¶1Have you ever wondered what Jesus was doing before he embarked on his public ministry? What does history say about his birth? And what was life like growing up in Nazareth? I'm John Nelson and on this special edition of Unbelievable, I'm sat down with Professor Joan Taylor to find out more about the childhood of Jesus. Joan Taylor is one of the world's leading historians of Jesus.
¶2She is professor emmerita of Christian origins and second temple Judaism at King's College London and visiting professor at Australian Catholic University Melbourne. You may have come across some of her books including Women Remembered with Helen Bond, What Did Jesus Look Like? and this incredible new book that we are discussing today, Boy Jesus, Growing Up Judean in Turbulent Times. Joan, thank you so much for joining me on Unbelievable. >> Thank you for having me.
¶3This is a bit of a surreal experience for me because the last time we were sat down together, well, it was on Zoom that you were my doctrinal examiner for my viviveror on Jesus's physical appearance. Um, and you had so many brilliant comments and questions for that thesis. So, it's really nice to be sat down with you again to discuss, you know, your recent book, uh, Boy Jesus. >> Now the tables are turned. >> The tables have turned.
¶4>> You may take your revenge. >> Not at all. Uh before we set up this interview, I think it was about four or five months ago, I got a copy of Boy Jesus because I'm fascinated with this whole idea that a Jesus historian can say something about the childhood of Jesus. I think a lot of Jesus historians haven't touched this topic. So what motivated you to write on the childhood of Jesus?
¶5probably for exactly that reason that time and time again the historical Jesus scholars would say there's absolutely nothing of any significance in the infancy narratives. There's nothing we can really know about Jesus as a child. Um, Sanders said, "The clearest case of invention is in the infancy narratives." And just >> it was one of those things you skipped over all through my academic teaching until quite recently um when I taught the historical Jesus. I would say the same thing. I would go through the history of the historical Jesus, the quest for the historical Jesus and and then look at the criteria of authenticity and all the sorts of things that we can do in order to get at the historical Jesus.
¶6And then I' I'd look at the evidence, the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are primary evidence in terms of the historical Jesus. But when it came to the infancy narratives, I'd say great, you know, there are the infancy narratives and we can look and, you know, there's Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph, birth in Bethlehem. Got to be a bit suspicious about that. Um, but what can we really know? John the Baptist.
¶7>> Yeah. >> So, we we're going to begin with the Gospel of Mark, Gospel of John. They they're situating Jesus coming to John the Baptist. That's all we can really trace. And that meant that everything that might have been quite important for Jesus in terms of his formative years, his the the environment of his birth, family memory, the fact that he was embedded in a family growing up, um possibly in different places.
¶8All of that was just erased. You we we can't know anything about it. We're not going to go there. It's just pure speculation if we try and go there. and I started to feel uncomfortable about that.
¶9>> Oh wow. So, how do you how do you go about reconstructing parts of Jesus' life? Because, okay, we've got these infancy narratives, and maybe we can dive into them in a moment, but then you've got this one childhood story or adolescent story of Jesus as a 12-year-old in Luke, and then there's not really anything else. So, sort of broad picture, how do you go about kind of filling in the missing pieces of Jesus' childhood? Well, the first thing was actually to go to Josephus, the Jewish historian Josephus writing in the first century who actually says a lot about the environment that Jesus was born into, the social, political, cultural environment >> um because he was very very interested in the reign of Herod the Great.
¶10And the one thing we have in both the infancy narratives is this situation of Jesus being born in the final years of Herod. So I thought, okay, to start off with, I wasn't thinking, I'm just going to take the infancy narratives as gospel truth as as historically accurate. I'm going to still be very wary about them, but the the least I can do is situate Jesus in a time. And um some listeners will know that uh with the difference um in in terms of reckoning time. Now uh today we would say that Jesus was born sometime 6 BC.
¶11It seems ridiculous. 6 B.CE common era uh before common era or to four >> um BCE because 4 BCE was the date of Herod's death. So Jesus was born sometime in those final two years of Herod's reign. Say roughly two years because it could have been more than two years. And um looking at what was going on in terms of the final years of Herod the Great, well really the whole reign of Herod the Great, I felt all of that was somehow built into what the infancy narratives authors expected readers to know.
¶12>> So they only needed to say Herod, King Herod. Yeah, >> remember Herod the Great is our way of referring to him, not an ancient way of referring to him. They only needed to mention Herod. And readers, many readers would go, "Whoa." Um, we're set up to expect bad things of Herod >> and indeed we get bad things of Herod and we get bad things of the Romans. So we are in a particular social location that is alienated and different from the powers that be.
¶13And those powers that be in um the end of the 1st century BC, beginning of the 1st century CE were actually those who have our official history. >> So we're situated somewhere else. And that to me in itself is just fascinating. >> Yeah. to try and uh go into that social situation that has led to the infancy narratives that we have.
¶14You know, where do they come from? How the memories work? You know, how are they put together? Where is this perspective from? Um, so I had Josephus in terms of the wider history, but then I also think there was something in terms of the infancy narratives that themselves that point you to look at that wider history from in a different way.
¶15>> Yeah, maybe we can stick with Herod for a moment because this might be a point where many historians would look at that story in Matthew's gospel, the mass, the dreadful massacre of the innocents, and say this is not attested in Josephus. Um and yet it does seem to be the sort of thing that Herod would do. So how do you how do you treat a narrative like that or an episode like that? >> Yeah, good question. I mean there are two things.
¶16Um the first thing is thinking about memory and how memory gets shaped over time. When Herod was first appointed by the Romans, he was supposed to take over as tetrarch in Judea. M >> but lo and behold, there he was in Jerusalem in 40 BCE. We're way back in time here when Rome's enemy, the Paththeanss, the Iranians, the present day Iranians, um they invaded with their own man to put in charge of Judea because in fact Judeian society was very divided. Some people sort of loosely favored Roman control sort of because they were the big power in the west, but others preferred to have paththean control to be ruled by the east.
¶17And you had to kind of make up your mind which imperial power you were going to go for. >> And they also favored different rulers. So the people who were with the Paththeanss wanted um this ruler called Metatias Antiggonus or Antigonus Metatias depending on which book you read and he was a Hezbana high priest and king. Okay, so there's Antiggonus with the Paththeians. They sweep into Jerusalem.
¶18The Paththeanss take over Jerusalem. Herod flees. He flees south according to Josephus. And on the road as he's fleeing south towards what became Herodium, he's attacked by local people. Now if you look at a map of Jerusalem and south of Jerusalem, what do you get?
¶19You get Bethlehem. >> The road goes directly past Bethlehem on the way to Herodium. At Herodium, later called Herodium. We don't actually know the name of the hill beforehand. Um Herod with his army, his personal army turns around and he attacks the invaders of who are attacking him >> and he massacres them.
¶20>> So there is indeed a massacre of of local people, imagine local young men coming from Bethlehem in 40 B.CE. So Herod has done a massacre. So it's not and he never did a massacre. There was one but it was at a different time. So you think okay memory stories told and retold and retold >> in the years just before Herod's death.
¶21There was another couple of things that happened. Well many things that happened in that Herod >> turned against his own family. He killed three of his own sons. >> Oh my goodness. >> Because he was so afraid that they were going to take his rule.
¶22And along with that, Josephus says he killed a whole lot of other people as well. M >> and if he was doing things against anyone that he felt was uh a danger to him and the people of Bethlehem had already risen up against him in favor of of Antigonist in 40 B.CE. He would have had his sights on them very very much. So it's not completely out of the question that there was something there was some incident in the area of Bethlehem. People were rounded up.
¶23Young men were rounded up. You know, something could have happened in those final years where Herod was absolutely off his head. >> Yeah. >> Really? Um and paranoid.
¶24Um Herod built his tomb in the end in Herodium. And if you go to Bethlehem today, go on top of one of the hotels in Bethlehem and look further to the south and you will see the hill of Herodium. That was his place looking at Bethlehem. So it's almost like he's got his eyes on Bethlehem. >> He did.
¶25>> But why? >> So Bethlehem from Ma that chapter 5, you'll know that it had expectation attached to it. That this would be a place where a future ruler of Judea would arise. This was expected. And that future ruler would be from the line of King David, the ancient King David who ruled the thousand years earlier and united the northern kingdom of Israel with the southern kingdom of Judah and uh ruled this United Kingdom and al also his son Solomon.
¶26So there was this great sense of we are going to be restored and the the the kingdom of Israel as David ruled it would be united again. The the 12 tribes would come back um and that the the prince of the line of David would rule over them. And if you want to read all about it, read Ezekiel. U because it's all about um this idea of the valley of the dry bones that in Ezekiel's vision um being reconstituted with the Holy Spirit empowering this new Israel. The spirit is there in this this vision and uh the the 12 tribes will come together in what is now the land of Israel.
¶27This is a term >> that Ezekiel really institutes. It wasn't around before. Um and and the the prince from the the line of David would be the ruler. This is the expected king, the Messiah, the Christ who would rule at the end of days. So we're in this esqueological world of hope.
¶28>> Yeah. >> And I think Herod really knew that. Not only because he he of what happened in terms of the Bethlehem people, but um that was the traditional place where David was from. The the line of David I think still lived in Bethlehem, at least some of them. And um and Herod was watching them.
¶29He also in 10 BC went into the tomb of David according to Josephus and he desecrated it. He robbed the tomb of David in Jerusalem. So he had business. >> But what David do that? >> Well, he he needed the money.
¶30>> According to Josephus, he and with all of his great glorious building project that everyone can see if you go to uh the region today, um you will see uh Herod's uh palace and in Palestine and in Jericho. You can go and see palaces in um in Msada or in Jerusalem or or in Cesaria. You know, Herod was building palaces. Um and that took a lot of money. And he was also waging war.
¶31>> He was very much that kind of guy. And so he needed the money. But to to go in and take the treasure from the tomb of David, that was absolutely taboo, sacriiggious and and offense to everyone who was from the line of David. >> Do you think King Herod saw himself as a sort of messianic figure? I mean, you mentioned all these building projects and obviously the son of David, Solomon, is involved in building the temple and maybe the Messiah is going to have something to do with this temple as well.
¶32Do you think there's do you think that he s thought I am the king of the Jews? I am this messianic figure of a this golden age. >> I think he did in some way he thought according to Josephus he gave a speech in Jerusalem when he he routed the the paththeians with the help of Mark Anthony. the the best of the Roman generals came to establish Herod back >> in Jerusalem because the area of Judea was a buffer against the Paththeians. It the empire was very concerned with what was going on with Judea.
¶33They needed the border to be secure. Um so when Herod was established he according to Josephus he gave the speech that he was put there by God and he used it seems accord again according to Josephus we have to just trust Josephus here um the prophecy by an Essene um predictor called Menahhem who looked at Herod when he was a boy and said he would be a future king. And it seems like the the Essenes were very good and adept at scripture, a scripture interpretation, and they reached in at a passage in Genesis probably and and managed to interpret it to mean that um Herod, even though he wasn't Judeian, he wasn't Jewish himself, his mother was u Nebotian and his father was Ian. um he was destined to be king of the Judans and so Menahm gave this pre prediction to Herod and that was very important to him so he could say in his speech I am put here by the will of God that's this is actually me that's being predicted here in Genesis 4:9 and you have to accept that he even in his coinage when he issued his coinage he's got um a an image of the top of his head with his diadem on it. So you can see his his his crown, his diadem >> with an X on it, which you know X marks the spot.
¶34>> Um which is the first letter of course of the Greek word Christos, the the Kai, the Greek letter Kai. >> Wow. >> So I think he's saying this is I am the anointed one. I am the the one who's chosen by the ruler of this world um Augustus to be officially king of the Judans, king of the Jews. That was his official Roman title.
¶35So don't anyone take this away from me. This is all ordained by both Rome and by God. And no one's messing with that. And no memory of the line of David is going to mess with that. So, so he's concerned maybe about Bethlehem and you you mentioned there that maybe there were descendants of David still living in the city.
¶36I think a lot of this is quite out of I suppose the mainstream of historical Jesus scholarship which looks at Bethlehem and says this is just pure invention from Micah 5:2. Um this is this is theology. It's not history. Were there people tracing themselves though to the line of David? And what is what how do you arrive at that position that Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem?
¶37>> It's really tricky because you know that argument that if anything is predicted in scripture then it might not have happened because it's just kind of wish fulfillment in the early church and the story of of Jesus. If you apply that criterion to say the Gospel of Matthew, there is nothing because because everything in the Gospel of Matthew is a a case of fulfilling what was already ordained in scripture. And you can go through to acts and this idea that the Christian story, the story of Jesus and the Christian story is foretold in the Old Testament is the very reason we have an Old Testament >> in in terms of Christianity. It was so that you could look at the Old Testament and go, "Oh, this is going to be now fulfilled and made real and um and complete in the story of Jesus." So if we applied that same story, we wouldn't have had the crucifixion. We that that same criterion because everything about the crucifixion is also foretold in in scripture including dividing your the clothing and and everything can be uh referred back to something that was already in scripture.
¶38Scripture the Old Testament is very rich resource. You can find a lot in it. >> So clearly Christians were working with scripture and going aha that was foretold. Aha, that was foretold. Um, the question of whether the Messiah absolutely had to be born in in in Bethlehem is quite a curious one because it's only really Ma >> that attaches birth in Bethlehem.
¶39You know, Bethlehem, you are going to be, you know, this is your future ruler. Um, otherwise there's a lot about the line of David. Yeah, the line of David, but doesn't say where the Davidic king should be born. And one might expect the Davidic king to be born in Jerusalem, which is where most Davidic kings were born for over centuries. >> Being born in Bethlehem doesn't necessarily make you, >> right?
¶40>> Yeah. Being born in Jerusalem doesn't necessarily being born in Bethlehem isn't really the main criterion of being the Messiah. um it's being of the line of David unless you're Herod and you try and twist it into another way of thinking entirely. Um and then even the line of David in some cases it's not clear that any every messianic claimment was from the line of David. For example, in um the second century, there was a revolutionary leader, Bar Cockba, son of the star.
¶41Um originally born uh Barosiba uh Kosiba and um there's nothing about him actually being from the line of David, but he was absolutely accepted by the Judeans as probably a legitimate king who a king in waiting. nothing in any records indicate that he was claiming to be from the line of David. And in the Gospel of Mark, you can have um the the Messiah, the Christ, as the son of humanity from Daniel 7, who is really a a more heavenly figure than a an earthly figure. So the the gospel of Mark is not sure whether we should really buy into the line of David as as the key thing about Jesus. He's much Mark is much more interested in Daniel 7 and the the son of humanity and what that means as as his identity, his fundamental identity.
¶42So, we've got a lot of different understandings of Messiah in second temple Judaism. That's been made very clear by the Dead Sea Scrolls where you have all sorts of different Messiahs. >> So, if we don't we don't have to have a Jesus that is either from the line of David or born in Bethlehem. It just so happens that Jesus being from the line of David is one of the earliest >> pieces of information we have about the historical Jesus. It's in the It's in the letters of Paul.
¶43It's in all of the Gospels. It's in the book of Revelation. It's in early Christian literature. So why doubt it? >> And do we have other families who trace themselves to the line of David?
¶44Because when I think about the line of David, you know, he's kind of this king almost of the mythic past and you you sort of think how almost everyone might today be uh descended from William the Conqueror or you know was it the case that sort of everyone could you know stretching that far back trace themselves to the line of David in some way? >> I think there are people who trace themselves to William the Cobra. Um so I used to be very skeptical about this but certainly there were sages like Hillel who traced themselves to the line of David and the idea that you could actually have a written record is quite interesting. There's a story of Julius Africa from Julius Africanis at the end of the second beginning of the third century and he says um in terms of the history of Herod that one of the things he did was he burnt the genealogical records that were held in the temple um because he was so conscious of his poor birth that he wasn't from a major family um and he includes the family of Ruth the Moabitetist which is of course Jesse um the Boaz and uh family. So Herod burnt the records of the line of of David.
¶45One of the things I found so interesting right at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, it talks about the biblos of the record of of Jesus genealogy that there is actually a sense that this was a written record, a book >> that was written down that that has been preserved and the family the implication is the family has preserved this written geneal theology um even if it's not written down oral tradition in the ancient world was very very important and I can see that um in many indigenous cultures today >> particularly you know I'm from New Zealand in Mali culture the the faka papapa your genealogological history your ancestry can be recited back hundreds of years and this is part of your identity. So that um for a Mari person to go to a Marai um a place where uh a congregation center, sacred congregation center, you would um recite your genealogy to indicate your identity. >> We see that um genealogy popping up in different points in the Old Testament in terms of genealogy being something that people were very concerned about. Certainly in in Genesis you have a lot of it but also in Ezra. So genealogies are part of the cultural landscape that we're in when we look at this ancient society.
¶46And just because we can't >> recite our genealogy beyond, you know, a few generations back, you know, I probably can get back to fifth generation on my mom's side, but the after that I start to get really vague. Um, that doesn't mean ancient people couldn't do that and and that for their identity it wasn't anything. It it was something and and the community would remember it. Um, you're not just an individual in the society. There's all sorts of family and community threads.
¶47M >> so to claim to be um from the family of David, that would be something well known among your wider family, your your your community. It's not something that would go under the radar. >> And yet Matthew and Luke in their genealogies take us back to David through perhaps a slightly different route and their genealogies look quite different. >> Could you could you speak to that? Is this just Matthew and Luke just completely botching the genealogies or is there a way that they can sort of both stand?
¶48>> Yeah, I think >> I think they can because if you uh the old idea in terms of you know what Julie Saffricana said is that the leverate marriage situations kicked in. So that um there was Joseph's father um who was a who was subject to a leverate marriage um and so his father was actually given as his uncle rather than his actual biological father. But you know any genealogy can go very quickly down different routes. And if we're talking about a kind of community where lots of people were descended from David but in different roots >> um and they hoped to maybe intermar in these this wider community, I could imagine >> a variety of different genealogies um but but with um with Jesus and and his genealogies already we're getting at this this this bifurcation at grandfather level, you know, that the sort of But but leverate marriage was the old explanation for it. And it might be the case that if um a man dies childless, his brother is supposed to raise up the the a son to the name of the deceased >> father.
¶49Um and when you have that sort of idea, you know, who who do you put down as the ancestor? Um that very quickly can go into different patterns. Yeah, I need to ask you about the census >> because I think a reason why some people have been skeptical of the Bethlehem birth is that Luke has this census which gets them down to Bethlehem in the first place um from Nazareth in in the north. And it looks like this is about 10 years out because it's when Corinius was governor of Syria, which seems to be about a decade away from when Luke thinks it is. I wonder what what do you do with the the census?
¶50It's a it's again it's that this I think in terms of memory and how family memory might have worked and different elements of things can chronology is hard to hold on to in family memory. In fact, quite recently, we were just try in my own family, we're trying to work out with my husband's brother, you know, did he have a heart attack first or did he have a stroke or did he have a stroke and then did he have a heart attack? And so, you know, certain things happen, but what year did they happen? You know, even in terms of our own lives, as we look back, you know what, as I get older, I find it harder to slot certain events into certain years. is I go well was that 2014 or was it you know and uh it was sort of precoid and postco that's a a bit of a a watershed in terms of our reckoning of time but um it it's difficult when you look back so you can think of certain things that happened but not necessarily exactly when so I I give them the benefit of the doubt about when exactly but but having said that I'm with Helen Bond on how the the infancy narrative of Luke is based on the infancy narrative of Matthew.
¶51So when I look at it, when I looked at the infancy narratives themselves really closely, it looked to me like the infancy narrative of Matthew had a lot of things going for it in terms of how memory might have been shaped, but it kind of fits in quite well with what I know from Joseph. I know from Josephus what was going on at the in the final um years of Herod and the beginning of the reign of Aralos. The Gospel of Luke feels like it's further away and is responding in some way to what has already been written in Matthew and going, let's look at Mary's memories and let's weave them into the story and let's look at um things from a different perspective, more from a Nazareth perspective. And um it it's doing something different and quite consciously I think it's doing something different. It's answering certain questions arising from the Gospel of Matthew.
¶52>> Yeah. I want us to go up to the north to Nazareth in a moment, but before that we need to go south to Egypt according to Matthew's narrative. Um Jesus becomes I think something of a refugee and lots of people have done different things with this. In the second century, the the uh the Roman philosopher Kelsus said that Jesus went to Egypt, learned magic from the Egyptians, came back a sorcerer. Yeah.
¶53>> I mean, what what do you think about this this trip to Egypt? Do you think that that was part of Jesus's childhood? >> Well, again, Egypt was the place where Judeian refugees went. M >> um there were a lot of them in Alexandria and after the big revolt, the great revolt in 70 um CE, many u of the fighters fled to Egypt where they were hunted down by the Romans horribly and executed. Um so it's the the place you flee to um from from Judea.
¶54Uh sometimes you went north to Damascus, Syria, but often you went south to um and west to Egypt. So if you were going to be a refugee, uh perfectly reasonable place to go to. And if I were from the line of David and I had seen what Herod was up to in building his great palace fortress at Herodium overlooking the town of Bethlehem. And I had seen him uh desecrate my ancestral tomb and rounding up everybody who might be a potential threat to him and killing them in the most horrible way possible. I think I might have taken my family and gone to Egypt for a while to see what would happen and let just sort of settle things down.
¶55So, we we're told that Joseph was warned in a in a dream, you know, take the child and >> get out. Um because the you're in danger. Um, so he he does we get this idea of Joseph being a visionary himself, which I think is itself interesting in terms of Jesus background. If these are family stories, it's it's legitimizing. Listen to God.
¶56Listen to to what angels might tell you in dreams. Read scripture. Visions are really important and they can tell you what what you need to do. So, um, so I I don't think it's it's not believable. um that people go, "Oh, you know, it's all about Israel in Egypt and setting things up for Jesus being the Messiah coming from Egypt like the new Moses, which yes, but where do you get the idea that Jesus needed to be a new Moses?" um that it's this question of chicken and egg in terms of when we're looking at scriptural proof texts.
¶57If he was in Egypt for a while and you were an early Christian interpreter of of of Jesus story, you'd think, "Oh yes, who else was in Egypt for a while? It's Moses." But there's no reason for the Messiah to be a Moses figure. You know, there's the there's the the Messiah, as expected, was to be a great leader, king, and establisher of of a new Israel. But there's nothing in Ezekiel that would indicate that that a Christ figure from the line of David should also be a Moses figure. So I I I just kind of think a lot of our assumptions about makes us what makes us skeptical as historical Jesus scholars are yeah assumptions.
¶58>> Assumptions because out of Egypt I called my son. I mean that's not much to sort of weave a historical narrative. It's almost as though the the scripture is fitting the ex the memory and the experience rather than the other way around. It's that chicken scenario as you said >> out of Egypt I call my son as Israel. So is Jesus supposed to represent all of Israel at this point?
¶59Not really. >> Yeah. And then the Moses and the Israel typology is not so tidy perhaps. So Jesus gets to Nazareth. Um and you've already alluded to this idea that maybe he's so he's part of this Davidic family.
¶60Joseph seems to be having dreams, visions. What What else is part of his early religious formation? Because I think we tend to think that sort of Jesus grows up, >> he goes to the River Jordan, he's baptized by John, has this special experience, maybe a visionary experience, and that's the moment where kind of he works out who he is. He's going to start his ministry. >> Do you think that there's Yeah.
¶61What else is is factoring into his religious formation? Does he already have an idea of maybe being someone special in the kingdom of God? >> Well, that that is a big question. I think all sorts of factor things are factoring in. I do think he had an in some way a birth that was considered miraculous.
¶62So, um a a birth that wasn't quite what was expected. Now, we could go into that in all sorts of different ways. Um, I I talked about this in um in New Zealand, a church talk actually, and um someone said she was a midwife and she had um helped four virgin births in her time because the you can conceive a child while being a a virgin. you know that is the truth uh in terms of the physicality of conception um and uh so that something like that I I don't think is essentially untrustworthy that that there was a story that that your birth your conception Jesus was very very unusual and there were all sorts of things that pertained to it where we did not expect it to happen the way it And we can then speculate on all the scenarios that might have resulted in that. But I think that there was something that then was interpreted by the family as indicating your there was something special about you Jesus because you have had that and um you need to be forewarned really in terms of family memory that there was a special story.
¶63um people told conception stories. People told birth stories in antiquity. There's a number of birth stories in the Bible and um and conception stories. So, it's it's part again it's part of the culture and people are looking for signs. People are looking for signs of God working and especially in a crisis situation like you had in Judea at that time.
¶64Um that would make sense. So, I'm I'm much more um open to a a special conception, a special birth situation for for Jesus than um I would have been 20 years ago teaching the historical Jesus and saying there's nothing there. Um something was happening. And on top of that in terms of the you know there's that's family memory and saying you know that that there's something special about you Jesus but also the context of the times were enormously violent. So I think that also impacted on Jesus growing up.
¶65We have to fight against the Sunday school Jesus image where we see Jesus as a child in his father's workshop and it's all beautifully green and lovely and and flowers are growing and they look wellfed and everything is lovely and calm and nothing is going wrong and anyway um we we look at Josephus if we look at Josephus from the time that Joseph and Mary and Jesus were in Egypt. Um, we're told in the Gospel of Matthew, then the angel came to Joseph and he was told that those who are seeking the child's life are dead. He he makes his way back to Judea. And there's this curious sort of swoosh from um Judea, which is called the land of Israel in the Gospel of Matthew. again this very strong Ezekiel term and it it it goes you know he goes back to the land of Israel but when he hears that Archalaus has taken over from his father he goes to Galilee and it's such a curious >> move it's like oh we're going back oh we're not going back after all we're going up here >> if you look at Josephus what takes place is um just before Herod dies there's a revolution in the temple with um these two teachers um who fight uh uh who who do this extraordinary thing.
¶66They fight off the guards and they um tear down the Roman eagle from the front of the temple that Herod has put up on the temple, the hated Roman eagle indicating the um the rule of Rome. >> Um but Herod isn't dead. They think he's dead, but he's not. And Herod then rounds up these two teachers and all of their students and supporters and he horribly executes them and burns or tortures them and burns them to death. In the fi in his final days, this is a bloodbath.
¶67A terrible number of people are killed. When he dies, huge numbers of people go to the temple and camp out in the temple like the, you know, Arab Spring moment. It's just >> taken over by thousands of people >> demanding liberation from the Romans. They don't want another Roman ruler. They want autonomy.
¶68They want their own land. They want freedom. Um and Aralos, the heir now of of Herod, initially is calm and tries to sort of deal with the crowds. And there's a sort of period where he's being very cautious and it's not clear who's going to be in control. So that you can see as the time when Joseph goes, "Okay, I can come back to the land of Israel." At the same time, there are various different revolutionaries who suddenly flare up after Herod dies.
¶69Um and one of them is Judas the Galilean who revolts in Galilee and takes over the city of Sepharus which is just a few kilometers away from Nazareth in the center of Galilee. So there is the the Galilean stronghold of revolutionaries. Archalow is thinking h what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What Archalaus does is he massacres everybody in the temple.
¶70He sends his his guards in. And according to Josephus, 3,000 people are massacred on one day in the temple. So put that next to the Gospel of Matthew. There's a very good reason then for Joseph not to bring his family home to Bethlehem because Archalaus has shown he's just as scary as his father. He's going to do even worse things in a way than his father.
¶71massacre people in the temple itself >> to hold on to the power legitimated by Rome. So, Joseph then veers off and goes where does he go? To the center of revolution in Galilee um just down the road from it in Nazareth where Galilee has now been a declared free of Roman control. But only a few years later, what we're told by um by Josephus is the Romans gather their forces in Syria in Antioch. They gather forces from all the Roman client kings around including huge Nabotan force.
¶72They march down from Antioch and they hit Sephus and burn it and destroy it completely and kill all the inhabitants and enslave anybody else who has survived, the women and children who survived >> and utterly crush all the resistance in Galilee and anywhere else in in Judea and install their man Aralos in Judea. Herod Antipass in Galilee and uh Herod Phillip in other areas. So, I I'm telling you all of this in great detail because I imagine, you know, there's here's my imagination. Little Jesus with his father Joseph standing, if you go up from Nazareth, you can walk up behind the town today and stand on the hill and look over at Sepharus and they would have seen Sepharus burn. >> Wow.
¶73So that idea of the absolutely crushing violence of Rome, I think would have made an enormous impact on child Jesus. That would have been the singular lesson that he learned from all the Roman activities around him um when he was a small child. So these are very much part of the turbulent times in your subtitle. I mean what was daily life like for Jesus? Was it because I've read some people who have said that you know actually Nazareth you know people were sort of somewhat above subsistence level.
¶74Maybe they didn't they weren't sort of fighting to survive. >> Um but presumably life was extremely difficult in first century Galilee. I mean, can you sketch some of the contours of why life would have been difficult for Jesus growing up? >> Well, the the first thing being from the the line of David, they would have had to be careful in Galilee like anywhere else. And there may have been other Davidic refugees and the in the area.
¶75the the name Nazareth itself, Nitza, it it makes you think of Isaiah 11:1, the the chute from the the stump of Jesse, the line of of David. So the question is, was it >> sort of a a place where particular Davidic people went? There was another town called Kohaba, the star, which again is very messianic in terms of its the way it sounded. at least it maybe attracted people from those lines and later on um it was understood that the relatives of Jesus lived in those two towns Cockaba and Nazareth. So it's just like whoa you know that there's something about th those two towns in Galilee.
¶76Um but that the family of Jesus I think would have been incredibly wary of anything and I think that impacts on the reception Jesus got as an adult when he went back to Nazareth and people were like you know don't say anything um be very careful um who are you to be saying this but um Nazareth in a way we don't know very much about because not much has been excavated has been two houses excavated um in uh first century houses and also uh an area of um what we call it grape processing works underneath the present basilica of the nativity there in in Nazareth. So, we know that grapes were important and that's rather lovely to know that it would have been a place with vineyards covering the hills. Um, because that of of course is such an important part of Jesus' parable world that he imagines the vines, the vine growers and the the workers and the vineyards and so on. So, we're in this environment in which people are are wine growing. Um there's fert fertile soil around.
¶77Um however, it's also a place uh various studies have been done which show that disease was rife. Um it seems to have been a very highly populated place. Uh village after village after village being uncovered in archaeological excavations. And that ties in with Josephus. He says there, you know, I think 204 villages >> um in quite a small pocket hanker bit of air of land in Galilee.
¶78So that um population would have put great pressure on the land and if there was a bad harvest then it would have been hard for everybody. It was easy to be subject to disease and famine. M I remember during the uh the co pandemic you brought out an article looking at I think what you describe as the chronic health crisis that was going on during Galilee at this time. And it makes me think about Joseph because Joseph doesn't show up >> later in the gospels. I mean in Matthew, you know, we're told about the Jesus the son of the carpenter.
¶79Maybe we can get into that word. But, you know, could it have just been the case that by the time that Jesus has begun his public ministry, Joseph would have likely already have passed? >> Yes, I think that's absolutely the case. And I think most people would agree with that. Um, he was no longer part of the picture.
¶80So, Jesus could be called son of Joseph and the Gospel of uh John or son of the carpenter in Matthew, but uh and he's remembered, but he's not any longer around. So he had lost his father in in the family. Um, and as for his brothers and sisters where we need to think about if if in the book as as you know I think of Jesus as the firstborn child as Jo of Joseph and Mary um the traditional understanding is that Jesus brothers and sisters as said >> um were from a previous marriage. M >> um the main reason I feel that really can't work >> is is chronological in in terms of if you think okay there was >> James and um Joseph uh James and Joseph and Simon and Jude as brothers and there were at least two sisters Mary and Salom um later remembered as Mary Salom me. Um though Matthew talks about all his sisters, so there could have been four sisters for all we know.
¶81>> Um they if James was the eldest of all of that bunch, how much older was James than Jesus? He might have been, you know, 15 years older than Jesus or more. But then he was leading the church up until he died when he was 62. So how old was James then? And he would have to have been a very old man.
¶82And and nowhere is it ever said that he was a very old man. Jesus cousin Simeon when he was killed um in Ucius says that he was not only a really old man but he was he was killed by the Romans for being a son of David a child of David the line and also a Christian double whammy absolutely terrible combination as a very old man but no one says that James was killed as a very old man >> so I just don't think it works chron chronologically that um he could have been the eldest son of this bunch of of >> but I suppose it does not commit us to the view that James was the eldest son. I mean it could it have been because I suppose you got this other scenario in which if these are children of Mary and Joseph then Mary has had what at least seven children >> um you have to have in the ancient world a lot of pregnancies to have >> and some dead children. >> Yeah. >> Which seems like I don't know it seems like a lot of children as well.
¶83Um >> though there are many cases today where women have 12 or even 14 children. Um and in the ancient world you know even in Victorian times frankly um we're it's only very very recently that we had the idea that we don't have many children and we space our children and you know all of this. Um so so yeah >> either way someone had a lot of children and and they um and uh and they were considered siblings of Jesus. So whatever the case, he grew up in a big family, you know, there there there is that family consciousness. >> And do you think I mean depending on when Joseph dies that as the eldest that as the firstborn Jesus is having responsibility?
¶84Yeah. >> So there's probably pressure on him in terms of working as well. >> Yes. I think it's built into the Gospel of John when um Jesus says to the beloved disciple, "Here's my mom." you know this is you look after her because I am otherwise the eldest son who should have been looking after her. I think it is that sense that um I'm going to take you as my disciple as my brother here um not James but um the the beloved disciple being John who would um look after his mother because now there's this family of disciples that mean his birth family is part of this wider sibling group of disciples.
¶85He can choose any of his disciples to look after his mother, but I think he had the responsibility of looking after his mother. >> So what is what is Jesus doing to help provide? Because obviously we have this term in the gospel um uh teto. >> Yes. >> Which is often translated as as carpenter, but you add a little bit of nuance to that.
¶86So yeah, what was what was Jesus doing? And was Jesus just doing whatever this techone work was or was it a kind of would he would he have been involved in this kind of agricultural side of things or what's going on there? >> He he could have been making any kind of agricultural implement. Um and agricultural implements could involve a mixture of metal, stone, and wood. So you would he would have skills in order to um combine different things.
¶87It wouldn't just have been I only work in wood. Um I'm only making wooden things. Um and in a much later work the acts of Thomas it it where they think that Thomas is the brother of Jesus Judas Thomas is a complicated thing. Um but they list the sorts of a sort of job description for for uh techone which is you make wooden artifacts but you can also make stone artifacts as well. um you can be involved in building the building trade.
¶88So it's like a builder um or you could be involved in ship building. So it's it's a broader term than we might think of when we think of a carpenter. We might be thinking of a cabinet maker rather than the um a constructor of different things. So you'd have to be quite >> um adaptable really in terms of what you could do to create >> things when he says you know my yoke my yoke is light you know maybe he's got some experience making yolks or >> totally >> I think was it Justin Marta in the second century who said that there were still yolks in Galilee that had been made by Jesus. >> Oh so lovely.
¶89Yeah. I think of when his disciples say, you know, look at these great stones, you know, and Jesus says, "Oh, they're all going to they're all going to go." But, you know, if he's working in construction more broadly, >> maybe these are relevant, you know, things to point out to him. >> The house built on the sand and the house built on rock and he's he's conscious of how to build a house. >> Yeah. I I know you're writing at the moment on on Mary Magdalene.
¶90Um, and you know, it just it just puts me and this topic as well puts me in the kind of Da Vinci Code mindset because obviously there you have this relationship between them. >> Um, and it made me think about, you know, Jesus's romantic life because we have no record of of a wife in the Gospels and some people have said may maybe Jesus was, you know, married when he was a younger man and maybe she passed away. I mean, do you think there's any sort of credence to this idea that Jesus could have had a wife, not Mary Magdalene, but that Jesus was married? >> Well, there certainly. I mean, it's not only the Da Vinci Code, it's also the book of longings.
¶91There's there's a real fascination with the idea of um Jesus romantic life as you as you put it. Um, and some people think, well, it was normal for for Jewish men to marry and have children. In fact, it's a mitzvah that you're supposed to marry and and have children. But but again, in second temple Judaism, there were ways of sidstepping that. >> Yeah.
¶92>> And I have worked on another group, not Christians, but therapeuti, a Jewish group in in Egypt, and they were celibate, and they lived together, and they >> had this understanding that they were bringing forth spiritual children. Um and that was their way of doing things. Marriage required you to have a certain income. Uh you had to be able to a man had to be able to look after his wife. Um and there were all sorts of reasons why that might not happen.
¶93If the family was very stretched, it was the job of the father to arrange a good marriage for his son. you know, all of these things might not have happened if Joseph had died. >> Yeah. >> Um, you can think of all sorts of reasons why Jesus didn't marry. The there were celibate groups like the Essenes uh that certainly uh one wing of them uh decided that they would not marry.
¶94Celibacy was around as something men would choose to to do. >> Yeah. So I don't think it's unlikely that Jesus decided not to marry uh to he could have looked after his mother and his siblings and concentrated on carpentry and thought this was what he needed to do and to to not take a wife and have his own family until things were clearer. Um these were difficult times in a place where there's a high population and uh food supply um was not always regular. Maybe you thought twice about >> getting married and starting your own family.
¶95So the trouble is we just don't know >> as with so many of these these questions. Maybe tying together then some of these threads. I mean why do you think it's important that we sort of think about the childhood or the young adult life of Jesus apart from the fact that historically it's you know really fascinating is there is there some sort of deeper value to it uh in your mind >> I think that it is what makes you who you are childhood and adolescence are the foundations of who we are in terms of our identities What happens to us as children and young people >> sets the pattern that we have to reckon with in our life and we we can consciously move against it. We can rework it. We can go to therapy and and re try and redesign ourselves and and answer some of the things that have happened in terms of our past.
¶96But especially if you've got trauma in your childhood um and and trauma in the family, if if the family has experienced trauma and those traumatic stories are told to you, you experience it as you own it. Um, so I I think it's really important that we think about these things and the kind of environment that Jesus grew up in and what might have happened to him and his family in his early years because it then leads us on to think okay in terms of his teaching what does he actually have in the background in terms of his knowledge of how things work in the world when he talks about the world being really in the hands of Satan. Um, and the rich and when he criticizes the rich, >> who are they colluding with in order to have their satisfactory conditions in the present day? Um, who are the losers in the present world order? um what did he experience in terms of social dislocation which is built into both the infancy narratives there is this >> this um physical and social dislocation built into them.
¶97Yeah. >> Uh so and then he embodies a kind of dislocation in terms of his ministry in in Galilee and expects his disciples to be somehow dislocated themselves. you know what where did that come from that this is >> what he wants us to model on you know model ourselves on so I I think all of this matters in terms of understanding his teaching and what he was really about >> and I suppose because Orthodox Christians claim to believe in the full humanity of Jesus and yet it's very easy just to sort of ignore thinking about what his life was actually like at all. M >> um I did also really want to ask you about Jesus's education because there are lots of debates about you know how literate Jesus was you know what languages he could have been engaging with I love that story in I think it's the infasy gospel of Thomas where Jesus goes to school and then ends up being quite a recalcitrant you know young boy and kind of schools his school master >> when he's trying to teach him his AVGs he's kind of like I am the alpha and the Omega. Thank you very much.
¶98Um, so I mean, did did Jesus go to school? Would he have learned to read and write in Nazareth? >> Yeah, it's a it's a a tricky one. Um, there would have been a a village synagogue school. There was a real drive to educate Jewish boys in terms of reading scripture.
¶99Um and and actually I've been in um I lived for a while in in West Africa in the Gambia and there they had they have to this day um Islamic teachers who school young boys in reading the Quran in Arabic and they're supposed to completely know Arabic from the Quran to be able to recite the Quran. Um but is that literacy as we would understand literacy? So I think sometimes we have a difficulty because we understand literacy in a particular way and there are different ways of being literate. I mean there's the super literacy of a university education. There's there's high school literacy, there's primary school literacy.
¶100Um, there might be literacy in terms of religious texts that doesn't kind of map on to what we think of as literacy because we would imagine if you're literate, you're also able to write. >> But you might know scripture backwards but not be able to sign your name. So I think Jesus definitely had incredible knowledge of scripture >> and I think he got that not just from the na the Nazareth synagogue school but from his family. >> Yeah. The way I read the Gospel of Matthew in the narratives in chapter 1 and two, Joseph is very very adept at scripture and interpretation and prophecy himself.
¶101And he would have made it his business to at least educate his sons in scripture at home and probably interpreting scripture, reading the signs of the times, understanding what was going on in the light of scripture. All of that is something that would have happened around the home. Yeah. >> Rather than just being farmed out to a school environment. So I I think that is it's all about Joseph.
¶102It's all about his education of Jesus and his brothers maybe sisters at home. >> Yeah. So he can with some legitimacy go around in debates with people and say have you not read u and there's that scene isn't there in Luke um where Jesus is this sort of vunderind he's kind of this child foragy who's dazzling his teachers in the temple. >> Yes. Is there some kind of plausibility to that story, do you think?
¶103>> There you go. The infancy gospel of Thomas the Pedica from the second century also preserves that as a little self-standing unit. And it's interesting that there's this kind of this floating story that lands at the end of the infancy narratives and the gospel of Luke as a a quite separate piece detached from it sort of concludes the infancy narratives and then story of Jesus in the temple and then it's also in the pitica in the second century. Um and that story that will be familiar to many uh listeners is that Jesus is taken to the temple when he's 12 years old by his mother and father and that at the end of Passover very important time um and we're thinking you know six the year 6 CE around 67 CE this is a time of transition actually when Archalaus was removed by the Romans >> interesting >> for being such a bad ruler. So maybe there's a particular Passover that that people are also calling for independence again.
¶104Who knows? Um they get instead they get um Caponius. They get the the Roman prefect. But but this is a a time of great anticipation. There would have been huge numbers of people at the temple at this time.
¶105Josephus talks about millions of people gathering like the Hajj, you know that everyone flowing to the temple for the Passover. There would have been a caravan from Nazareth coming down, caravans from different villages and towns camping out outside Jerusalem. Absolute mayhem. >> So there's a lot that rings true in terms of that social environment. And when they head off to Nazareth, they travel off for days and then don't realize Jesus is not with them until he they discover he's not.
¶106And they have to go back to Jerusalem. I think it was a day's journey. And then they go back and they can't find Jesus anywhere in Jerusalem and find him eventually in the temple which would have been a very good place to camp out because there was food and drink and shelter and teachers and this was was a good place to be. So, in the story, as we have it in in Luke, um, one of the things that I I love about it is it's it's these parents going, "Wow, you know, we didn't know we were looking for you. >> What?
¶107Why weren't you with us?" And and Jesus very calmly responds and says, "You know, I didn't know I'm in my father's house. This is my father's house." Um and he is astounding the teachers there because he has this great knowledge as he said. Um but there's various things about the story that does ring true is a sort of family memory that could have been circulated down through generations really. This is the one thing the family remembers about Jesus that he was brought to the temple and the the the teachers in the temple thought he was quite amazing in terms of the scriptural knowledge for a boy from Nazareth and um and he got left behind there when the the caravan left to go to back to Nazareth. So the core core bits of that story I think could be true.
¶108other things in terms of the pedica, the infancy gospel of Thomas about him zapping his teacher. >> Um, >> maybe not. >> Maybe not. Yeah, >> Professor Joan Taylor, this has been absolutely fascinating. I could talk to you for hours.
¶109Um, but we we do need to go. I just want to thank you for coming on and, you know, your work is a is a real inspiration to me and I'm sure it's just going to be fascinating to so many um of our of our listeners. Your book is Boy Jesus, Growing Up Judeian in Turbulent Times. Go get it at any good bookstore. Thank you so much, Jane.
¶110>> Thank you for having me. Thank you.