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
