude, and quickly made ready for the jour­ney as Je­sus had di­rected. And so, on the af­ter­noon of Sun­day, Jan­uary 18, A.D. 28, Je­sus and the apos­tles started out upon their first re­ally pub­lic and open preach­ing tour of the cities of Gal­i­lee. On this first tour they preached the gospel of the king­dom in many cities, but they did not visit Naz­a­reth.

• told apostles to remain away from N.

146:0.2This was the first time Je­sus per­mit­ted his as­so­ciates to preach with­out re­straint. On this tour he cau­tioned them on only three oc­ca­sions; he ad­mon­ished them to re­main away from Naz­a­reth and to be dis­creet when pass­ing through Ca­per­naum and Tiberias. It was a source of great sat­is­fac­tion to the apos­tles at last to feel they were at lib­erty to preach and teach with­out re­stric­tion, and they threw them­selves into the work of preach­ing the gospel, min­is­ter­ing to the sick, and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers, with great earnest­ness and joy.

150:7.1This Fri­day af­ter­noon Je­sus walked about Naz­a­reth quite un­ob­served and wholly un­rec­og­nized. He passed by the home of his child­hood and the car­pen­ter shop and spent a half hour on the hill which he so much en­joyed when a lad. Not since the day of his bap­tism by John in the Jor­dan had the Son of Man had such a flood of hu­man emo­tion stirred up within his soul. While com­ing down from the mount, he heard the fa­mil­iar sounds of the trum­pet blast an­nounc­ing the go­ing down of the sun, just as he had so many, many times heard it when a boy grow­ing up in Naz­a­reth. Be­fore re­turn­ing to the en­camp­ment, he walked down by the syn­a­gogue where he had gone to school and in­dulged his mind in many rem­i­nis­cences of his child­hood days. Ear­lier in the day Je­sus had sent Thomas to ar­range with the ruler of the syn­a­gogue for his preach­ing at the Sab­bath morn­ing ser­vice.

150:7.3Thus did the Mas­ter find him­self in the midst of, not a wel­come home­com­ing, but a de­cid­edly hos­tile and hy­per­crit­i­cal at­mo­sphere. But this was not all. His en­e­mies, know­ing that he was to spend this Sab­bath day in Naz­a­reth and sup­pos­ing that he would speak in the syn­a­gogue, had hired nu­mer­ous rough and un­couth men to ha­rass him and in ev­ery way pos­si­ble make trou­ble.

150:7.4Most of the older of Je­sus’ friends, in­clud­ing the dot­ing chazan teacher of his youth, were dead or had left Naz­a­reth, and the younger gen­er­a­tion was prone to re­sent his fame with strong jeal­ousy. They failed to re­mem­ber his early de­vo­tion to his fa­ther’s fam­ily, and they were bit­ter in their crit­i­cism of his ne­glect to visit his brother and his mar­ried sis­ters liv­ing in Naz­a­reth. The at­ti­tude of Je­sus’ fam­ily to­ward him had also tended to in­crease this un­kind feel­ing of the cit­i­zenry. The or­tho­dox among the Jews even pre­sumed to crit­i­cize Je­sus be­cause he walked too fast on the way to the syn­a­gogue this Sab­bath morn­ing.

150:8.1This Sab­bath was a beau­ti­ful day, and all Naz­a­reth, friends and foes, turned out to hear this for­mer cit­i­zen of their town dis­course in the syn­a­gogue. Many of the apos­tolic ret­inue had to re­main with­out the syn­a­gogue; there was not room for all who had come to hear him. As a young man Je­sus had of­ten spo­ken in this place of wor­ship, and this morn­ing, when the ruler of the syn­a­gogue handed him the roll of sa­cred writ­ings from which to read the Scrip­ture les­son, none pres­ent seemed to re­call that this was the very man­u­script which he had pre­sented to this syn­a­gogue.

150:8.2The ser­vices on this day were con­ducted just as when Je­sus had at­tended them as a boy. He as­cended the speak­ing plat­form with the ruler of the syn­a­gogue, and the ser­vice was be­gun by the recital of two prayers: “Blessed is the Lord, King of the world, who forms the light and cre­ates the dark­ness, who makes peace and cre­ates ev­ery­thing; who, in mercy, gives light to the earth and to those who dwell upon it and in good­ness, day by day and ev­ery day, re­news the works of cre­ation. Blessed is the Lord our God for the glory of his hand­i­works and for the light-giv­ing lights which he has made for his praise. Se­lah. Blessed is the Lord our God, who has formed the lights.”

150:8.3Af­ter a mo­ment’s pause they again prayed: “With great love has the Lord our God loved us, and with much over­flow­ing pity has he pitied us, our Fa­ther and our King, for the sake of our fa­thers who trusted in him. You taught them the statutes of life; have mercy upon us and teach us. En­lighten our eyes in the law; cause our hearts to cleave to your com­mand­ments; unite our hearts to love and fear your name, and we shall not be put to shame, world with­out end. For you are a God who pre­pares sal­va­tion, and us have you cho­sen from among all na­tions and tongues, and in truth have you brought us near your great name—se­lah—that we may lov­ingly praise your unity. Blessed is the Lord, who in love chose his peo­ple Is­rael.”

150:8.4The con­gre­ga­tion then re­cited the Shema, the Jew­ish creed of faith. This rit­ual con­sisted in re­peat­ing nu­mer­ous pas­sages from the law and in­di­cated that the wor­shipers took upon them­selves the yoke of the king­dom of heaven, also the yoke of the com­mand­ments as ap­plied to the day and the night.

150:8.5And then fol­lowed the third prayer: “True it is that you are Yah­weh, our God and the God of our fa­thers; our King and the King of our fa­thers; our Sav­ior and the Sav­ior of our fa­thers; our Cre­ator and the rock of our sal­va­tion; our help and our de­liv­erer. Your name is from ev­er­last­ing, and there is no God be­side you. A new song did they that were de­liv­ered sing to your name by the seashore; to­gether did all praise and own you King and say, Yah­weh shall reign, world with­out end. Blessed is the Lord who saves Is­rael.”

150:8.6The ruler of the syn­a­gogue then took his place be­fore the ark, or chest, con­tain­ing the sa­cred writ­ings and be­gan the recita­tion of the nine­teen prayer eu­lo­gies, or bene­dic­tions. But on this oc­ca­sion it was de­sir­able to shorten the ser­vice in or­der that the dis­tin­guished guest might have more time for his dis­course; ac­cord­ingly, only the first and last of the bene­dic­tions were re­cited. The first was: “Blessed is the Lord our God, and the God of our fa­thers, the God of Abra­ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Ja­cob; the great, the mighty, and the ter­ri­ble God, who shows mercy and kind­ness, who cre­ates all things, who re­mem­bers the gra­cious promises to the fa­thers and brings a sav­ior to their chil­dren’s chil­dren for his own name’s sake, in love. O King, helper, sav­ior, and shield! Blessed are you, O Yah­weh, the shield of Abra­ham.”

150:8.7Then fol­lowed the last bene­dic­tion: “O be­stow on your peo­ple Is­rael great peace for­ever, for you are King and the Lord of all peace. And it is good in your eyes to bless Is­rael at all times and at ev­ery hour with peace. Blessed are you, Yah­weh, who blesses his peo­ple Is­rael with peace.” The con­gre­ga­tion looked not at the ruler as he re­cited the bene­dic­tions. Fol­low­ing the bene­dic­tions he of­fered an in­for­mal prayer suit­able for the oc­ca­sion, and when this was con­cluded, all the con­gre­ga­tion joined in say­ing amen.

150:8.8Then the chazan went over to the ark and brought out a roll, which he pre­sented to Je­sus that he might read the Scrip­ture les­son. It was cus­tom­ary to call upon seven per­sons to read not less than three verses of the law, but this prac­tice was waived on this oc­ca­sion that the vis­i­tor might read the les­son of his own se­lec­tion. Je­sus, tak­ing the roll, stood up and be­gan to read from Deuteron­omy: “For this com­mand­ment which I give you this day is not hid­den from you, nei­ther is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it down to us that we may hear and do it? Nei­ther is it be­yond the sea, that you should say, who will go over the sea for us to bring the com­mand­ment to us that we may hear and do it? No, the word of life is very near to you, even in your pres­ence and in your heart, that you may know and obey it.”

150:8.9And when he had ceased read­ing from the law, he turned to Isa­iah and be­gan to read: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me be­cause he has anointed me to preach good tid­ings to the poor. He has sent me to pro­claim re­lease to the cap­tives and the re­cov­er­ing of sight to the blind, to set at lib­erty those who are bruised and to pro­claim the ac­cept­able year of the Lord.”

150:8.10Je­sus closed the book and, af­ter hand­ing it back to the ruler of the syn­a­gogue, sat down and be­gan to dis­course to the peo­ple. He be­gan by say­ing: “To­day are these Scrip­tures ful­filled.” And then Je­sus spoke for al­most fif­teen min­utes on “The Sons and Daugh­ters of God.” Many of the peo­ple were pleased with the dis­course, and they mar­veled at his gra­cious­ness and wis­dom.

150:8.11It was cus­tom­ary in the syn­a­gogue, af­ter the con­clu­sion of the for­mal ser­vice, for the speaker to re­main so that those who might be in­ter­ested could ask him ques­tions. Ac­cord­ingly, on this Sab­bath morn­ing Je­sus stepped down into the crowd which pressed for­ward to ask ques­tions. In this group were many tur­bu­lent in­di­vid­u­als whose minds were bent on mis­chief, while about the fringe of this crowd there cir­cu­lated those de­based men who had been hired to make trou­ble for Je­sus. Many of the dis­ci­ples and evan­ge­lists who had re­mained with­out now pressed into the syn­a­gogue and were not slow to rec­og­nize that trou­ble was brew­ing. They sought to lead the Mas­ter away, but he would not go with them.

150:9.1Je­sus found him­self sur­rounded in the syn­a­gogue by a great throng of his en­e­mies and a sprin­kling of his own fol­low­ers, and in re­ply to their rude ques­tions and sin­is­ter ban­ter­ings he half hu­mor­ously re­marked: “Yes, I am Joseph’s son; I am the car­pen­ter, and I am not sur­prised that you re­mind me of the proverb, ‘Physi­cian heal your­self,’ and that you chal­lenge me to do in Naz­a­reth what you have heard I did at Ca­per­naum; but I call you to wit­ness that even the Scrip­tures de­clare that ‘a prophet is not with­out honor save in his own coun­try and among his own peo­ple.’”

150:9.2But they jos­tled him and, point­ing ac­cus­ing fin­gers at him, said: “You think you are bet­ter than the peo­ple of Naz­a­reth; you moved away from us, but your brother is a com­mon work­man, and your sis­ters still live among us. We know your mother, Mary. Where are they to­day? We hear big things about you, but we no­tice that you do no won­ders when you come back.” Je­sus an­swered them: “I love the peo­ple who dwell in the city where I grew up, and I would re­joice to see you all en­ter the king­dom of heaven, but the do­ing of the works of God is not for me to de­ter­mine. The trans­for­ma­tions of grace are wrought in re­sponse to the liv­ing faith of those who are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries.”

150:9.3Je­sus would have good-na­turedly man­aged the crowd and ef­fec­tively dis­armed even his vi­o­lent en­e­mies had it not been for the tac­ti­cal blun­der of one of his own apos­tles, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, who, with the help of Na­hor, one of the younger evan­ge­lists, had mean­while gath­ered to­gether a group of Je­sus’ friends from among the crowd and, as­sum­ing a bel­liger­ent at­ti­tude, had served no­tice on the en­e­mies of the Mas­ter to go hence. Je­sus had long taught the apos­tles that a soft an­swer turns away wrath, but his fol­low­ers were not ac­cus­tomed to see­ing their beloved teacher, whom they so will­ingly called Mas­ter, treated with such dis­cour­tesy and dis­dain. It was too much for them, and they found them­selves giv­ing ex­pres­sion to pas­sion­ate and ve­he­ment re­sent­ment, all of which only tended to arouse the mob spirit in this un­godly and un­couth as­sem­bly. And so, un­der the lead­er­ship of hire­lings, these ruf­fi­ans laid hold upon Je­sus and rushed him out of the syn­a­gogue to the brow of a near-by pre­cip­i­tous hill, where they were minded to shove him over the edge to his death be­low. But just as they were about to push him over the edge of the cliff, Je­sus turned sud­denly upon his cap­tors and, fac­ing them, qui­etly folded his arms. He said noth­ing, but his friends were more than as­ton­ished when, as he started to walk for­ward, the mob parted and per­mit­ted him to pass on un­mo­lested.

150:9.4Je­sus, fol­lowed by his dis­ci­ples, pro­ceeded to their en­camp­ment, where all this was re­counted. And they made ready that evening to go back to Ca­per­naum early the next day, as Je­sus had di­rected. This tur­bu­lent end­ing of the third pub­lic preach­ing tour had a sober­ing ef­fect upon all of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers. They were be­gin­ning to re­al­ize the mean­ing of some of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings; they were awak­ing to the fact that the king­dom would come only through much sor­row and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment.

150:9.5They left Naz­a­reth this Sun­day morn­ing, and trav­el­ing by dif­fer­ent routes, they all fi­nally as­sem­bled at Beth­saida by noon on Thurs­day, March 10. They came to­gether as a sober and se­ri­ous group of dis­il­lu­sioned preach­ers of the gospel of truth and not as an en­thu­si­as­tic and all-con­quer­ing band of tri­umphant cru­saders.

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.

123:5.6Next, in ad­di­tion to his more for­mal school­ing, Je­sus be­gan to make con­tact with hu­man na­ture from the four quar­ters of the earth as men from many lands passed in and out of his fa­ther’s re­pair shop. When he grew older, he min­gled freely with the car­a­vans as they tar­ried near the spring for rest and nour­ish­ment. Be­ing a flu­ent speaker of Greek, he had lit­tle trou­ble in con­vers­ing with the ma­jor­ity of the car­a­van trav­el­ers and con­duc­tors.

123:5.3At Naz­a­reth the pupils sat on the floor in a semi­cir­cle, while their teacher, the chazan, an of­fi­cer of the syn­a­gogue, sat fac­ing them. Be­gin­ning with the Book of Leviti­cus, they passed on to the study of the other books of the law, fol­lowed by the study of the Proph­ets and the Psalms. The Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue pos­sessed a com­plete copy of the Scrip­tures in He­brew. Noth­ing but the Scrip­tures was stud­ied prior to the twelfth year. In the sum­mer months the hours for school were greatly short­ened.

123:5.1Je­sus was now seven years old, the age when Jew­ish chil­dren were sup­posed to be­gin their for­mal ed­u­ca­tion in the syn­a­gogue schools. Ac­cord­ingly, in Au­gust of this year he en­tered upon his event­ful school life at Naz­a­reth. Al­ready this lad was a flu­ent reader, writer, and speaker of two lan­guages, Ara­maic and Greek. He was now to ac­quaint him­self with the task of learn­ing to read, write, and speak the He­brew lan­guage. And he was truly ea­ger for the new school life which was ahead of him.

123:5.2For three years—un­til he was ten—he at­tended the el­e­men­tary school of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue. For these three years he stud­ied the rudi­ments of the Book of the Law as it was re­corded in the He­brew tongue. For the fol­low­ing three years he stud­ied in the ad­vanced school and com­mit­ted to mem­ory, by the method of re­peat­ing aloud, the deeper teach­ings of the sa­cred law. He grad­u­ated from this school of the syn­a­gogue dur­ing his thir­teenth year and was turned over to his par­ents by the syn­a­gogue rulers as an ed­u­cated “son of the com­mand­ment”—hence­forth a re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen of the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael, all of which en­tailed his at­ten­dance at the Passovers in Je­ru­sa­lem; ac­cord­ingly, he at­tended his first Pass­over that year in com­pany with his fa­ther and mother.

123:5.5These syn­a­gogue schools, of course, had no text­books. In teach­ing, the chazan would ut­ter a state­ment while the pupils would in uni­son re­peat it af­ter him. When hav­ing ac­cess to the writ­ten books of the law, the stu­dent learned his les­son by read­ing aloud and by con­stant rep­e­ti­tion.

123:5.13From four di­rec­tions Je­sus could ob­serve the car­a­van trains as they wended their way in and out of Naz­a­reth, and to the south he could over­look the broad and fer­tile plain coun­try of Es­draelon, stretch­ing off to­ward Mount Gil­boa and Samaria.

123:5.14When they did not climb the heights to view the dis­tant land­scape, they strolled through the coun­try­side and stud­ied na­ture in her var­i­ous moods in ac­cor­dance with the sea­sons. Je­sus’ ear­li­est train­ing, aside from that of the home hearth, had to do with a rev­er­ent and sym­pa­thetic con­tact with na­ture.

123:5.15Be­fore he was eight years of age, he was known to all the moth­ers and young women of Naz­a­reth, who had met him and talked with him at the spring, which was not far from his home, and which was one of the so­cial cen­ters of con­tact and gos­sip for the en­tire town. This year Je­sus learned to milk the fam­ily cow and care for the other an­i­mals. Dur­ing this and the fol­low­ing year he also learned to make cheese and to weave. When he was ten years of age, he was an ex­pert loom op­er­a­tor. It was about this time that Je­sus and the neigh­bor boy Ja­cob be­came great friends of the pot­ter who worked near the flow­ing spring; and as they watched Nathan’s deft fin­gers mold the clay on the pot­ter’s wheel, many times both of them de­ter­mined to be pot­ters when they grew up. Nathan was very fond of the lads and of­ten gave them clay to play with, seek­ing to stim­u­late their cre­ative imag­i­na­tions by sug­gest­ing com­pet­i­tive ef­forts in mod­el­ing var­i­ous ob­jects and an­i­mals.