Zebedee

• purchased Joseph’s equity in a Capernaum property

127:6.10Al­though all their Naz­a­reth prop­erty (ex­cept their home) was gone, this year they re­ceived a lit­tle fi­nan­cial help from the sale of an eq­uity in a piece of prop­erty in Ca­per­naum. This was the last of Joseph’s en­tire es­tate. This real es­tate deal in Ca­per­naum was with a boat­builder named Zeb­e­dee.

• Jesus joined Z.’s boatmaking business

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

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

• father-partner of Jesus

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

• with wife Salome had 3 sons, 4 daughters

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

• family almost worshiped Jesus

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

• Jesus joined Z.’s boatmaking business

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

• directed son John buy house with Jesus’ money

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

• celebrated Passover with Annas in Jerusalem

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

• Jesus told Z. about upcoming Mediterranean journey

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

• Jesus told Z. about upcoming Mediterranean journey

129:3.3This was an event­ful pe­riod in Je­sus’ life. While on this jour­ney he made many con­tacts with his fel­low men, but this ex­pe­ri­ence is a phase of his life which he never re­vealed to any mem­ber of his fam­ily nor to any of the apos­tles. Je­sus lived out his life in the flesh and de­parted from this world with­out any­one (save Zeb­e­dee of Beth­saida) know­ing that he had made this ex­ten­sive trip. Some of his friends thought he had re­turned to Da­mas­cus; oth­ers thought he had gone to In­dia. His own fam­ily in­clined to the be­lief that he was in Alexan­dria, as they knew that he had once been in­vited to go there for the pur­pose of be­com­ing an as­sis­tant chazan.

129:3.4When Je­sus re­turned to Pales­tine, he did noth­ing to change the opin­ion of his fam­ily that he had gone from Je­ru­sa­lem to Alexan­dria; he per­mit­ted them to con­tinue in the be­lief that all the time he had been ab­sent from Pales­tine had been spent in that city of learn­ing and cul­ture. Only Zeb­e­dee the boat­builder of Beth­saida knew the facts about these mat­ters, and Zeb­e­dee told no one.

• in Capernaum, Jesus made his home with

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.

• Jesus joined Z.’s boatmaking business

134:9.6The next morn­ing Je­sus went to the chest con­tain­ing his per­sonal ef­fects, which had re­mained in Zeb­e­dee’s work­shop, put on his apron, and pre­sented him­self for work, say­ing, “It be­hooves me to keep busy while I wait for my hour to come.” And he worked sev­eral months, un­til Jan­uary of the fol­low­ing year, in the boat­shop, by the side of his brother James. Af­ter this pe­riod of work­ing with Je­sus, no mat­ter what doubts came up to be­cloud James’s un­der­stand­ing of the life­work of the Son of Man, he never again re­ally and wholly gave up his faith in the mis­sion of Je­sus.

• in Capernaum, Jesus made his home with

137:3.4Je­sus ar­rived in Ca­per­naum Mon­day night, but he did not go to his own home, where lived James and his mother; he went di­rectly to the home of Zeb­e­dee. All his friends at Ca­per­naum saw a great and pleas­ant change in him. Once more he seemed to be com­par­a­tively cheer­ful and more like him­self as he was dur­ing the ear­lier years at Naz­a­reth. For years pre­vi­ous to his bap­tism and the iso­la­tion pe­ri­ods just be­fore and just af­ter, he had grown in­creas­ingly se­ri­ous and self-con­tained. Now he seemed quite like his old self to all of them. There was about him some­thing of ma­jes­tic im­port and ex­alted as­pect, but he was once again light­hearted and joy­ful.

• Zebedee

137:3.5Mary was thrilled with ex­pec­ta­tion. She an­tic­i­pated that the prom­ise of Ga­briel was near­ing ful­fill­ment. She ex­pected all Pales­tine soon to be star­tled and stunned by the mirac­u­lous rev­e­la­tion of her son as the super­nat­u­ral king of the Jews. But to all of the many ques­tions which his mother, James, Jude, and Zeb­e­dee asked, Je­sus only smil­ingly replied: “It is bet­ter that I tarry here for a while; I must do the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven.”

• Jesus joined Z.’s boatmaking business

137:6.5Je­sus in­structed them to take up their reg­u­lar du­ties un­til “the hour of the king­dom comes.” And to en­cour­age them, he set an ex­am­ple by go­ing back reg­u­larly to work in the boat­shop. In ex­plain­ing that they should spend three hours ev­ery evening in study and prepa­ra­tion for their fu­ture work, Je­sus fur­ther said: “We will all re­main here­about un­til the Fa­ther bids me call you. Each of you must now re­turn to his ac­cus­tomed work just as if noth­ing had hap­pened. Tell no man about me and re­mem­ber that my king­dom is not to come with noise and glamor, but rather must it come through the great change which my Fa­ther will have wrought in your hearts and in the hearts of those who shall be called to join you in the coun­cils of the king­dom. You are now my friends; I trust you and I love you; you are soon to be­come my per­sonal as­so­ciates. Be pa­tient, be gen­tle. Be ever obe­di­ent to the Fa­ther’s will. Make your­selves ready for the call of the king­dom. While you will ex­pe­ri­ence great joy in the ser­vice of my Fa­ther, you should also be pre­pared for trou­ble, for I warn you that it will be only through much tribu­la­tion that many will en­ter the king­dom. But those who have found the king­dom, their joy will be full, and they shall be called the blest of all the earth. But do not en­ter­tain false hope; the world will stum­ble at my words. Even you, my friends, do not fully per­ceive what I am un­fold­ing to your con­fused minds. Make no mis­take; we go forth to la­bor for a gen­er­a­tion of sign seek­ers. They will de­mand won­der-work­ing as the proof that I am sent by my Fa­ther, and they will be slow to rec­og­nize in the rev­e­la­tion of my Fa­ther’s love the cre­den­tials of my mis­sion.”

• Zebedee
• home served as headquarters for kingdom

138:5.4Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome had gone to live with their son David so that their large home could be turned over to Je­sus and his twelve apos­tles. Here Je­sus spent a quiet Sab­bath with his cho­sen mes­sen­gers; he care­fully out­lined the plans for pro­claim­ing the king­dom and fully ex­plained the im­por­tance of avoid­ing any clash with the civil au­thor­i­ties, say­ing: “If the civil rulers are to be re­buked, leave that task to me. See that you make no de­nun­ci­a­tions of Cae­sar or his ser­vants.” It was this same evening that Ju­das Is­car­iot took Je­sus aside to in­quire why noth­ing was done to get John out of prison. And Ju­das was not wholly sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ at­ti­tude.

• owned fish-drying business

139:1.1An­drew, chair­man of the apos­tolic corps of the king­dom, was born in Ca­per­naum. He was the old­est child in a fam­ily of five—him­self, his brother Si­mon, and three sis­ters. His fa­ther, now dead, had been a part­ner of Zeb­e­dee in the fish-dry­ing busi­ness at Beth­saida, the fish­ing har­bor of Ca­per­naum. When he be­came an apos­tle, An­drew was un­mar­ried but made his home with his mar­ried brother, Si­mon Pe­ter. Both were fish­er­men and part­ners of James and John the sons of Zeb­e­dee.

• Zebedee

140:7.3For two days they worked, teach­ing by day and hold­ing pri­vate con­fer­ences late into the night. On the third day Je­sus vis­ited with Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome while he sent his apos­tles off to “go fish­ing, seek care­free change, or per­chance visit your fam­i­lies.” On Thurs­day they re­turned for three more days of teach­ing.

• home served as headquarters for kingdom

154:7.2Fol­low­ing the Mas­ter’s boat was an­other and smaller craft, con­tain­ing six of David’s mes­sen­gers, who had in­struc­tions to main­tain con­tact with Je­sus and his as­so­ciates and to see that in­for­ma­tion of their where­abouts and safety was reg­u­larly trans­mit­ted to the home of Zeb­e­dee in Beth­saida, which had served as head­quar­ters for the work of the king­dom for some time. But Je­sus was never again to make his home at the house of Zeb­e­dee. From now on, through­out the re­main­der of his earth life, the Mas­ter truly “had not where to lay his head.” No more did he have even the sem­blance of a set­tled abode.