The Urantia Book
PAPER 129
THE LATER ADULT LIFE OF JESUS
129:0.1 JESUS had fully and finally separated
himself from the management of the domestic affairs of the
Nazareth family and from the immediate direction of its
individuals. He continued, right up to the event of his baptism,
to contribute to the family finances and to take a keen personal
interest in the spiritual welfare of every one of his brothers and
sisters. And always was he ready to do everything humanly possible
for the comfort and happiness of his widowed mother.
129:0.2 The Son of Man had now made every
preparation for detaching himself permanently from the Nazareth
home; and this was not easy for him to do. Jesus naturally loved
his people; he loved his family, and this natural affection had
been tremendously augmented by his extraordinary devotion to them.
The more fully we bestow ourselves upon our fellows, the more we
come to love them; and since Jesus had given himself so fully to
his family, he loved them with a great and fervent affection.
129:0.3 All the family had slowly awakened to
the realization that Jesus was making ready to leave them. The
sadness of the anticipated separation was only tempered by this
graduated method of preparing them for the announcement of his
intended departure. For more than four years they discerned that
he was planning for this eventual separation.
1. THE TWENTY-SEVENTH YEAR (A.D. 21)
129:1.1 In January of this year, A.D. 21, on a
rainy Sunday morning, Jesus took unceremonious leave of his
family, only explaining that he was going over to Tiberias and
then on a visit to other cities about the Sea of Galilee. And thus
he left them, never again to be a regular member of that
household.
129:1.2 He spent one week at Tiberias, the new
city which was soon to succeed Sepphoris as the capital of
Galilee; and finding little to interest him, he passed on
successively through Magdala and Bethsaida to Capernaum, where he
stopped to pay a visit to his father's friend Zebedee. Zebedee's
sons were fishermen; he himself was a boatbuilder. Jesus of
Nazareth was an expert in both designing and building; he was a
master at working with wood; and Zebedee had long known of the
skill of the Nazareth craftsman. For a long time Zebedee had
contemplated making improved boats; he now laid his plans before
Jesus and invited the visiting carpenter to join him in the
enterprise, and Jesus readily consented.
129:1.3 Jesus worked with Zebedee only a little
more than one year, but during that time he created a new style of
boat and established entirely new methods of boatmaking. By
superior technique and greatly improved methods of steaming the
boards, Jesus and Zebedee began to build boats of a very superior
type, craft which were far more safe for sailing the lake than
were the older types. For several years Zebedee had more work,
turning out these new-style boats, than his small establishment
could handle; in less than five years practically all the craft on
the lake had been built in the shop of Zebedee at Capernaum. Jesus
became well known to the Galilean fisherfolk as the designer of
the new boats.
129:1.4 Zebedee was a moderately well-to-do man;
his boatbuilding shops were on the lake to the south of Capernaum,
and his home was situated down the lake shore near the fishing
headquarters of Bethsaida. Jesus lived in the home of Zebedee
during the year and more he remained at Capernaum. He had long
worked alone in the world, that is, without a father, and greatly
enjoyed this period of working with a father-partner.
129:1.5 Zebedee's wife, Salome, was a relative
of Annas, onetime high priest at Jerusalem and still the most
influential of the Sadducean group, having been deposed only eight
years previously. Salome became a great admirer of Jesus. She
loved him as she loved her own sons, James, John, and David, while
her four daughters looked upon Jesus as their elder brother. Jesus
often went out fishing with James, John, and David, and they
learned that he was an experienced fisherman as well as an expert
boatbuilder.
129:1.6 All this year Jesus sent money each
month to James. He returned to Nazareth in October to attend
Martha's wedding, and he was not again in Nazareth for over two
years, when he returned shortly before the double wedding of Simon
and Jude.
129:1.7 Throughout this year Jesus built boats
and continued to observe how men lived on earth. Frequently he
would go down to visit at the caravan station, Capernaum being on
the direct travel route from Damascus to the south. Capernaum was
a strong Roman military post, and the garrison's commanding
officer was a gentile believer in Yahweh, "a devout man," as the
Jews were wont to designate such proselytes. This officer belonged
to a wealthy Roman family, and he took it upon himself to build a
beautiful synagogue in Capernaum, which had been presented to the
Jews a short time before Jesus came to live with Zebedee. Jesus
conducted the services in this new synagogue more than half the
time this year, and some of the caravan people who chanced to
attend remembered him as the carpenter from Nazareth.
129:1.8 When it came to the payment of taxes,
Jesus registered himself as a "skilled craftsman of Capernaum."
From this day on to the end of his earth life he was known as a
resident of Capernaum. He never claimed any other legal residence,
although he did, for various reasons, permit others to assign his
residence to Damascus, Bethany, Nazareth, and even Alexandria.
129:1.9 At the Capernaum synagogue he found many
new books in the library chests, and he spent at least five
evenings a week at intense study. One evening he devoted to social
life with the older folks, and one evening he spent with the young
people. There was something gracious and inspiring about the
personality of Jesus which invariably attracted young people. He
always made them feel at ease in his presence. Perhaps his great
secret in getting along with them consisted in the twofold fact
that he was always interested in what they were doing, while he
seldom offered them advice unless they asked for it.
129:1.10 The Zebedee family almost worshiped
Jesus, and they never failed to attend the conferences of
questions and answers which he conducted each evening after supper
before he departed for the synagogue to study. The youthful
neighbors also came in frequently to attend these after-supper
meetings. To these little gatherings Jesus gave varied and
advanced instruction, just as advanced as they could comprehend.
He talked quite freely with them, expressing his ideas and ideals
about politics, sociology, science, and philosophy, but never
presumed to speak with authoritative finality except when
discussing religion -- the relation of man to God.
129:1.11 Once a week Jesus held a meeting with
the entire household, shop, and shore helpers, for Zebedee had
many employees. And it was among these workers that Jesus was
first called "the Master." They all loved him. He enjoyed his
labors with Zebedee in Capernaum, but he missed the children
playing out by the side of the Nazareth carpenter shop.
129:1.12 Of the sons of Zebedee, James was the
most interested in Jesus as a teacher, as a philosopher. John
cared most for his religious teaching and opinions. David
respected him as a mechanic but took little stock in his religious
views and philosophic teachings.
129:1.13 Frequently Jude came over on the
Sabbath to hear Jesus talk in the synagogue and would tarry to
visit with him. And the more Jude saw of his eldest brother, the
more he became convinced that Jesus was a truly great man.
129:1.14 This year Jesus made great advances in
the ascendant mastery of his human mind and attained new and high
levels of conscious contact with his indwelling Thought Adjuster.
129:1.15 This was the last year of his settled
life. Never again did Jesus spend a whole year in one place or at
one undertaking. The days of his earth pilgrimages were rapidly
approaching. Periods of intense activity were not far in the
future, but there were now about to intervene between his simple
but intensely active life of the past and his still more intense
and strenuous public ministry, a few years of extensive travel and
highly diversified personal activity. His training as a man of the
realm had to be completed before he could enter upon his career of
teaching and preaching as the perfected God-man of the divine and
posthuman phases of his Urantia bestowal.
2. THE TWENTY-EIGHTH YEAR (A.D. 22)
129:2.1 In March, A.D. 22, Jesus took leave of
Zebedee and of Capernaum. He asked for a small sum of money to
defray his expenses to Jerusalem. While working with Zebedee he
had drawn only small sums of money, which each month he would send
to the family at Nazareth. One month Joseph would come down to
Capernaum for the money; the next month Jude would come over to
Capernaum, get the money from Jesus, and take it up to Nazareth.
Jude's fishing headquarters was only a few miles south of
Capernaum.
129:2.2 When Jesus took leave of Zebedee's
family, he agreed to remain in Jerusalem until Passover time, and
they all promised to be present for that event. They even arranged
to celebrate the Passover supper together. They all sorrowed when
Jesus left them, especially the daughters of Zebedee.
129:2.3 Before leaving Capernaum, Jesus had a
long talk with his new-found friend and close companion, John
Zebedee. He told John that he contemplated traveling extensively
until "my hour shall come" and asked John to act in his stead in
the matter of sending some money to the family at Nazareth each
month until the funds due him should be exhausted. And John made
him this promise: "My Teacher, go about your business, do your
work in the world; I will act for you in this or any other matter,
and I will watch over your family even as I would foster my own
mother and care for my own brothers and sisters. I will disburse
your funds which my father holds as you have directed and as they
may be needed, and when your money has been expended, if I do not
receive more from you, and if your mother is in need, then will I
share my own earnings with her. Go your way in peace. I will act
in your stead in all these matters."
129:2.4 Therefore, after Jesus had departed for
Jerusalem, John consulted with his father, Zebedee, regarding the
money due Jesus, and he was surprised that it was such a large
sum. As Jesus had left the matter so entirely in their hands, they
agreed that it would be the better plan to invest these funds in
property and use the income for assisting the family at Nazareth;
and since Zebedee knew of a little house in Capernaum which
carried a mortgage and was for sale, he directed John to buy this
house with Jesus' money and hold the title in trust for his
friend. And John did as his father advised him. For two years the
rent of this house was applied on the mortgage, and this,
augmented by a certain large fund which Jesus presently sent up to
John to be used as needed by the family, almost equaled the amount
of this obligation; and Zebedee supplied the difference, so that
John paid up the remainder of the mortgage when it fell due,
thereby securing clear title to this two-room house. In this way
Jesus became the owner of a house in Capernaum, but he had not
been told about it.
129:2.5 When the family at Nazareth heard that
Jesus had departed from Capernaum, they, not knowing of this
financial arrangement with John, believed the time had come for
them to get along without any further help from Jesus. James
remembered his contract with Jesus and, with the help of his
brothers, forthwith assumed full responsibility for the care of
the family.
129:2.6 But let us go back to observe Jesus in
Jerusalem. For almost two months he spent the greater part of his
time listening to the temple discussions with occasional visits to
the various schools of the rabbis. Most of the Sabbath days he
spent at Bethany.
129:2.7 Jesus had carried with him to Jerusalem
a letter from Salome, Zebedee's wife, introducing him to the
former high priest, Annas, as "one, the same as my own son." Annas
spent much time with him, personally taking him to visit the many
academies of the Jerusalem religious teachers. While Jesus
thoroughly inspected these schools and carefully observed their
methods of teaching, he never so much as asked a single question
in public. Although Annas looked upon Jesus as a great man, he was
puzzled as to how to advise him. He recognized the foolishness of
suggesting that he enter any of the schools of Jerusalem as a
student, and yet he well knew Jesus would never be accorded the
status of a regular teacher inasmuch as he had never been trained
in these schools.
129:2.8 Presently the time of the Passover drew
near, and along with the throngs from every quarter there arrived
at Jerusalem from Capernaum, Zebedee and his entire family. They
all stopped at the spacious home of Annas, where they celebrated
the Passover as one happy family.
129:2.9 Before the end of this Passover week, by
apparent chance, Jesus met a wealthy traveler and his son, a young
man about seventeen years of age. These travelers hailed from
India, and being on their way to visit Rome and various other
points on the Mediterranean, they had arranged to arrive in
Jerusalem during the Passover, hoping to find someone whom they
could engage as interpreter for both and tutor for the son. The
father was insistent that Jesus consent to travel with them. Jesus
told him about his family and that it was hardly fair to go away
for almost two years, during which time they might find themselves
in need. Whereupon, this traveler from the Orient proposed to
advance to Jesus the wages of one year so that he could intrust
such funds to his friends for the safeguarding of his family
against want. And Jesus agreed to make the trip.
129:2.10 Jesus turned this large sum over to
John the son of Zebedee. And you have been told how John applied
this money toward the liquidation of the mortgage on the Capernaum
property. Jesus took Zebedee fully into his confidence regarding
this Mediterranean journey, but he enjoined him to tell no man,
not even his own flesh and blood, and Zebedee never did disclose
his knowledge of Jesus' whereabouts during this long period of
almost two years. Before Jesus' return from this trip the family
at Nazareth had just about given him up as dead. Only the
assurances of Zebedee, who went up to Nazareth with his son John
on several occasions, kept hope alive in Mary's heart.
129:2.11 During this time the Nazareth family
got along very well; Jude had considerably increased his quota and
kept up this extra contribution until he was married.
Notwithstanding that they required little assistance, it was the
practice of John Zebedee to take presents each month to Mary and
Ruth, as Jesus had instructed him.
3. THE TWENTY-NINTH YEAR (A.D. 23)
129:3.1 The whole of Jesus' twenty-ninth year
was spent finishing up the tour of the Mediterranean world. The
main events, as far as we have permission to reveal these
experiences, constitute the subjects of the narratives which
immediately follow this paper.
129:3.2 Throughout this tour of the Roman world,
for many reasons, Jesus was known as the Damascus scribe.
At Corinth and other stops on the return trip he was, however,
known as the Jewish tutor.
129:3.3 This was an eventful period in Jesus'
life. While on this journey he made many contacts with his fellow
men, but this experience is a phase of his life which he never
revealed to any member of his family nor to any of the apostles.
Jesus lived out his life in the flesh and departed from this world
without anyone (save Zebedee of Bethsaida) knowing that he had
made this extensive trip. Some of his friends thought he had
returned to Damascus; others thought he had gone to India. His own
family inclined to the belief that he was in Alexandria, as they
knew that he had once been invited to go there for the purpose of
becoming an assistant chazan.
129:3.4 When Jesus returned to Palestine, he did
nothing to change the opinion of his family that he had gone from
Jerusalem to Alexandria; he permitted them to continue in the
belief that all the time he had been absent from Palestine had
been spent in that city of learning and culture. Only Zebedee the
boatbuilder of Bethsaida knew the facts about these matters, and
Zebedee told no one.
129:3.5 In all your efforts to decipher the
meaning of Jesus' life on Urantia, you must be mindful of the
motivation of the Michael bestowal. If you would comprehend the
meaning of many of his apparently strange doings, you must discern
the purpose of his sojourn on your world. He was consistently
careful not to build up an overattractive and attention-consuming
personal career. He wanted to make no unusual or overpowering
appeals to his fellow men. He was dedicated to the work of
revealing the heavenly Father to his fellow mortals and at the
same time was consecrated to the sublime task of living his mortal
earth life all the while subject to the will of the same Paradise
Father.
129:3.6 It will also always be helpful in
understanding Jesus' life on earth if all mortal students of this
divine bestowal will remember that, while he lived this life of
incarnation on Urantia, he lived it for his entire
universe. There was something special and inspiring associated
with the life he lived in the flesh of mortal nature for every
single inhabited sphere throughout all the universe of Nebadon.
The same is also true of all those worlds which have become
habitable since the eventful times of his sojourn on Urantia. And
it will likewise be equally true of all worlds which may become
inhabited by will creatures in all the future history of this
local universe.
129:3.7 The Son of Man, during the time and
through the experiences of this tour of the Roman world,
practically completed his educational contact-training with the
diversified peoples of the world of his day and generation. By the
time of his return to Nazareth, through the medium of this
travel-training he had just about learned how man lived and
wrought out his existence on Urantia.
129:3.8 The real purpose of his trip around the
Mediterranean basin was to know men. He came very close to
hundreds of humankind on this journey. He met and loved all manner
of men, rich and poor, high and low, black and white, educated and
uneducated, cultured and uncultured, animalistic and spiritual,
religious and irreligious, moral and immoral.
129:3.9 On this Mediterranean journey Jesus made
great advances in his human task of mastering the material and
mortal mind, and his indwelling Adjuster made great progress in
the ascension and spiritual conquest of this same human intellect.
By the end of this tour Jesus virtually knew -- with all human
certainty -- that he was a Son of God, a Creator Son of the
Universal Father. The Adjuster more and more was able to bring up
in the mind of the Son of Man shadowy memories of his Paradise
experience in association with his divine Father ere he ever came
to organize and administer this local universe of Nebadon. Thus
did the Adjuster, little by little, bring to Jesus' human
consciousness those necessary memories of his former and divine
existence in the various epochs of the well-nigh eternal past. The
last episode of his prehuman experience to be brought forth by the
Adjuster was his farewell conference with Immanuel of Salvington
just before his surrender of conscious personality to embark upon
the Urantia incarnation. And this final memory picture of prehuman
existence was made clear in Jesus' consciousness on the very day
of his baptism by John in the Jordan.
4. THE HUMAN JESUS
129:4.1 To the onlooking celestial intelligences
of the local universe, this Mediterranean trip was the most
enthralling of all Jesus' earth experiences, at least of all his
career right up to the event of his crucifixion and mortal death.
This was the fascinating period of his personal ministry in
contrast with the soon-following epoch of public ministry. This
unique episode was all the more engrossing because he was at this
time still the carpenter of Nazareth, the boatbuilder of
Capernaum, the scribe of Damascus; he was still the Son of Man. He
had not yet achieved the complete mastery of his human mind; the
Adjuster had not fully mastered and counterparted the mortal
identity. He was still a man among men.
129:4.2 The purely human religious experience --
the personal spiritual growth -- of the Son of Man well-nigh
reached the apex of attainment during this, the twenty-ninth year.
This experience of spiritual development was a consistently
gradual growth from the moment of the arrival of his Thought
Adjuster until the day of the completion and confirmation of that
natural and normal human relationship between the material mind of
man and the mind-endowment of the spirit -- the phenomenon of the
making of these two minds one, the experience which the Son of Man
attained in completion and finality, as an incarnated mortal of
the realm, on the day of his baptism in the Jordan.
129:4.3 Throughout these years, while he did not
appear to engage in so many seasons of formal communion with his
Father in heaven, he perfected increasingly effective methods of
personal communication with the indwelling spirit presence of the
Paradise Father. He lived a real life, a full life, and a truly
normal, natural, and average life in the flesh. He knows from
personal experience the equivalent of the actuality of the entire
sum and substance of the living of the life of human beings on the
material worlds of time and space.
129:4.4 The Son of Man experienced those wide
ranges of human emotion which reach from superb joy to profound
sorrow. He was a child of joy and a being of rare good humor;
likewise was he a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." In a
spiritual sense, he did live through the mortal life from the
bottom to the top, from the beginning to the end. From a material
point of view, he might appear to have escaped living through both
social extremes of human existence, but intellectually he became
wholly familiar with the entire and complete experience of
humankind.
129:4.5 Jesus knows about the thoughts and
feelings, the urges and impulses, of the evolutionary and
ascendant mortals of the realms, from birth to death. He has lived
the human life from the beginnings of physical, intellectual, and
spiritual selfhood up through infancy, childhood, youth, and
adulthood -- even to the human experience of death. He not only
passed through these usual and familiar human periods of
intellectual and spiritual advancement, but he also fully
experienced those higher and more advanced phases of human and
Adjuster reconciliation which so few Urantia mortals ever attain.
And thus he experienced the full life of mortal man, not only as
it is lived on your world, but also as it is lived on all other
evolutionary worlds of time and space, even on the highest and
most advanced of all the worlds settled in light and life.
129:4.6 Although this perfect life which he
lived in the likeness of mortal flesh may not have received the
unqualified and universal approval of his fellow mortals, those
who chanced to be his contemporaries on earth, still, the life
which Jesus of Nazareth lived in the flesh and on Urantia did
receive full and unqualified acceptance by the Universal Father as
constituting at one and the same time, and in one and the same
personality-life, the fullness of the revelation of the eternal
God to mortal man and the presentation of perfected human
personality to the satisfaction of the Infinite Creator.
129:4.7 And this was his true and supreme
purpose. He did not come down to live on Urantia as the perfect
and detailed example for any child or adult, any man or woman, in
that age or any other. True it is, indeed, that in his full, rich,
beautiful, and noble life we may all find much that is exquisitely
exemplary, divinely inspiring, but this is because he lived a true
and genuinely human life. Jesus did not live his life on earth in
order to set an example for all other human beings to copy. He
lived this life in the flesh by the same mercy ministry that you
all may live your lives on earth; and as he lived his mortal life
in his day and as he was, so did he thereby set the example
for all of us thus to live our lives in our day and as we are.
You may not aspire to live his life, but you can resolve to
live your lives even as, and by the same means that, he lived
his. Jesus may not be the technical and detailed example for all
the mortals of all ages on all the realms of this local universe,
but he is everlastingly the inspiration and guide of all Paradise
pilgrims from the worlds of initial ascension up through a
universe of universes and on through Havona to Paradise. Jesus is
the new and living way from man to God, from the partial to
the perfect, from the earthly to the heavenly, from time to
eternity.
129:4.8 By the end of the twenty-ninth year
Jesus of Nazareth had virtually finished the living of the life
required of mortals as sojourners in the flesh. He came on earth
the fullness of God to be manifest to man; he had now become
well-nigh the perfection of man awaiting the occasion to become
manifest to God. And he did all of this before he was thirty years
of age.
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