#12 Jewish Boyhood

Note: This topic has already been addressed in my previous post #12 Childhood and Youth. However, latter-day prophets have provided us modern day revelation on the topic.

                  

#12 Jewish Boyhood

In the scriptures we find very little about our Savior's early years on earth. We get a few words in Luke 2: Matthew 3: and the Inspired Version of Matthew 3, where we learn: Jesus grew strong in spirit, wisdom, stature and grace, and in favor with God and man. He grew up with his brethren. He served under his father. He was found in the temple with the learned doctors and Rabbis, hearing and asking, and amazing them with his understanding and answers.

We are very fortunate in that we know historically a great deal about the society, culture, life and ways of the Jewish nation into which our Savior was born and reared. We know what would go on in a typical family, neighborhood, and community such as his would be. Given this knowledge we can with some assurance get a feeling and picture of what Jesus' early life was probably like.

I believe this greatly enhances our understanding of the factors and forces faced by our Lord during his earthly ministry. It helps us to more clearly see the why, the how, the what, and the way of things that he did and taught.

Apostle Bruce R. McConkie:

“Jewish Family Life in Jesus’ Day” offers a good look at what we could expect the Lord's life to have been during those years.

Note: As with us today, on a scale of one to ten, there were all grades of homes and families. The following standards/events would be what an orthodox Jewish family would try to achieve … at the upper end of the scale. We may assume that Mary and Joseph would be at the upper end.   

In Jesus’ day the Jews had their temple, their synagogues, and their homes, and around them their whole life revolved. Three times each year faithful men appeared before the Lord in his sanctuary, and would not Jesus, who kept his Father's law, have been among them there; to

sacrifice, to recommit themselves to Jehovah and to receive a new remission of their sins?

Many people frequented the sacred courts to teach and be taught and to partake of the spirit of worship that centered in the Holy of Holies.

Every Sabbath and on certain feast days the faithful came to the synagogue to pray, to hear the word of the Lord and to receive the exhortations so important even to the most spiritual of men. But the home was something else ... the home was the place where true worship was taught and practiced. Every Jewish home was to be a house of worship, a house of prayer and a house of God.

And Jesus our Lord was nursed and suckled in a Jewish home; he played within its walls as a child; he was guided by a Jewish mother and a Jewish foster father as he learned the customs and discipline and the way of life of the race of which he was a part. In the real and practical sense it was his first and chief house of worship.

It is true that he worshipped as a youth and in his maturing years in Jewish synagogues; we know that during his ministry he used them as teaching centers, as the sites for miracles, and as the reverent and sacred houses of worship that they in fact were.

But we cannot see our Lord in proper perspective unless we see him in the home of Joseph and Mary; unless we know what he was taught within those private walls. Jesus was the Son of God and dwelt among men with native endowments without equal, but he was also a product, as we all are, of his environment; and his Father chose to place him in the care and custody, during his formative years, of Jewish Joseph and Jewish Mary and their Jewish home with all its Jewish teachings, practices, and ways of worship.

Joseph and Mary lived in modest circumstances. Their home in Nazareth would have been small, without running water and other amenities common in even the poorer homes today ... and as to their food, the principal fare would have been the meat and vegetables and fruits grown and raised so abundantly in the hills of Galilee.

They lived in close and intimate quarters, with limited amounts of this world's goods. The Father of the Son placed his Eternal Offspring in modest circumstances. But it is the spirit and teachings, the love and harmony, not the wood and mortar and chairs that make a true home.   And in those things that are important, the home provided by the just and faithful husband of Mary excelled. Surely the Father of us all, who also was the Father of the One only in mortality, would have chosen that family circle which was preeminent above all others as the environment for his Only Begotten Son.

Men married at sixteen or seventeen years of age, almost never later than twenty; and women at a somewhat younger age, often not older than fourteen. These ages applied to all, Joseph and Mary included. Children were esteemed to be a heritage from the Lord and were devoutly desired.

Mothers taught their children almost from the moment of birth; at least tutorial processes began by the time infant lips began to utter their first words and phrases. The Psalms and prayers were used as lullabies. At the age of two years children were weaned, with the occasion being celebrated by a feast. When the children reached about three years of age fathers began to assume their imposed obligation to teach them the Law; not nursery rhymes, but verses of scripture, benedictions, and wise sayings. Formal schooling began at five or six, with the Bible as the text.

The educational system imposed upon Jewish children was more, far more, than formal schooling arrangements. It was part and portion of their way of life. They learned from what was done as well as from what was said. A spirit of religion and devotion pervaded the home. Every pious home had either portions or all the Old Testament. There were even little parchment rolls for children that contained such scriptures as the Shema, the Hallel, the history of the creation and of the flood, and the first eight chapters of Leviticus. Jewish homes, Jewish family life, the rearing of Jewish children, indeed, the whole Jewish way of life was founded upon Jewish theology.

Alfred Edersheim:

“The pious Jew had no other knowledge, neither sought nor cared for any other … in fact denounced it … than that of the law of God.”

Glenn R. McGettigan

December 2011; Revised December 2014