Paper 128

JESUS’ EARLY MANHOOD

1. Always be mindful of the twofold purpose of Michael's bestowal on Urantia:

l. The mastering of the experience of living the full life of a human creature in mortal flesh, the completion of his sovereignty in Nebadon.

2. The revelation of the Universal Father to the mortal dwellers on the worlds of time and space and the more effective leading of these same mortals to a better under­standing of the Universal Father.

2. Joshua ben Joseph knew full well that he was a man, a mortal man, born of woman. This is shown in the selection of his first title, the Son of Man...He obtained knowledge, gained experience, and combined these into wisdom, just as do other mortals of the realm. Until after his baptism he availed himself of no supernatural power. He employed no agency not a part of his human endowment as a son of Joseph and Mary.

As to the attributes of his prehuman existence, he emptied himself. Prior to the beginning of his public work his knowledge of men and events was wholly self‑limited. He was a true man among men.

3.  The self‑realization of divinity was a slow and, from the human standpoint, a natural evolutionary revelation. This revelation and self‑realization of divinity began in Jerusalem when he was not quite thirteen years old with the first supernatural occurrence of his human existence; and this experience of effecting the self‑realization of his divine nature was completed at the time of his second supernatural experience while in the flesh, the episode attendant upon his baptism by John in the Jordan, which event marked the beginning of his public career of ministry and teaching.

4.  When once he had espoused his public career, subsequent to the technical completion of his purely mortal experience of sovereignty acquirement, he did not hesitate publicly to admit that he was the Son of God ... After his baptism he thought nothing of permitting his sincere believers and grateful followers to worship him.

5. The latter part of this year, when carpenter work was slack about Nazareth, Jesus left James in charge of the repair shop and Joseph at the home bench while he went over to Sepphoris to work with a smith. He worked six months with metals and acquired considerable skill at the anvil.

6.  Before taking up his new employment at Sepphoris, Jesus held one of his periodic family conferences and solemnly installed James, then just past eighteen years old, as acting head of the family ... From this day James assumed full financial responsibility for the family, Jesus making his weekly payments to his brother. Never again did Jesus take the reins out of James's hands...He had begun the slow process of weaning his family.

7.  This year (23) the financial pressure was slightly relaxed as four were at work...The situation was such that Jesus stopped work for three weeks to take Simon to Jerusalem for the Passover, and this was the longest period away from daily toil he had enjoyed since the death of his father.

8.  At Philadelphia Jesus and Simon became acquainted with a merchant from Damascus who developed such a great liking for the Nazareth couple that he insisted they stop with him at his Jerusalem headquarters ... He proposed that Jesus come to Damascus to enter his Oriental import business, but Jesus explained that he did not feel justified in going so far away from his family just then

9.  While Simon attended the Passover ceremonies, Jesus mingled with the throngs of visitors and engaged in many interesting personal conferences with numerous gentile proselytes.

Perhaps the most notable of all these contacts was the one with a young Hellenist named Stephen ... Stephen was tremendously impressed with what Jesus said, he never forgot his words.

And this was the same Stephen who subsequently became a believer in the teachings of Jesus, and whose boldness in preaching this early gospel resulted in his being stoned to death by irate Jews ... But Stephen never even faintly surmised that the Galilean he had talked with some fifteen years previously was the very same person whom he later proclaimed the world's Savior, and for whom he was so soon to die, thus becoming the first martyr of the newly evolving Christian faith.

10.    The last four months of this year, Jesus spent in Damascus as the guest of the merchant whom he first met at Philadelphia when on his way to Jerusalem ...This part‑Jewish merchant proposed to devote an extraordinary sum of money to the establishment of a school of religious philosophy at Damascus. He planned to create a center of learning which would outrival Alexandria. And he proposed that Jesus should immediately begin a long tour of the world's educational centers preparatory to becoming the head of this new project. This was one of the greatest temptations that Jesus ever faced in the course of his purely human career.

11.    Jesus most cleverly and intentionally contrived to detach various episodes of his life so that they never became, in the eyes of the world, associated together as the doings of a single individual. Many times in subsequent years he listened to the recital of this very story of the strange Galilean who declined the opportunity of founding a school in Damascus to compete with Alexandria.

12.    Jesus did not want to build up such a human record of achievement as would attract attention from his teaching. Very early he recognized that his followers would be tempted to formulate a religion about him which might become a competitor of the gospel of the kingdom that he intended to proclaim to the world ... He always refused to take undue or unfair advantage of the human mind. He did not want men to believe in him unless their hearts were responsive to the spiritual realities revealed in his teachings.

13.   The week following the Passover of this year (24) a young man from Alexandria came down to Nazareth to arrange for a meeting, later in the year, between Jesus and...five prominent Jews of Alexandria, who besought him to establish himself in their city as a religious teacher, offering as an inducement to begin with, the position of assistant to the chazan in their chief synagogue.

14.    Jesus listened to all they had to say, thanked them for their confidence, and, in declining to go to Alexandria, in substance said. "My hour has not yet come."...Before taking leave of Jesus. they presented him with a purse ... But he likewise refused the money, saying; "The house of Joseph has never received alms, and we cannot eat another's broad an long as I have strong arms and my brothers can labor."

15.    The remainder of this year was the most uneventful six months of his whole career. He