Jesus amongst the teachers in the temple in Luke 2

The Christmas season is now with us! The reading for the first Sunday in the Christmas season (Christmas 1) is Luke 2.41–52—though it is arguable that we should actually start our reading at verse 40, since it forms an ‘inclusio’ (bracket) with the final verse of the reading.

At every point in this reading, we once again come across the intersection in Luke of issues arising from Greco-Roman expectations and understanding, and Jewish piety rooted in the Torah. Why does Luke even record this incident, when it features nowhere else? Because a standard expectation of historiography, and accounts of ‘lives’ of famous people, was that there would be some comment on their upbringing and education. The other gospels, who are not working under this expectation, have no need to prioritise this in the limited space of their accounts.

The reason why we should include verse 40 in our reason is severalfold. First, Luke 2.39 looks very much like a summary statement (which we will encounter throughout this gospel, and especially in his second volume, Acts), and draws a line under the events in and around Bethlehem by noting their relocation to Nazareth, reflecting once more Luke’s interest in time and place.

(An aside: I think this claim, that ‘when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth’, is the point of greatest tension with Matthew’s nativity account. At this point, Matthew suggests that they stayed in Bethlehem for some time, possibly up to two years, since this is the age of children that Herod kills on learning when Jesus’ star arose in Matt 2.16. But note that Matthew simply gives us no details of where Mary and Joseph lived or came from, and simply mentions Bethlehem as the place of Jesus’ birth.

We ought also to note that, for artisans like Joseph, they needed to be mobile and live where the work was, and we know that it was common for such people to have two homes, one where they had long-term family and property, and the other lodgings where they worked. We also need to remember that gospels writers are always selective in their use of material, and Matthew and Luke have distinct aims in their telling of the story.)

More importantly, the language in Luke 2.40 both forms the inclusio for this episode which illustrates what the verses at start and finish refer to, and draws a parallel and distinction with John the Baptist.

The parallels between the first and second sayings both connect and differentiate Jesus and John. Both grow strong; John is strong ‘in spirit’ or perhaps ‘in the Spirit’; but Jesus is ‘filled with wisdom’, and there is an explicit reference to the ‘grace of God’, bringing together both the human and the divine.

The parallels between the first and third are interesting; the first saying effectively signs off John until we meet him in chapter 3, but the third indicates in Jesus a continuing process of maturing, and once again there is the double emphasis on the human and the divine. Between the second and third, wisdom is again emphasised, with correlates with the depiction, in this episode and later in the gospel, of Jesus as teacher.

The first verse of our reading proper is fascinating. Here we see once more the emphasis on Mary and Joseph as pious observant Jews, who go to Jerusalem for Passover as a well-established habit. This implies that they will have gone at least for the other two major pilgrim festivals, Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Tabernacles)—which in turn implies that the Fourth Gospel’s chronology is more accurate, and confirms that Luke’s shaping of Jesus ministry in the central section is an artifice to emphasise the theme of discipleship as a journey.

The age of Jesus as twelve does not appear to have any symbolic significance (not least because we do not have here twelve ‘things’). However, it does have cultural and historical significance. This is the age, even today in Middle Eastern cultures, of the transition from being a ‘boy’ to being a young man, and for the male children this meant a transition from keeping the company of the women to keeping the company of the men, each group mostly socialising separately.

The transition from boy to man was expressed in Jewish practice in the Bar Mitzvah, becoming a ‘son of the commandments’ at age 13. (This is not mentioned in Scripture, but it has become established by the second century, and is mentioned in Mishnah Avon 5.21 and the Talmud, Niddah 45b).

But this was also the normal age at which a son of a craftsman would begin his apprenticeship, which could last for up to five years (see Sabine Huebner, Papyri and the Social World of the New Testament, p 81). The question which unfolds in this passage is: to which person is Jesus truly being an apprentice, to his human or his Heavenly Father?

The description of the journey away from Jerusalem, and Mary and Joseph’s ignorance of his absence and then their frantic searching, seems to be plausible both historical and humanly. Given his age, it was quite possible for each group, the men and the women, who travelled and socialised separately, to assume Jesus was with the other. The ‘group’ is in Greek a συνοδια, a group of people travelling together, which we might call a ‘caravan’. The people would be walking, with animals used for carrying baggage.

I have heard this episode used in preaching as illustrating the dangers of presuming that God is travelling with us, when he is in fact elsewhere. But such an allegorical reading of the episode does not appear to be required by the way Luke tells the story.

We should note, as customary in that culture, that travelling was undertaken ‘with their relatives and acquaintances’; there is not one part of Luke’s nativity story which suggests Mary and Joseph were alone or marginalised. By contrast, the repeated emphasis is on family and relationships.

Is there significance to the discovery of him, alive and well, ‘after three days’? Is there a connection here with Jesus being found alive following his bloody death ‘after three days’? I would be interested to hear any arguments (make them in the comments) but I cannot see any obvious parallels here; Jesus is lost but not dead in this episode.

There is, however, another number which is significant. This whole pericope is 170 words in Greek, and the numerically central words are ἐν μέσῳ τῶν διδασκάλων, ‘amongst the teachers’. We know that this is significant for Luke, since there are other examples where the central terms in a pericope are of importance, and other ways in which Luke makes use of numerical composition.

But if the numerical centre of the passage is here, the narrative climax comes a few verses further on. Jesus seems to be quite at home with the ‘teachers’, who have not yet taken on the negative sense of those forming part of the growing opposition to Jesus in his later ministry.

He is both ‘listening and asking questions’ and ‘giving answers’. This is a reflection of Jewish ways of learning then, which we see in Jesus’ own ministry—as he teaches by asking questions—and the real experience of teaching. Posing questions and inviting answers and reflection is a key part of good pedagogy, and any teacher will tell you that they can know the able pupils by the kinds of questions they ask.

The first contrast arises from the reaction of the teachers and the reaction of his parents. Both are ‘amazed’ or ‘astonished’, the terms here being potentially positive. But whilst the teachers are impressed, his parents are frustrated and perhaps even angered.

The second contrast is set up by Mary’s words to Jesus: ‘your [earthly, step-] father and I…’ to which Jesus responds with reference to his Heavenly Father. Here the parallels between the human and the divine open up into a tension—to which does Jesus owe his primarily loyalty as he reaches the beginning of adult life and the start of his apprenticeship?

Translations of Jesus’ reply vary, since the phrase in Greek is slightly vague: ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου δεῖ εἶναί με ‘in the [things] of my father I must be’. Does this mean ‘I must be in my father’s house’? Or ‘I must be about my father’s business’? Both are possible—and both are phrases that would naturally be used of someone who was an apprentice. The language of ‘necessity’ would not reflect well in Roman culture, where it is the agency and decision of the growing man which is seen as a virtue. But it fits perfectly with the focus on Jewish piety: this is what God requires of Jesus, and he obeys.

This is a critical moment in the narrative of Jesus’ maturing; it is the last time in this gospel that Mary speaks, and it is the first time that Jesus speaks. He is demonstrating that his loyalty to God takes precedence over his loyalty to family, and to Mary in particular; perhaps this hard lesson is one part of the way in which ‘a sword will pierce your soul too’ (Luke 2.35) not least because the relationship between mother and oldest son was especially close in the ancient world, and she (when older and widowed) would depend for provision and security on him.

As someone commented online in relation to our video discussion: the moment when Mary finds Jesus is the moment when she begins to lose him.

The closing comments in this episode do two things. First, they note the failure of Mary (and Joseph) to truly understand who Jesus is and what he is doing. This is rather striking, given all that has happened up until now in this gospel. We have had angels appearing, miraculous pregnancies and births in two different ways; songs of praise to God for the amazing things he has done and will yet do; and prophecies of how special these two (John and Jesus) are, especially in relation to Jesus.

Yet a few short years later, all this appears to be forgotten. This locates Mary and Joseph quite firmly within the group of disciples as they appear later in the gospels, who likewise are exposed in close proximity to the work and words of Jesus, and yet are also slow to understand his significance. Despite Luke 1, Mary is portrayed in quite ambiguous terms in the gospel, and she is very clearly one of us in her faltering and impartial understanding as she travels the journey of discipleship.

And yet Jesus brings the presence of the divine into a fully human context. So the final note is one that expresses this: his growth in stature both before God and before people comes by means of his submission (a different term from that of ‘obedience’) to his human parents in the context of a human family. This is a striking contrast to the apocryphal story of Jesus forming a dove from clay, and magically breathing life into it, as depicted in the Quran (Surahs 3.49 and 5.110), in turn lifted from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas chapter 2.

This is no magical Jesus, but the Son of the Father, bringing his presence to us in this Christmas season, in the fulness of humanity.

Come and join James and Ian as they discuss all these issues!