Jesus was born in the shadow of Herod the Great, an anti-Christ figure who was as brilliant as he was wealthy.
He was the greatest builder in the Roman Empire, with a palace larger than Caesar’s. He was also very conflicted and paranoid, and in an attempt to kill this newborn rival “King of the Jews,” he ordered the murder of all babies in Bethlehem.
Joseph and Mary had taken baby Jesus to Egypt where they lived within a very large Jewish community made up of families who fled the Babylonian conquest of Judah some 500 years earlier. While Jesus’ family had a community there that received them, it is fair to say they were refugees.
So, in some ways, Jesus’ childhood was quite unusual with the trauma of displacement. However, Herod died soon thereafter, and the young family was able to return to Nazareth, where Jesus grew up like any other Jewish boy at the time.
The Bible is virtually silent about Jesus’ childhood years. We do know he had a family of at least six siblings. Other than that, we have to look to other sources to know how He was raised, what he studied and how he grew spiritually.
Join me this week on the Out of Zion podcast titled Jesus’ Childhood, and we will discuss life in Nazareth in the first century and what it tells us about the life of Jesus. This study is Part 2 of our 3D Jesus series. {eoa}
Dr. Susan Michael is USA Director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and host of the Out of Zion podcast.
