The True Life of Jesus, cont.
Back in Nazareth, life for the holy family was fraught with hardship, the details of which are preserved in the earliest Gospels of Jesus' childhood. Because he was the Son of God and yet forced to live in a town full of conservative middle-class Jews, the infant Jesus was never a popular child. The true story of the Lord's childhood is told in the first-century
Gospel of Thomas, which was written by the holy Ghost as dictated to the apostle, Thomas Didymus, who received his stories the Lord's childhood directly from Jesus' own mouth.
Jesus was just five years old when he performed his first miracle. One Saturday afternoon while playing near the head of the Kana Creek, the divine youth molded twelve sparrows from wet clay. The other Jewish children, who looked on, were offended. They went straight to Joseph and said, "Behold, your son [i.e.,
stepson] was playing with us in the stream, and he has taken clay and formed twelve birds and thereby profaned the Sabbath!"
Joseph followed the children to the creek, and said to Jesus, "My son [i.e.,
stepson], why have you done this thing, which is not permitted?"
Jesus then clapped his hands, and shouted to the row of little clay birds: "Depart, and fly away, and remember me now that you are alive!" And lo, the twelve sparrows flew away, singing the praise of Almighty God. And when the Jewish children saw it, they were sore amazed (Thomas 2:1-5).
One of Jesus' favourite games as a child was to dam up the Kana Creek and to make ponds, pretending he was Moses parting the Red Sea. One day a child of Annas the scribe, a Pharisee, took a branch from a willow tree, and dispersed the waters that Jesus had gathered:
And when Jesus saw what the child had done, he became angry, saying, "You sodomite, godless and stupid, woe unto you! What did the ponds that I made ever do to you? Behold, now you shall become as a dried-up tree, without roots or leaves or fruit." And immediately, the child withered up, and fell to the ground and died. Jesus then left the boy where he lay, and returned home to Joseph's house without telling anyone. (Thomas, ch. 3)
Jesus subsequently explained to Mr. and Mrs. Annas that they had no one to blame for the tragedy but the unprovoked vandalism of their own stupid teenaged sodomite. Mr. and Mrs. Annas did not believe him:
The Jewish parents of the dead child wailed with grief as they came and carried away his remains. And they went to Joseph and accused him, saying, "Behold what your son [i.e., stepson] has done! Please teach him to bless, and not to curse!" (Thomas, ch. 3)
On another occasion, Jesus was minding his own business when a Jewish child running through the streets of Nazareth bumped his shoulder:
Jesus said to the reckless child, "Woe unto you! You will not complete your journey." Immediately, the child fell down and died.
And the Jews who beheld what happened said, "Whence comes this youth, the son [i.e., stepson] of Joseph, that his every word is fulfilled?"
Then the Jewish parents of the dead child went to Joseph and found fault with him, saying, "Because you have such a son [i.e., stepson], you may not live with us in the village until you teach him to bless and not to curse. For our own children are getting killed!"
And when Jesus heard it, he punished the Jewish parents by striking them with blindness.
Now when Joseph saw that Jesus had killed another child and blinded the parents, he was very upset. And he took Jesus' by the ear and pulled it quite hard. But the child Jesus became angry with him and said to Joseph, "It is enough for you to seek and not to find – but too much for you to act like such a fool. Do you not know that I am not even yours? I'm your stepson! Do not bother me!" (Thomas, chs. 4-5).
Jesus was more patient with his mother than with his stepfather. When Mary asked him why he killed other children, Jesus cited the precedent of Elisha: One day, as the prophet was walking to Bethel, a crowd of children mocked the prophet for his male-pattern baldness, calling him a "Zayin karah" (a
hairless dickhead). "But Elisha cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tore those forty-two children to pieces" (
2 Kings 2:23-24). "And behold," said Jesus, "a greater than Elisha is here among you."
Saint Thomas reports that by the time Jesus was twelve, "nobody dared to make him angry because they did not want to be cursed or crippled or killed" (
Thomas 8:3).
To help prevent Columbine-style violence, the Virgin Mary quietly put out the word to other parents of Nazareth, saying, "Whatever you do, make sure that your children do not call my son names"—and she was thinking not only of
zayin karah, but of such epithets as
akzar mamzer (you "mean little bastard"), which is the other one that Jesus heard quite often.
Some Jews thought they were better than Jesus. One day, Jesus' schoolteacher, a rabbi, rapped the holy youth on the head for being slow to answer a question. Jesus cursed him. The man fell on his face, dead. "Jesus then left Torah school and walked home." He calmly explained to his mother that the Torah instructor at Nazareth Elementary was dead. ("That zayin karah hit me," said Jesus. "He struck the Son of God!")
But Joseph was sore troubled and said to the Jews, "Don't blame me! Do you not know that the boy is not even my mine?" (Thomas 14:3)
One of those standing there muttered aloud, "Joseph saith this because his wife cuckolded him"– which was not true, not in the literal human sense of the word, "cuckolded"; but anyway, the man who said it was drunk, so the Virgin Mary forgave him. Jesus and Joseph did not. The boy Jesus said that the man who said that would be damned after he died. Next, Jesus killed the man, with a curse.
Joseph told Jesus' mother, "Do not let your Son out the door, because the people who anger him will die" (Thomas 14:4).
Everyone in Israel should have seen from these powerful deeds that Jesus was someone special, and that you cannot go and crucify a boy like that for no reason; but God the Father just "hardened their hearts."
(Yahveh! What a
zayin karah!)
– L.
Kids: for more information, visit <http://www.mscclan.com/storage/pics/jesus.gif>
