Jesus was a Jew. His date of birth is unknown. His name is not to be found in any register of births, yet the Christian west bases its calendar on the ostensible (and accepted) year of Jesus' birth. The first time that his name appears is in one of St. Paul's epistles, about the year 50 of the new era.
In the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke it says Jesus was 'born at Bethlehem'. St. Mark, on the other hand, names Nazareth as the place of birth. Right from the birth of the Redeemer confusion and contradictions make the Bible adventurous reading.
Mary is universally mentioned as his mother. His father, Joseph the carpenter, is not the physical father, for Mary received the sperm by 'immaculate conception' with the co-operation of the Holy Ghost. That is Christian popular belief, for reason cannot grasp this process of impregnation. So especially illuminated theologians take great pains to prove what is meant by 'immaculate conception'.
According to the official biography, the New Testament, the trail of the infant Jesus is lost after his birth until he suddenly crops up again in the Temple as a twelve-year-old runaway-in heated theological conversation with scholars. Unfortunately we never know exactly what is true and what is not, what actually happened and what forgers invented (original texts!).
If it is correct, and that is what I am assuming here, that the twelve-year-old could tie the clever temple scholars up in theological discussion, the precocious lad must have been drilled in the Old Testament texts in some contemporary school.
What kind of school was available to him? We must recall the historical background to find the answer.
The territory we call the 'Near East' today belonged at the time we are concerned with to the gigantic Roman Empire. Damascus was conquered in 64 B.C. by the famous general Pompeius Magnus (106-
48), Jerusalem was taken in 37 and Egypt became a Roman province in 30. What happened in this century to Caius Julius Caesar in the conquered and occupied territories is not hidden in historic mist.
Presumably occupying forces have been made of the same stuff in all ages. At all events the Romans brought their way of life with them and propagated their culture in the occupied countries. The Roman soldiers were no saints: they worshipped Apollo (taken over from the Greeks), the god of poetry, music and youth, emptied their beakers to the health of the god Bacchus (Dionysus), wooed the goddess Fortuna for luck, implored pity from Jupiter, god of lightning, thunder and justice, prayed to Neptune, god of water, for rain, knelt in devotion before Sol, the sun god. Abomination to any orthodox Jew!
For more than 400 years - Ezra compiled the text of the Torah as early as 440 B.C. - the Jewish people had lived according to the Mosaic Law, the Pentateuch and the Torah. And the patriarch Moses said in the law: Thou shall have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God. (Exodus 20:4-5)
Moses was a monotheist. When the founder of the Jewish religion had led the Israelites back into Palestine from Egypt circa 1230 B.C. he had the legendary tablets with the commandments set up on Mount Sinai. Thus the recognition and worship of a single god was an old tradition, when the Romans practised polytheism among the Jews.
The Jews could do nothing about it. With gnashing of teeth they lived together with the hated heavily armed occupiers, who, I should remark in passing, neither encouraged nor forced conquered peoples to worship their gods. Very sensibly, they even gave them a measure of self-government. True, the Temple was guarded by Roman soldiers, but it was administered by Jews. In the forecourts moneychangers, merchants with their stalls and artisans in their booths carried on their business.
So at the time of the Roman occupation, the time of Jesus, the Torah - the basic law of the Jewish state since 443 B.C. -was still the religious doctrine of the Jews.
The Sadducees, representatives of the conservative religious party, were strict guardians, preservers and teachers of the Mosaic law. One possible school for the infant Jesus could be sought among them
... The Sadducees' opponents were the Pharisees, the progressives, who admittedly also kept the letter of the Mosaic Law, but who accepted angels and resurrection from the dead in their teaching. As scribes they gained considerable influence of Judaism at the time of Jesus with their law schools. Here was a second possible answer to the problem of Jesus' schooling.
'If we follow the gospels, Jesus did not agree with the Sadducees or the Pharisees. He often made fun of the 'scribes' and the New Testament also states that they did not accept the forward young man as one of their kind. But if Jesus had been a graduate of a Sadducees' or Pharisees school, he would have been recognized or expelled as a renegade. Nothing of the kind has been handed down: the name of Jesus of Bethlehem or Nazareth does not figure in any writings by the scribes. The disputatious Jesus must have acquired his knowledge somewhere, else. Where? Was there a. third school? There was, but it has not been common knowledge for very long.
Until A.D. 68 the extraordinary conservative fraternity of the Essenes lived deliberately isolated from temple Jewry in a monastic-like habitat that had been rebuilt after an earthquake. It was situated at Chirbet Qumran in a fissured mountainous region on the Dead Sea. The 'Army of Salvation' traced their origin to a 'Teacher of Righteousness' from the time of the Maccabees, centuries before Christ.
The Essenes concluded their 'New Covenant in order to prepare the Messianic king- dom. The oldest reports about this ascetic sect are found in an essay by Philo of Alexandria (25 B.C. - A.D. 50): 'Quod omnis probus liber sit'[14]
Palestinian Syria, inhabited by a considerable section of the very numerous people of the Jews, is also not unfruitful in the production of virtues. Certain of them, more than 4,000 in number, are called Essenes; in my view, although it is not strictly speaking a Greek word, it is connected with the word
'holiness'; these are in fact men who are quite specially devoted to the service of God; .but they do not make animal sacrifices. They find it more advisable to consecrate their thoughts. ... They amass neither silver, nor gold, and they do not cultivate large tracts of land because they want to get income from them, but limit themselves to providing _for the necessaries of life. Almost alone among men, they live without goods or property ... nevertheless they consider themselves rich because they rate sufficiency and a good disposition as a genuine excess ... They reject everything that could awake avarice in them. ... They do not possess a single slave, on the contrary they are all free and help each other mutually. ... Thousands of examples testify to their love of God ... contempt for wealth and honours, aversion from pleasure ... They have a single fund for all, and communal expenses ... and the custom of communal meals ... nowhere else could one find a better practical example of men sharing the same roof, the same way of life and the same table ...
The intriguing nature of the Essene community also struck the Jewish historian and general Flavius Josephus (37-97), who mentioned them in his books The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews. In Chapter 7 of Book II of The Jewish War [15], he gives details of this religious community which I quote literally: Among the Jews there are three schools of thought, whose adherents are called Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes respectively. The Essenes profess a severer discipline: they are Jews by birth and are particularly attached to each other ... Scorning wedlock, they select other men's children while still Pliable and teachable, and fashion them after their own pattern. Contemptuous of wealth ... their rule is that novices admitted to the sect must surrender their property to the order ... When adherents arrive from elsewhere, all local resources are put at their disposal as if they were their own ... In dress and personal appearance they are like children in the care of a stern tutor. Neither garments nor shoes are changed till they are dropping to pieces or worn out with age. ... The priest says grace before meat ...