The Boy Lost and Found
CHAPTER 12
JESUS STAYED at the school in the village church until he was twelve years old. By that time he could read and write and could also repeat many verses. But as his reading book and spelling book and copy book and memory verses were all in the Bible, and as he heard long readings from its books at the church service, we may be sure that he knew quite well all the best things in that best of all books, the Bible. One proof of this is that in later years, when anyone tried to puzzle him with a hard question, he often answered promptly with a sentence from the Bible.
A Jewish boy generally left school at the age of twelve, unless he wished to become a rabbi, which was the name among the Jews for a teacher of their law. If that was his wish or the purpose of his parents, he was sent up to Jerusalem to study in the college held by the scribes or teachers in the Temple. Saul of Tarsus, a boy about four years younger than Jesus, whom we know as Paul the Apostle, was a student in the Temple college, but Jesus was not. While the young Saul was studying in Jerusalem, Jesus as a young man was working in the carpenter shop at Nazareth.
When Jesus was twelve years old he was taken on his first journey from Nazareth up to Jerusalem to attend the great feast of the Passover. Three great feasts were held during the year. The feast of the Passover was in the early spring, and kept in mind the great day when the Israelites went out of Egypt, no longer slaves but free men. The feast of the Pentecost was held in the late spring, just fifty days after the Passover—the word "pentecost" meaning "fifty days"—and reminded the people that fifty days after their fathers went out of Egypt, God gave them their law amid lightning and thunder on Mount Sinai. The feast of the Tabernacles, or "feast of tents" (for that is the meaning of the word tabernacles), was held in the fall; and at this time the people built for themselves huts of green branches, ate in them and slept in them for a week, to show the outdoor life of the early days in the wilderness, while they were marching to Canaan, the Promised Land. These three great feasts were held in Jerusalem, and from every part of the land the people came up to the city to attend them.
It was a great event when the boy Jesus for the first time went on this journey to Jerusalem. The younger children were left at home, under the care of some friend, for a boy did not begin attending these feasts until he was twelve years old. Of course, Joseph and Mary knew all about this journey, for they had made it many times. They went in the caravan or company from Nazareth, following the road that Joseph and Mary had taken on their way to Bethlehem, twelve years before. As they journeyed, Mary seated on the ass, Joseph and the boy Jesus walking beside her, they would talk about the places which they passed, and the stories of old times told about them. Jesus knew all those stories, for every Jewish boy had heard them, over and over.
As they paused on the top of the hill beside Nazareth, below them was spread out the great plain of Esdraelon, and they would say, "That mountain by the Great Sea on the west is Mount Carmel, where Elijah built his altar and made his great offering, when in answer to his prayer the fire came down from heaven and burned up the bullock laid on the altar. Do you see that road running across the plain? On that road Elijah ran in front of King Ahab's chariot, after the long drought, when the rain was coming. And then, this plain! Over it from Mount Tabor, there on the left, Deborah and Barak chased the flying Canaanites across the plain. Do you see that second mountain beyond Tabor? That is Mount Gilboa; and at its foot Gideon with his brave three hundred frightened at night the Midianite host and won a great victory."
Mount Tabor and the plain of Esdraelon
They went down into the Jordan valley and walked southward by the Roman road, following the Jordan River. At one place the mountains on either side came down close to the river, and there was barely room for the road between the foaming stream on one side and the steep rocks on the other.