It was in such circumstances, and under such influences, that the early years of Jesus passed. To go beyond this, and to attempt lifting the veil which lies over His Child-History, would not only be presumptuous, [1176] but involve us in anachronisms. Fain would we know it, whether the Child Jesus frequented the Synagogue School; who was His teacher, and who those who sat beside Him on the ground, earnestly gazing on the face of Him Who repeated the sacrificial ordinances in the Book of Leviticus, that were all to be fulfilled in Him. But it is all a mystery of Godliness.' We do not even know quite certainly whether the school-system had, at that time, extended to far-off Nazareth; nor whether the order and method which have been described were universally observed at that time. In all probability, however, there was such a school in Nazareth, and, if so, the Child-Saviour would conform to the general practice of attendance. We may thus, still with deepest reverence, think of Him as learning His earliest earthly lesson from the Book of Leviticus. Learned Rabbis there were not in Nazareth - either then or afterwards. [1177] He would attend the services of the Synagogue, where Moses and the prophets were read, and, as afterwards by Himself, [1178] occasional addresses delivered. [1179] That His was pre-eminently a pious home in the highest sense, it seems almost irreverent to say. From His intimate familiarity with Holy Scripture, in its every detail, we may be allowed to infer that the home of Nazareth, however humble, possessed a precious copy of the Sacred Volume in its entirety. At any rate, we know that from earliest childhood it must have formed the meat and drink of the God-Man. The words of the Lord, as recorded by St. Matthew [1180] and St. Luke, [1181] also imply that the Holy Scriptures which He read were in the original Hebrew, and that they were written in the square, or Assyrian, characters. [1182] Indeed, as the Pharisees and Sadducees always appealed to the Scriptures in the original, Jesus could not have met them on any other ground, and it was this which gave such point to His frequent expostulations with them: Have ye not read?'
But far other thoughts than theirs gathered around His study of the Old Testament Scriptures. When comparing their long discussions on the letter and law of Scripture with His references to the Word of God, it seems as if it were quite another book which was handled. As we gaze into the vast glory of meaning which He opens to us; follow the shining track of heavenward living to which He points; behold the lines of symbol, type, and prediction converging in the grand unity of that Kingdom which became reality in Him; or listen as, alternately, some question of His seems to rive the darkness, as with flash of sudden light, or some sweet promise of old to lull the storm, some earnest lesson to quiet the tossing waves - we catch faint, it may be far-off, glimpses of how, in that early Child-life, when the Holy Scriptures were His special study, He must have read them, and what thoughts must have been kindled by their light. And thus better than before can we understand it: And the Child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him.'
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[1084] And yet Keim speaks of his Hochherzigkeit and natürlicher Edelsinn! (Leben Jesu, i. 1. p. 184.) A much truer estimate is that of Schürer, Neutest. Zeitgesch. pp. 197, 198.
[1085] See the horrible description of his living death in Jos. Ant. xvii. 6. 5.
[1086] See the calculation in Wiesler's Synopse, pp. 56 and 444. The Dissertatio de Herode Magno,' by J.A. van der Chijs (Leyden, 1855), is very clear and accurate. Dr. Geikie adopts the manifest mistake of Caspari, that Herod died in January, 753, and holds that the Holy Family spent three years in Egypt. The repeated statement of Josephus that Herod died close upon the Passover should have sufficed to show the impossibility of that hypothesis. Indeed, there is scarcely any historical date on which competent writers are more agreed than that of Herod's death. See Schürer, Neutest. Zeitg., pp. 222, 223.