Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 123
THE EARLY CHILDHOOD OF JESUS
1. Throughout the two years of their sojourn at Alexandria, Jesus enjoyed good health and continued to grow normally ... friends presented Jesus with a complete copy of the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures... Joseph and Mary finally took leave of Alexandria... They went directly to Bethlehem ... By the first of October Joseph had convinced Mary and all their friends that it was best for them to return to Nazareth. Accordingly, early in October, 4 B.C., they departed from Bethlehem for Nazareth.
2. Jesus' entire fourth year was a period of normal physical development and of unusual mental activity... The 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.... It was midsummer of this same year that Joseph built a small workshop close to the village spring and near the caravan tarrying lot ... 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.
3. In something more than a year after the return to Nazareth the boy Jesus arrived at the age of his first personal and wholehearted moral decision; and there came to abide with him a Thought Adjuster ... which had aforetime served with Machiventa Melchizedek.. This event occurred on February 11, 2 B.C.
4. In this year, 2 B.C., a little more than one month before his fifth birthday anniversary Jesus was made very happy by the coming of his sister Miriam, who was born on the night of July 11.
5. From the time Jesus was five years old until he was ten, he was one continuous question mark. While Joseph and Mary could not always answer his questions, they never failed fully to discuss his inquiries and in every other possible way to assist him in his efforts to reach a satisfactory solution of the problem which his alert mind had suggested... It was the custom of the Galilean Jews for the mother to bear the responsibility for a child's training until the fifth birthday, and then, if the child were a boy, to hold the father responsible for the lad's education from that time on.
6. Already, with his mother's help, Jesus had mastered the Galilean dialect of the Aramaic tongue; and now his father began teaching him Greek ... There were only two complete copies of the Scriptures in Greek in all Nazareth, and the possession of one of them by the carpenter's family made Joseph's home a much‑sought place and enabled Jesus, as he grew up, to meet an almost endless procession of earnest students and sincere truth seekers.
7. The first great shock of Jesus' young life occurred when he was not quite six years old. It had seemed to the lad that his father‑at least his father and mother together‑knew everything. Imagine, therefore, the surprise of this inquiring child, when he asked his father the cause of a mild earthquake which had just occurred, to hear Joseph say, "My son, I really do not Know." Thus began that long and disconcerting disillusionment in the course of which Jesus found out that his earthly parents were not all‑wise and all‑knowing.
8. During this year Joseph and Mary had trouble with Jesus about his prayers. He insisted on talking to his heavenly Father much as he would talk to Joseph, his earthly father ... he would say his prayers just as he had been taught after which he insisted on having "just a little talk with my Father in heaven."
9. This year Jesus made great progress in adjusting his strong feelings and vigorous impulses to the demands of family co‑operation and home discipline... When the situation had been explained to Jesus, he was always intelligently and willingly co‑operative with parental wishes and family regulations. Much of his spare time was spent studying the flowers and plants by day and the stars by night.
10. The only real accident Jesus had up to this time was a fall down the back‑yard stone stairs which led up to the canvas‑roofed bedroom. It happened during an unexpected July sandstorm from the east ... He was blinded by the sand when descending the stairs and fell. After this accident Joseph built a balustrade up both sides of the stairway.
There was no way in which this accident could have been prevented... Material accidents, commonplace occurrences of a physical nature, are not arbitrarily interfered with by celestial personalities. Under ordinary circumstances only midway creatures can intervene in material conditions to safeguard the persons of men and women of destiny ... The fourth member of the Nazareth family, Joseph, was born Wednesday morning, March 16, A.D. 1.
11. Jesus was now seven years old, the age when Jewish children were supposed to begin their formal education in the synagogue schools ... 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.
12. Nazareth 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 ...And these conditions gave rise to the common saying in Jerusalem, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"
13. Jesus 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... Throughout his years at the synagogue he was a brilliant student, possessing a great advantage since he was conversant with three languages.
14. When entering school at seven years ...it was customary for the pupils to choose their "birthday text ..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."
15. Although Jesus was not an unusual student, he was a diligent pupil and belonged to the more progressive third of his class, doing his work so well that he was excused from attendance one week out of each month. This week he usually spent either with his fisherman uncle on the shores of the Sea of Galilee near Magdala or on the farm of another uncle (his mother's brother) five miles south of Nazareth.
16. This year Jesus made arrangements to exchange dairy products for lessons on the harp. He had an unusual liking for everything musical... While Jesus continued to make enviable progress at school, all did not run smoothly for either parents or teachers. He persisted in asking many embarrassing questions concerning both science and religion particularly regarding geography and astronomy... His third brother, Simon, was born Friday evening, April 14, of this year, A.D. 2.
17. In February, Nahor, one of the teachers in a Jerusalem academy of the rabbis, came to Nazareth to observe Jesus ... he... advised Joseph and Mary to allow him to take Jesus back with him to Jerusalem, where he could have the advantages of education and training at the center of Jewish culture. Mary was half persuaded to consent; she was convinced her eldest son was to become the Messiah, the Jewish deliverer; Joseph hesitated. ..Because of this difference of opinion between Joseph and Mary, Nahor requested permission to lay the whole matter before Jesus. Jesus listened attentively, talked with Joseph, Mary, and a neighbor, Jacob the stone mason... and then, two days later, reported that... he had finally decided to "talk with my Father who is in heaven"; and while he was not perfectly sure about the answer, he rather felt he should. remain at home "with my father and mother," adding, "they who love me so much should be able to do more for me and guide me more safely than strangers who can only view my body and observe my mind but can hardly truly know me."
Discussion Questions
1. Had Jesus grown up in Alexandria, would his life been more effective?
2. How does our parental training compare with that of Jewish parents of Jesus' day?
3. What do you think of a grade school boy being fluent in three languages? Should we be teaching children more than one language?
4. If guardian seraphim are limited in their ability to perform physical tasks, what is their service in our lives?
5. Do you think Jesus' decision to stay in Nazareth was the result of divine guidance or human wisdom?
6. Is there an ideal way to teach children to pray?
7. How do you think Jesus' life would have changed if he had been educated in Jerusalem?
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