Little is known from the Biblical Record about the childhood of he who was born King of the Jews. In fact the cynical could reasonably claim that the mixed details available in the Synaptic Gospels were manufactured to fit Old Testament prophesy. It would appear that this child did not become self-aware and people start standing up and taking notice until after he began his itinerant preaching around Judea. We are told a great deal about his lineage, angel visitations, and the means of his birth. We hear much about his birth in Bethlehem, Angel Choirs, Shepherds and Wise Men and the events which place his birth around 4 BCE. He is named in the Temple at eight days. There is a flight into Egypt around the time he was two. And then nothing until his Visit to the Temple at age 12 and the trouble he caused his parents by staying behind.
The record is then a blank for the next 18 years until he joins his parents for the wedding to which his family were all invited at Cana. Before or after that he visits his cousin John the Baptizer in the River Jordan and wonders into the Wilderness to disappear again for a period of time. When he reappears for his 3-year peripatetic ministry of teaching, preaching and healing the sick at age 30 he is an old man at a time when life expectancies weren’t much higher than that. The teachings of a younger man would probably not have been given much credence.
In the Gospels details of time and place are often added in an attempt to give verisimilitude to the story. No attempt is made to fill in the blanks in his life story and it must be remembered that the first Gospel was probably written 3 centuries after his death. The present book is an attempt to fill those gaps by means of the anthropological record, other writings from that time period, and gospels that failed to make it into the canon. Since there are no written documents and the Bible in any case is a record of faith not history this needs-must be a work of fiction.
Items of interest:
This is not a childhood biography so aside from a few embellishments little is added to the list of known details I summarized in my opening paragraphs.
Jesus was a southpaw?
We are given a brief summary of Jewish History much as Jesus would have had it related which includes:
A revisionist version of the 10 plagues of Egypt
That Judea was emptied during the Babylonian Captivity rather than the more accepted assertion that it was her leaders and elite that were carried off into bondage, not the entire community.
We learn of Jesus’ moral upbringing and have cause to reflect that this was a very special couple chosen to raise God’s Son.
We learn of the scholarly influences he may have encountered and the philosophical and cultural systems in place during his growing years. Aramaic, Greek and Roman Latin.
The author takes it as a given that Jesus interacted with the Essene Community at Qumran along with his cousin John (the Baptist) taking particular delight in their library. It is also assumed that Jesus and his cousin John had a life-long friendship. John’s father Zechariah was of the priestly class and the knowledge he passed on to his son must have challenged the younger cousin though no mention is made of an interaction between Zechariah and Jesus.
The one issue the author does not confront is that of marriage. It would have been considered a given at the time that any good rabbi would have a wife.
This is not light reading. In a few short pages the author has summarized theological arguments and concepts that have occupied the best minds inside and outside Christendom for a millennium and filled entire libraries with their discourse.
The record is then a blank for the next 18 years until he joins his parents for the wedding to which his family were all invited at Cana. Before or after that he visits his cousin John the Baptizer in the River Jordan and wonders into the Wilderness to disappear again for a period of time. When he reappears for his 3-year peripatetic ministry of teaching, preaching and healing the sick at age 30 he is an old man at a time when life expectancies weren’t much higher than that. The teachings of a younger man would probably not have been given much credence.
In the Gospels details of time and place are often added in an attempt to give verisimilitude to the story. No attempt is made to fill in the blanks in his life story and it must be remembered that the first Gospel was probably written 3 centuries after his death. The present book is an attempt to fill those gaps by means of the anthropological record, other writings from that time period, and gospels that failed to make it into the canon. Since there are no written documents and the Bible in any case is a record of faith not history this needs-must be a work of fiction.
Items of interest:
This is not a childhood biography so aside from a few embellishments little is added to the list of known details I summarized in my opening paragraphs.
Jesus was a southpaw?
We are given a brief summary of Jewish History much as Jesus would have had it related which includes:
A revisionist version of the 10 plagues of Egypt
That Judea was emptied during the Babylonian Captivity rather than the more accepted assertion that it was her leaders and elite that were carried off into bondage, not the entire community.
We learn of Jesus’ moral upbringing and have cause to reflect that this was a very special couple chosen to raise God’s Son.
We learn of the scholarly influences he may have encountered and the philosophical and cultural systems in place during his growing years. Aramaic, Greek and Roman Latin.
The author takes it as a given that Jesus interacted with the Essene Community at Qumran along with his cousin John (the Baptist) taking particular delight in their library. It is also assumed that Jesus and his cousin John had a life-long friendship. John’s father Zechariah was of the priestly class and the knowledge he passed on to his son must have challenged the younger cousin though no mention is made of an interaction between Zechariah and Jesus.
The one issue the author does not confront is that of marriage. It would have been considered a given at the time that any good rabbi would have a wife.
This is not light reading. In a few short pages the author has summarized theological arguments and concepts that have occupied the best minds inside and outside Christendom for a millennium and filled entire libraries with their discourse.
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