by Paul Johnson
There is no more touching scene in the whole of history than Gabriel’s disclosure to the trembling Virgin that she is pregnant, and her brave acceptance of the fact as an honor: no wonder so many of the greatest Western artists have endeavored to bring the episode to life as “the Annunciation.” For a teenager, Mary was notably energetic and decisive. She wanted the news of her cousin Elizabeth’s condition confirmed, and she immediately set forth, alone, on a long journey into the hill country of Judah, where Elizabeth lived with her husband, Zacharias, a priest who was a part-time official of the Jerusalem Temple.
The second notable scene in the story of Jesus occurred when Mary arrived there, recorded by Luke. Upon seeing Mary, Elizabeth felt her child, the future St. John the Baptist, leap in her womb, and the Holy Spirit intimated to her, at once, that Mary, too, was pregnant and carried God’s son within her. “[W]ith a loud voice” Elizabeth said, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1:41-43).
Mary’s reply to this salutation is one of the most striking passages in the New Testament. She replied in words which fall easily into verse, the form in which I have taken the liberty of transcribing them, and they have often been set to music (Lk 1:46-55):My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:
for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
This great hymn of exaltation, rightly known as the Magnificat, lifts the spirits of the poor and humble, and adumbrates one of the central themes of Jesus’s ministry. Within the Gospel story there is not only truth but its fruit, beauty, and here was Mary, while still carrying Jesus in her womb, creating poetry of mighty power.
Luke says Mary stayed three months with Elizabeth. She then returned to Nazareth and told Joseph of her condition. According to the Gospel of St. Matthew (1:19-25), which in many respects is the most detailed and is based upon Aramaic sources, her fiancé, who had treated her as a virgin, was shocked by her news. “[B]eing a just man,” however, he was “not willing to make her a publick example, [but] was minded to put her away privily. . . . [W]hile he thought on these things,” an angel appeared to him “in a dream” and said, “[F]ear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” Matthew says that Joseph did as the angel bid “and took unto him his wife.” Matthew says that Joseph did not cohabit with Mary until Jesus was born. Indeed, the most ancient traditions insist that Mary remained a virgin all her life, though Joseph gave her and her child all the love and care of a devoted husband.
The next episode occurred four or five months later, when a decree of the emperor, Augustus, for a census needed for taxation was passed on to all Herod’s subjects by Cyrenius, the governor of Syria. They were commanded to register at their native towns. As both Joseph and Mary were of David’s house, they went (Mary “great with child,” as noted in Luke 2:5) to Jerusalem, the city David had added to the Jewish kingdom by conquest, and in particular to Bethlehem, a small, one-street town six miles away, which was particularly associated with David’s name. Mary was a sturdy teenager. This was her third long journey while pregnant. Once in Bethlehem, “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2:6-7). About a century later, Justin Martyr, who came from about forty miles away and repeated local tradition, said the manger was a cave; that is not unlikely, for there are many in the limestone ridge on which Bethlehem perches.
There is no mention of a doctor or midwife, and Joseph seems to have been Mary’s only attendant. But she had no need of help. She ministered to herself, and her baby was, and remained throughout his life, healthy. But there were visitors (Lk 2:8-18; Mt 2:1-12). According to Luke, local shepherds, “keeping watch over their flock by night,” were startled by an astonishing light, which they recognized as an angelic vision— “and they were sore afraid.” But they were told by the angel: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy. . . . For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. . . . Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” Suddenly there was a heavenly chorus singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” The shepherds decided to go to Bethlehem, and they found Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, just as the angel said, in a stable. They explained all this to local people, and “all they that heard it wondered.” They also told Mary of the light, and the angel, and the chorus, so that she “kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
What Luke did not describe, but Matthew did, were the next visitors, “wise men from the east.” They brought gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh, “treasures” as Matthew called them, fit for a king. For the wise men were astrologers, used to studying the heavens and prognosticating from the changing configurations of the stars. One star in particular they believed denoted by its position that a king had been born to the Jews. They came to Jerusalem and presented themselves at Herod’s court, asking to be given directions. Herod “gathered all the chief priests and the scribes of the people together” and asked them to indicate from the scriptures where the king, or savior, or Christ, as prophesied, would be born. They replied: Bethlehem. Herod saw the wise men “privily” and sent them to Bethlehem: “Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.”
The wise men, and their story of the newborn baby who was to be king of the Jews, aroused all Herod’s paranoia. Matthew says that “being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.” Joseph, too, was warned in a dream that he, Mary, and the child were endangered by Herod. He was told, “Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.” Joseph did as he was told. The “flight into Egypt” has become another of those memorable episodes which has inspired artists over the ages—it is the subject of Caravaggio’s finest work, now in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery in Rome. The little party is seen resting. Joseph holds up a musical score for a young angel to play a lullaby, while Mary and the baby sleep.
Herod’s terror that the infant king would steal his kingdom led to his greatest crime in his long life of misdeeds. He dispatched armed assassins “and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under” (Mt 2 : 16). It was his last act. Within weeks he was dead. His territories were divided, and his son Archelaus inherited Judaea. Joseph was told this, and returned with his family. But he was careful to avoid Judaea, for fear Archelaus would have inherited his father’s suspicious nature, and returned to Nazareth in Galilee by a roundabout route, through Gaza and Samaria.
The story of the birth of Jesus, and the visits of the shepherds and the wise men, is the idyllic side of the Nativity, giving Jesus’s infancy a delightful storybook quality which has entranced everyone, young and old, for two thousand years. But the massacre of the innocents, as it came to be known, reminds us of the darker side of life in an obscure province of the Roman Empire in the fir
st century AD: the atrocious, unbridled cruelty of power, the absence in practice of any rule of law to restrain the powerful, and the contempt for human life, even the tenderest, shown by the mighty. This was the reality of human wickedness which Jesus was born to redress, against which he spoke, and which finally engulfed him. The massacre of the innocents is a foretaste of Calvary.
Some few people could see into this future, as is recorded in Luke (1 : 13-23, 59-65). He writes that Elizabeth’s husband, Zacharias, was skeptical when the angel Gabriel told him that his elderly wife was pregnant with the future John the Baptist, and as punishment was struck dumb. But when the child was born and taken to be circumcised, Elizabeth refused to name him after his father and insisted he be called John. Her neighbors and cousins protested: “There is none of thy kindred that is called by this name. And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called.” To their astonishment, Zacharias “asked for a writing table, and wrote: saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all.” More remarkable still, “his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God.” But, as with so many incidents in the story of Jesus, this happy tale is overshadowed by the threatening world surrounding it. News of the remarkable birth must have spread and reached Herod’s ever-suspicious ears. An ancient tradition, published by the early fathers, such as Origen, says Herod had Zacharias slaughtered “between the temple and the altar.” So he is venerated as an early martyr.
There was another old priest who did duty at the Temple called Simeon. Luke says he was “just and devout,” firmly believing in the coming Messiah. Indeed, he had had a revelation “that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (2 : 25-26). When Mary and Joseph came to the Temple for Mary’s ritual purification after giving birth and for Jesus’s circumcision—both according to Judaic law—the old man was present and took the child into his arms, blessed God in thanks, and said, using poetic words which have echoed down the generations (2:29-32):Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.
But, continues Luke (2 : 34-40), turning to Mary, the old man also said, on the somber note which alternates with the joyous tone of those early episodes in Jesus’s life, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; . . . ([and] a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” He was joined by an old woman called Anna, described by Luke as a “prophetess” and “a widow of about fourscore and four years,” who “served God with fastings and prayers night and day.” She, too, recognized the child as the Redeemer. The forecasts and warnings of Anna and Simeon joined the other words which Mary treasured in her heart. She did not fail to note that, expanding the prophecies, her child would be “a light of the Gentiles”—indeed the entire human race—and not just Jews, and that his sacrifices would pierce her like a sword. As “the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom,” she must have spent many anxious hours pondering his destiny and the atrocious pain, as well as joy, it would bring her.
She told Luke of one striking episode (2 : 42-51) which confirmed her hopes for him but puzzled her understanding. She, Joseph, and the child formed a close trio, well termed “the Holy Family” in Christian devotion. There was great piety in their home at Nazareth, much praying, and the Jewish feasts and practices were meticulously observed. Every year at the feast of Passover, they went up to Jerusalem to make a sacrifice in the Temple. This testifies to Joseph’s success in his trade, and the comparative affluence in which they lived, for the long and expensive journey meant that Joseph was away from his work for many weeks. In this annual pilgrimage they had many “kinsfolk and acquaintance.” When Jesus was twelve, they thought him old enough to wander about by himself, exploring. The Temple, rebuilt by Herod on a gigantic scale, was a vast labyrinth of courts, rooms, and corridors, and Jerusalem itself a major city of palaces and forts, and a warren of houses. When the time came to leave, “Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it.” They assumed he was with their friends in the convoy of mules and donkeys and had gone “a day’s journey” before, suddenly frightened, they realized he had been left behind in the holy and wicked city.
Luke records that after three days of frantic searching “they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.” Here speaks an adoring mother’s pride, no doubt, but the next exchange she remembers is rather different and unexpected. She rebuked Jesus for his thoughtlessness: “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” He replied, “[W]ist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Luke adds: “[T]hey understood not the saying which he spake unto them.” It is striking that these first recorded words of Jesus are of a piece with his entire life and mission: he must be about God’s business. And though Mary, by courtesy, refers to Joseph as his father, Jesus already knows and believes his Father is God, and says so, without any attempt at concealment.
Mary, Luke adds, “kept all these sayings in her heart.” But it is at this point that the stories she related of Jesus’s conception, birth, and childhood cease abruptly. Jesus went back to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, “and was subject unto them.” Luke then skips the next eighteen years of Jesus’s life and moves to his baptism by St. John. The other evangelists are likewise silent. It is a somber and unwelcome fact that for more than half of Jesus’s life we know absolutely nothing about what he did or where he went or how he lived.
We can be sure he was well instructed. Virtually all clever Jewish children were, if circumstances permitted, and Jesus came from a comfortable home. We know he could read, for his deep and, still more, his skeptical knowledge of the scriptures is evidence of constant study of the texts from an early age. By age twelve he was perfectly capable of taking part in a learned discussion of their meaning. We know he could write, too, though there is only one recorded instance of his doing so. This was the occasion when he stopped the puritanical but hypocritical Jews from stoning to death a woman taken in adultery by writing their own sins in the dust. The fact that he performed this difficult feat, and that his writing was instantly read and understood, argues that he had an unusually clear and readable hand, almost the hand of a professional scribe, one might think. But no writing by Jesus has survived. Nor do we know what he read, apart from the scriptures.
What we do know, from the records of his sayings, is that he was a civilized, cultured, educated man who chose his words with great care and precision, with delicacy, accuracy, and tact—all indications of wide reading in secular as well as religious literature. My belief is that he was familiar with Latin and Greek, as well as his native Aramaic and the Hebrew he spoke and read as an educated observant Jew. His habitual poetic turn of phrase, though natural to him (as to his mother), was also, I suspect, acquired by steady reading of poetry, much of which he had learned by heart. This poetry, I think, included not just Hebrew texts like the book of Job, which is full of poetry, and the religious songs we call the Psalms, but the treasury of Greek poets that circulated in the empire by this time. I believe Jesus could have recited passages from Homer and Euripides, possibly Virgil also. But this is mere deductive supposition.
We must assume that Jesus was self-taught in many respects. His words and concepts betray absolutely no sign of academic deformation or the impress of a system. He repudiated such things, just as he hated legalism in moral teaching. His was an imagination unsullied by the classroom or lecture hall. Being an autodidact, he had never attended such places, and so was dismissed by his critics as uneducated. John reports that the Temple Jews, amazed at his teaching t
here, sneered, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” (7:15). We can only guess where the young Jesus found his books to study. But written materials of all kinds were never rare in the Jewish world, even in a country town like Nazareth.
What is less conjectural is that Jesus was a man of wide knowledge, especially of trade and agriculture. This is made clear by his confident and expert references to those practical matters in his sayings and parables. Jesus had a huge range, one reason why so many loved to listen to him, often picking up approvingly a reference to their own calling. But I suspect his knowledge reflected actual experience. The death of Joseph, which occurred during his missing years, led to the breakup of the Nazareth household; Mary went to live with one or another of her numerous family or clan, which included a sister and grown-up children, sometimes referred to as Jesus’s brothers, or brethren.
At this point it would have been natural for Jesus, who had evidently chosen not to carry on Joseph’s workshop as a carpenter, to leave home and seek experience in a wider world, so as to carry on, in due course, his “Father’s business” more efficiently. There is no means of knowing what he did. One suggestion is that he became an Essene. But his teaching and behavior are so foreign to what we know of this sect from the Dead Sea Scrolls that it can be ruled out. Nor is it likely he belonged to any other religious sect, of which there were many. Zealotry of any kind was foreign to him. He bore none of the psychological stigmata of the professional cleric, monk, or anchorite, being moderate, disliking religiosity and strict observance, moving easily and enjoyably with men and women of all degrees and temperaments, and shunning solitude, except for prayer. He was a convivial and collegiate spirit, always seeking companions and new friends.
