WHAT transpired during what are commonly called the Silent Years of the life of Jesus is not for us an interest dictated by idle curiosity. We require to know to the fullest extent possible the man we are dealing with if we are to interpret correctly what has been handed down concerning him. We are persuaded that the documents we possess, when we understand their character and how they came into being, are able to yield a straightforward and sensible answer to the question of the natives of Nazareth, ‘Whence hath this man these things?’
It is certified to us that Jesus was the eldest of a fairly large family brought up in humble circumstances. Poverty was widespread at this period, due to taxation, political disorganisation and the effects of famine and civil strife. The household at Nazareth was accustomed to frugal living. Things that Jesus said point to personal experience of economic stringency, which his associations converted into a philosophy of life. He was assured that in God's providence there would be enough for simple necessities, enough to manage on, and one should not be anxious about tomorrow. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’
Memories doubtless spoke in such teaching, and we can fathom what some of these may have been. While still a youth Jesus would appear to have lost his father, the breadwinner of the family. After the incident when Jesus was twelve, as reported by Luke, Joseph disappears from the story. At the marriage in Cana of Galilee it is the mother of Jesus who is there, not both his parents.1 and elsewhere in the accounts of the public ministry it is only his mother and brothers who play a part. Jesus does not directly refer to his father, but we find him showing concern for the lot of the poor widow and tenderness towards little children and the orphan.
Jesus is said to have followed his father's trade, but we may infer that temperamentally he was not well suited to assume responsibilities as head of the family, which made demands upon him at variance with his need for solitude and opportunity to pursue the matters with which his mind was burdened. His mother may not have taken too kindly to his inwardness and habit of going off alone. His family should be his first consideration. It was not easy, even with care and scrimping, to provide for so many mouths, to save for the dowries of the girls. Jesus may have had a recollection of his mother in mind when he told of the woman who had lost a small silver coin, and who lit a lamp and swept the house through until she found it. His stories were often based on real life as he had known and observed it.
If this was the position, it would not be surprising if Mary was disturbed about Jesus. When he embarked on his public activities it would seem all wrong that he should turn his back on his family to go off preaching. She loved her eldest son, and perhaps thought of him as in some ways so like his father, but she could not pretend to understand him. His kinsfolk went further. They decided that he must be out of his mind and attempted to take control of him. His mother and brothers sought access to him, and we are left in doubt whether he received them.2 When Jesus is found addressing his mother it is with respect and sympathy, but not in terms that suggest there was a close bond between them.
With the father of Jesus it had been different. We may judge from his references to fatherhood that Jesus had adored Joseph and that this feeling was reciprocated. Joseph had taught his son his trade, and inevitably they must have been constantly together. To the boy God was conceived in his father's image, and when Joseph was taken away the intensity with which Jesus turned to God as the Father in Heaven is eloquent of how greatly he had loved and felt the loss of his earthly parent. Today it would probably be said that he had a father fixation. The unexpected death of Joseph when Jesus was still at a most impressionable age may well have been an important factor in convincing him of his messianic destiny. Had not God said of the son of David, ‘I will be his father, and he shall be my son’.3 By taking Joseph was not God signifying the fulfilment of the messianic promise of the Psalmist?4 This is brought out in the Gospel account of the baptism of Jesus, representing his authorisation to take up his work as Messiah. The words that came to him then seem to echo not only the Psalmist's language, but the affectionate encouragement his father had given him in childhood in the carpenter's shop, ‘You are my dear son: I am very pleased with you.’
We must not minimise the struggle which Jesus underwent, his self-examination and mental anguish, before he could accept for himself that he had been chosen to be the Messiah. It was a conclusion he had to reach without the help of any human being in whom he could confide. No wonder if he should often wish to be alone and pour out his soul to the One who was now the only father he had. When he turned over again and again those prophecies held to relate to the Messiah he must have stood aghast at what was involved of wisdom and perfection of character. Who could measure up to such a standard? The worst thing to contend with was the temptation to the sins of pride and power-seeking and self-sufficiency. Once youthful dreams were submitted to more mature judgements such temptations must have weighed heavily upon him, long before they were finally resisted and put to flight in the contest which tradition reports took place in the wilderness after his baptism. ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One!’
It may never previously have occurred to us what a tremendous and heart-searching thing it was for Jesus to own himself as the man his people awaited. The Christian will have supposed that in some sense even as a boy he was conscious of deity within him, and that accordingly he accepted that he was the Messiah without qualm or misgiving. All he did, on this view, was effectively and for almost the whole of his life to conceal his divine nature from everyone he met, suppressing the revelation of his powers, performing no miracles, healing no sick, so that the people of Nazareth had no inkling of his quality, and not even a demon had the temerity to identify him. Such a view, apart from its intrinsic improbability, does not correspond with the picture of Jesus in the Gospels as a man who readily responded with the capacities in him to the call of human need. If he was the same before his baptism as he was afterwards this could hardly fail to be manifest in his earlier years. After Jesus had been accepted as God it did not take Christians very long to appreciate this difficulty, and they produced a number of books purporting to relate authentically the prodigies he had performed as a boy, and which may be read in M. R. James's Apocryphal New Testament. But quite evidently there had been no such exploits, and nothing to indicate that the young Jesus son of Joseph was other than he seemed.
We may not underrate how much the true understanding of the Jesus of the Gospels depends upon what preceded and led up to his public activities. We have to realise that for him the prospect of being the Messiah must have been in certain respects quite terrifying. How could he obtain full knowledge of all that was involved and what he would be required to do? How should he prepare himself? It was conceivable that he might even be deluding himself about his vocation. He had no experience of government or anything to do with the exercise of authority. The life to which he was accustomed was relatively uncomplicated, village life among ordinary people. But he could not deny that a fire burned within him, as it had burned within the prophets of old, most of whom like himself were persons of no eminence, and yet they had spoken the word of the Lord to princes.
It was essential for Jesus to acquire more insight into the messianic interpretation of the Scriptures, more ability to comprehend the will of God. The messianic import of a number of passages he well knew from what he had heard in the synagogue, and perhaps from what his father and others had told him. But since no one had had to face the fulfilling of the prophecies there existed no systematic presentation of what should befall the Messiah. This had to be discovered and worked out. A clear pattern had to emerge. Though Jesus may have believed that he would be guided aright when the time came, he still had to visualise the mission of the Messiah more concretely and relate it to contemporary conditions and circumstances.
Even with the responsibilities at home which Jesus was obliged to discharge, especially while his younger brothers and sisters were growing up, there was the possibility to learn much, and it is clear that he availed himself of it to the full. While he would often seek solitude, he did not lock himself away in a private world of his own. He became a keen student of life and human character. Very little escaped his penetrating notice. The man we meet in the Gospels is one who knows the countryside of Galilee intimately, its flowers and trees, fields and orchards, the activities of the people in work and worship, in their social, spiritual, political and economic affairs. The things he teaches and the realistic tales he tells to illustrate his teaching, are proof of how much he has absorbed. Such a store of information could only have been the outcome of prolonged and acute observation. There had been nothing somnambulistic in his walks abroad. He had deemed it to be vital to his equipment that he should have first-hand knowledge of the ways of the world.
There is no need to imagine, as some writers have done, that Jesus travelled to other lands such as Egypt and even Tibet in order to learn from the Masters there. He exhibits no familiarity at all with any foreign country, and refers to the outside world only in the most general terms. The only country he knew was Palestine. But it is no less negatived that nothing whatever had been shaping itself in the mind of Jesus concerning the demands of the messiahship, and that illumination and all that went with it came to him suddenly out of the void when he was baptised by John. Everything we read in the Gospels is against such a view.
The Jesus of the Gospels alludes to himself from the beginning as the Son of Man, a northern messianic title.5 He speaks clearly and positively on a wide range of themes. He appears to know exactly what he has to do and why, and all this from the outset of his brief ministry. When tempted to take another course than that which he has determined in advance is right he rejects it out of hand. He is so familiar with the Scriptures and their implication that he seems to carry the whole Bible in his head. What he had succeeded in mastering surprised the doctors of Jerusalem, so that they could say of him, ‘How is he acquainted with learning, never having studied?’
But though Jesus was no ‘disciple of the wise’ as understood by the Pharisees, he could well have had access to other sources of knowledge. It would be natural for him to seek out those who could further enlighten him on messianic matters. Among them in Galilee would have been groups of those whom the people revered as ‘the Saints’. There were many such ‘Essenes’ in the region, varying in their antecedents. It is suggested by the Gospels that Jesus had imbibed a good many of their notions, and his younger brother James was strongly attracted to the nazirite ascetic way of life. Jesus was not himself an Essene, as has often been asserted, but it seems fairly certain that he must have consorted with such sectaries, and was familiar with some of their literature and teaching.6 He accepted some of their tenets and recognised the existence of an ‘Elect of Israel’, but he also repudiated much that they represented, their asceticism, secretiveness, rigidity of discipline, harsh judgements and uncompromising attitudes. He could not go all the way with them, any more than he could with the Pharisees.
It would not have been difficult in later years for Jesus to be away from home for protracted periods in an endeavour to learn what ‘the Saints’ could teach him. His domestic responsibilities would have diminished considerably once his younger brothers could earn a living and one or more of his sisters had married. We know that some of his trade were itinerant, going from village to village like gipsy tinkers giving the services of their craft. This possibility has been explored by Robert Eisler in his work The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist, where he regards the pre-Christian Nazoreans as having an affinity with the ancient sectarian migrant tribes of Rechabites and Kenites, as more recently does Matthew Black, many of whom followed the calling of smiths and carpenters. Eisler compares them with the still-existing bedouin Sleb of Syria, a tribe of itinerant craftsmen whose name derives from the cross-mark they put on their foreheads. These people have little use for money and are often ready to accept grain or dates in payment for their work. Eisler draws attention to the Essene-like position of Jesus in respect of wealth and possessions, and his instructions to his apostles when he sent them out. Jesus declared that no man could serve God and Mammon. Men should not lay up treasure on earth. It was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We must therefore regard it as highly probable that for a time Jesus attached himself to a travelling body of sectarian craftsmen, and thereby came to be known as the Nazorean.
Naturally such thinking is speculative in the absence of direct evidence. But the indirect evidence which has accumulated is very impressive.
Whatever Jesus learnt, however, and in whatever way he obtained his knowledge, including elements of the healing art cultivated and practiced by the communities of ‘the Saints’, there was always before him the destiny for which he prepared. In the last resort, he alone, earnestly soliciting the help of the Heavenly Father, must penetrate to the inner recesses of the sacred writings and marshal in order the intimations of the Divine Oracles. The novel achievement of Jesus was to mark out clearly the path the Messiah would have to tread. Thus it was written.
What is so striking in the Gospels, as scholars have noted, is the dynamic purposefulness of Jesus. He proceeds methodically to carry out certain actions calculated to have particular effects and leading up to a predetermined conclusion. It is as if he was a chemist in a laboratory confidently following a formula set down in an authoritative textbook. There is scarcely a hint of hesitation or indecision. He is like a chess player with a master plan, who has anticipated and knows how to counter the moves of his opponents, and indeed to make them serve the ends of his design. He says and does things quite unexpected by his intimate associates, which take them by surprise or which they are unable to fathom. They may like to think they are wholly in his confidence, and even that he will do what they have in mind for him. But he baffles and defeats them, and makes arrangements of which they have not been cognisant to secure his objectives.
The man of the Gospels is clearly putting into operation a programme which was the outcome of his prior messianic investigations in the years before his baptism, with absolute conviction of the validity of his findings. What God had spoken by the mouth of his prophets must surely and inevitably come to pass down to the last jot and tittle. So informed is he that he is readily able to take his cue from situations as they arise, and actively assist in shaping them so that they will make their foreordained contribution. He does not, of course, know beforehand to what extent and in what manner they will play their part, but with the help of his sources and his knowledge of contemporary affairs he can discern that certain categories of persons will be involved.
We might well be sceptical that Jesus could do this, or imagine that if he did he must have been superhuman, were it not for the information we possess, notably since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But now we have ample confirmation of the oracular treatment of the Scriptures at the time of Jesus, whereby it was elicited from them what would happen in the Last Times to nations, groups and individuals, often in some detail. We are still ignorant of the methods employed, but we have before our eyes some of the results of the curious science of the Elect. It is plainly disclosed that the anticipations of Jesus, allowing for exaggerations in the Gospel tradition, could have been reached by the methods which were in use.
From caves near Qumran have come manuscripts, some two thousand years old, which show how the books of the Bible were prophetically interpreted in an extraordinary manner to make them relate to the fortunes of the Elect and the persecution of the Teacher of Righteousness, to the punishment of the Wicked Priest and the other chief priests of Jerusalem.7 When we read these strange documents it is not difficult to understand how Jesus could have arrived at comprehension of what the Messiah would experience. He evidently accepted that assured results were obtainable in the ways which were in vogue,8 and a prophetic blue-print of the Days of the Messiah was the outcome of his investigations. The Scriptures thus disclosed to him the character of his mission, how his message would be received, his fate, and his subsequent appearance in glory as king and judge of the nations. The nearest individual approach to the achievement of Jesus is the prophetic and didactic power which the Essenes associated with the unnamed Teacher of Righteousness.9
We must dare to be honest about Jesus, and ready to take advantage of every circumstance which may help to throw light on his personality and the working of his mind. The faith he had in God is fully in keeping with a type of mystical Jewish piety, by no means extinct, in which there is a liberal mixture of superstition. He was oriental in his poetry, his pictorialism, his addiction to aphorisms and inclination to invective. He had the bright intelligence of his race, vivid imagination and great strength of will. It was in his nature to scheme and plan, and patiently and stubbornly to pursue a chosen course to the end. He had what is called in Jewish jargon a yiddishe hertz, a Jewish warmth of benevolent affection. He was highly sensitive and a shrewd judge of people. In his make-up there was no ambition of self-aggrandisement: his recognition of himself as the Messiah-designate cannot be attributed to megalomania. He saw himself as the Servant.
It is not within the province of this book, or the competence of its author, to provide a psychoanalytical study of Jesus. But it is necessary with what help we can obtain from the idealised records, supplemented by other knowledge which can be brought to bear on the subject, to have some insight into the character of the man we are dealing with. Only so can we apprehend that certain implications of the narratives are in keeping with that character, when they reveal how Jesus converted his convictions into actions and set out deliberately to bring upon himself those consequences which, according to his interpretation, the prophecies had predetermined.
The motives of Jesus must be sought in the land where he was born and the times in which he lived. On his own showing, he was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They were oppressed. Their country was controlled by a powerful heathen people, governed by its officials and their representatives. They suffered. They were in dread. They sinned and were wretched, angry and anxious. Yet upon their redemption there waited the peace and happiness of the whole world, which should arise from Israel's return to the Lord, when the worship of the One God and Father would be extended to all the children of men. The Scribes instructed in the Kingdom of God had made known that the Last Times of the old order had come, that the Messiah would speedily be revealed as the instrument of the great change, the Regeneration. But the transition would not be accomplished without sorrows and judgements, conflicts and calamities on an unprecedented scale. The Shepherd himself would be required to give his life for the sheep. All this Jesus saw and believed, and found in his heart a great love and compassion for his people, the flooding into his soul of a prompting to respond at whatever cost to the cry which he both felt and heard going up to heaven.
If he was a strange man it was because he was the product of a strange people with a strange faith that they were chosen of God to lead all nations to him, so that justice, righteousness and peace might reign on earth. It was a strange country, a holy land, in which Jesus was born and grew up. It was a strange period, the End of the Days, of which holy men of long ago had written. The most dramatic moment in human history was now believed to be imminent, and the signs of its arrival were multiplying.
This was the heritage, and these were the circumstances, which explain Jesus to us far more intelligibly than the quasi-pagan interpretation to which Christianity still largely subscribes under compulsion of its traditions and inclinations.
We may consider that Jesus had a strong sense of the dramatic, which not only brought home to him acutely the character and implications of his people's history, but led him to see himself as the embodiment of their hopes. In his own person he dramatised their dreams and saw himself acting out the prophecies. We may hold that this is how he came to marshall the messianic predictions in order as no one else had done so that they acquired the form of a drama developing to its appointed climax. His visualisation of the role of the Messiah was highly theatrical, and he played out the part like an actor with careful timing and appreciation of what every act called for. His calculated moves, his symbolic actions such as the forty days in the wilderness and the choice of twelve apostles, his staging of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the Last Supper, all testify to his dramatic consciousness, as do many of his gestures and declamations. Only one who possessed such a consciousness could have conceived, contrived and carried out the Passover Plot so masterfully and so superbly. But the portrayal of the Messiah's tragedy, and the anticipation of the happy ending, was utterly sincere. This was reality not make-believe.
For Jesus it was of the essence of his faith that God in his mysterious ways had made choice of him, a descendant of David, as the means of fulfilling those purposes which from age to age the Lord had inspired his messengers to proclaim. It was a knowledge which he could not communicate to anyone, could not even hint at before his call came. He could only prepare himself, and wait.
The effects of all he may be imagined to have endured, as he contemplated what was to come and dare not betray his secret, were bound to take their toll and show themselves in his physical appearance. It is conveyed by John's Gospel that he looked considerably older than his years.10 He was approaching thirty, according to Luke, when at last the news came which told him that his long and exacting probation was at an end.
1. Jn. ii. 1.
2. Mk. iii. 21, 31–5.
3. II. Sam. vii. 14.
4. Ps. ii. 7.
5. See Part Two, Chapter 2, North Palestinean Sectarians and Christain Origins.
6. See Part Two, Chapter 2.
7. The Biblical Commentaries from Qumran are extremly revealing, and may readily be consulted in the translation of G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin Books). Special attention is drawn to the Commentary on Habakkuk and that on Psalm xxxvii. A specimen from each is given here by way of illustration. Square brackets indicate words restored where the manuscripts are defective.
Commentary on Habakkuk.
[For the violence done to Lebanon shall overwhelm you, and the destruction of the beasts] shall terrify you, because of the blood of men and the violence done to the land, the city, and all its inhabitants (Hab. ii. 17).
Interpreted, this saying concerns the Wicked Priest, in as much as he shall be paid the reward which he himself tendered to the Poor. For Lebanon is the Council of the Community; and the beasts are the Simple of Judah who keep the Law. As he himself plotted the destruction of the Poor, so will God condemn him to destruction. As for that which he said, Because of the blood of the city and the violence done to the land: interpreted, the city is Jerusalem where the Wicked Priest committed abominable deeds and defiled the Temple of God. The violence done to the land: these are the cities of Judah where he robbed the poor of their possessions.
Commentary on Psalm xxxvii.
The Wicked draw the sword and bend their bow to bring down the poor and needy and to slay the upright of way. Their sword shall enter into their own heart and their bow shall be broken (14–15).
Interpreted, this concerns the wicked of Ephraim and Manasseh, who shall seek to lay hands on the Priest (i.e. the Teacher of Righteousness) and the men of his Council at the time of trial which shall come upon them. But God will redeem them from out of their hand. And afterwards, they (i.e. the wicked) shall be delivered into the hand of the violent among the nations for judgement. . . .
8. James the brother of Jesus utilised this technique to confirm that the Gentiles would respond to the Gospel (Acts xv. 14–18), and the Pharisee Johanan son of Zaccai also did so to foretell the destruction of the Temple which took place in A.D. 70.
9. In the Habakkuk Commentary he is called ‘the Priest [in whose heart] God set [understanding] that he might interpret all the words of his servants the Prophets, through whom He foretold all that would happen to His people and [His land]’ (II). He is also called the ‘Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known all the mysteries of the words of His servants the Prophets’ (VII).
10. Jn. viii. 57.