The Early Years of Jesus


   For Urantia Book readers, and assuming the absence of the Urantia revelation, it is both interesting and educational to realise how little is known about the pre-baptismal phase of Jesus' life. Without The Urantia Book not even the date or year of Jesus' birth is known.

   The revelation also provides us with a detailed account of those formative years of Jesus in which he was fully a mortal man, one having no knowledge of his own divinity and  scarcely an inkling of the post-baptismal life that would confront him as both God and man.

   Again without The Urantia Book, what  could we have known about that early life? Other than the few scraps of information contained within the Gospels of the New Testament, our only recourse is to assume that Jesus would have received the same kind of training as any other Galilean child having parents such as Mary and Joseph, living in a town such as Nazareth in Galilee where Joseph was a carpenter.

   The Gospels tell us that Jesus' birth took place at Bethlehem where Mary and Joseph had gone to participate in a census ordered by the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus. But while in Bethlehem an "angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt and be thou there until I bring you word, for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him." (Matthew 2: 13) 

    Later, when Herod was dead, an angel of the Lord again appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying: Arise, and take the young child and his mother and go into the land of Israel. For they are dead which sought the young child's life."  (Matthew 2; Luke 2). Finally Joseph, Mary, and Jesus settled in Nazareth.

   Outside of this birth scene and the Egyptian sojourn, all we know for certain about the very early life of Jesus at Nazareth is contained in a single verse from Luke's Gospel: "
And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him."

   Of Jesus as a young adolescent we are again beholden to Luke for detail. Every year Joseph and Mary attended the annual Passover festival in Jerusalem. When Jesus was twelve years old and it was time to return from Jerusalem to Nazareth along with a party of kinsfolk, Jesus was accidentally left behind. But the fact that he was missing was not noticed until the party had travelled a full day's journey.

   Mary and Joseph immediately left their kinsfolk to return to Jerusalem and search for Jesus. However three fruitless days passed before they tried looking in the Temple where Jesus was found. Mary immediately asked Jesus why he had treated them so--to which Luke has Jesus say, "
How is it  that you sought after me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?" (Luke 2:49)

   All four Gospels commence their next phase first with an introduction to John the Baptist, followed by John's baptism of Jesus. For further possibilities upon how Jesus may have passed his childhood we turn to the accounts of historians who tell us how male children of practicing Jews were brought up in provincial Galilee.

   One such historian1 states that: "
nowhere does the historical background of Jesus betray any influence from the general atmosphere of Greek culture or Roman civilization of his day. There is no evidence he was acquainted with the Greek language. His mother tongue was a provincial dialect, Aramaic, the peculiar speech that betrayed the Galilean origin of his disciples. It was in this dialect that Jesus thought, taught, preached, and prayed--and cried to God in his direst need--Abba in Gethsemane, Eloi, Eloi on the cross."

   Another historian, Alfred Edersheim,2 looks at Jesus' early life from a different perspective. He informs us about the kind of upbringing and education young Jewish boys would most likely have received in a province such as Galilee at the time of Jesus.

   "
For study at school from the age of five up to ten years, the Bible was exclusively the text-book. From ten to fifteen years it was the "Mishner" or traditional law; after that age the student entered on those theological studies as were held in the higher acadamies of the Rabbis.

   "Study of the Bible commenced with Leviticus. Then it passed on to other parts of the Pentateuch--the first five books of the Bible--and finally to the Talmud, the oral law, but only to those students over fifteen years of age
."

Home Page
Previous Page
Next Page