p. 1 | General Articles by Geikie

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 9, 1882

General Articles.

By Geikie

Early Days of Jesus.

That both parents of a Jewish child took an active part in its early education is shown by the instance of Susanna, of whom we are told that "her parents also were righteous, and taught their daughter according to the law of Moses," and by that of Timothy, "who from a child, had known the Holy Scriptures;" his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice, having been by implication his teachers. But it was on the father, especially, that the obligation lay, to teach his children of both sexes, the sacred law and the other Scriptures, the knowledge of which constituted almost exclusively the sum of Jewish education. Abraham had found divine favor on the express ground that "he would command his children and his household after him, and they should keep the way of Jehovah;" and express injunctions required every father to teach the sacred history of his nation, with the great deeds and varying fortunes of his ancestors, and the words of the law "diligently" to his children, and to talk of them while sitting in the house, or walking by the way, when they retired to rest, and when they rose for the day. It was, indeed, required by the rabbis that a child should begin to learn the law by heart when five years old. As soon as it could speak it had in the same way to learn the lessons and petitions of the morning service. At the frequently recurring household religious feasts, special rites, which should stir the child to ask their meaning, formed a regular part. The book of Proverbs abounds with proofs of the fidelity with which these commands were carried out by both fathers and mothers. In a virtuous home no opportunity was lost—at the table, at home or

abroad, evening or morning—of instilling reverence for God's law into the minds of the family, and of teaching them its express words throughout, till they knew them by heart. When we remember that the festivals made labor unlawful for two months in each year, in the aggregate, it is evident that the leisure thus secured would give great facilities for domestic instruction.

Such had been, for ages, the rule in Israel, and it doubtless still prevailed in many households. Elementary schools, however, gradually came to be felt a necessity for orphan children, and in the decline of manners, even for those of many living parents. Whether they had been generally established in the days of Christ's childhood has, nevertheless, been questioned. "If any man," says the Talmud, "deserves that his name should be handed down to posterity, it is Joshua, the son of Gamaliel. For, but for him the knowledge of the law would have perished in Israel. In early times he who had a father was taught, but he who had not, did not learn the law. For they were commanded in the words of the law, 'you'—doubtless the fathers—'shall teach them.'" At a latter date it was ordered that school-masters should be appointed to teach the youth of Jerusalem, because it is written, "The law shall go forth from Zion." But this plan did not remedy the evil, for only the child that had a father was sent to school, while he who had none was not sent. It was therefore provided that higher teachers should be provided in every district, and that the youth of sixteen or seventeen years of age should attend their schools. But this plan failed, because any scholar whom the master chastised presently ran off. Then, at last, Joshua, the son of Gamaliel, ordained that teachers should be appointed, as in every district, so in every town, to whom the boys from the sixth or seventh year of their age should be committed." But such a law must have been only supplementary to already existing customs, and it cannot be doubted that boys' schools were already general in the time of Christ. . . .

The age at which children were to be sent to school is fixed in the Mishna. Raf said to Samuel, the son of Schilath, a teacher, "Do not take a boy to be taught before he is six years old, but from that year receive him, and train him as you do the ox, which day by day, bears a heavier load." Even the number of scholars a teacher might take is rigidly fixed. "Rabba (or Raf) has said, a school-master may receive to the number of twenty-five scholars. If there be fifty, there must be two school-masters; if only forty, there must be an assistant, who is to be paid, half by the congregation, half by the school-master." The few children who were not sent to school from whatever cause, were called Am-ha-aretz, or boors—it being taken for granted that they must have lived in some rude district where schools were not easy of access. Neither unmarried men or women were allowed to be teachers. The Hazan or minister of the nearest synagogue was, in general, the master, and the synagogue itself, in a great many cases served as a school-house.

In school the children, according to their age, sat on benches, or on the ground, as they still do in the East, the master sitting on a raised seat. The younger children had, as text-books, some simple passage from the Bible, carefully written out—for, of course, there were no books, in the sense, then—and they seem to have repeated it in a sing-song cadence, till they learned it by heart. In eastern schools, at this time, some are written by each scholar, with chalk, on tablets of wood, like our slates in shape, and these are cleaned after each lesson. Some centuries after Christ the boys, having had portions of the "law" as their class-book till they were ten years old, began at that age to read the Mishna or Rabbinical comments, and at fifteen entered on the reading of the Gemara, or the collected comments on

both the law and the Mishna. In Christ's day, advanced education was, no doubt, much the same, but it must have been given by oral instruction, for the sayings of the rabbis were not as yet committed to writing.

The early years of Christ were, doubtless, spent in some such school, after he had passed from the first lessons of Mary, and the instructions of Joseph. Mysterious as it is to us, we must never forget that, as a child, he passed through the same stages as other children. The Apocryphal Gospels are full of miracles attributed to these opening years, describing the infant as already indefinitely beyond his age. There is no warrant for this in Scripture. Nothing was out of keeping in the life of our Lord. As Irenæus says, "He sanctified childhood by passing through it." Neither his words nor acts, his childish pleasures nor his tears, were different from those of his age. Evil alone had no growth in him; his soul gave back to the heavens all their sacred brightness. The ideal of humanity from his birth, he never lost the innocence of childhood, but he was none the less completely like other children in all things else. We are told that "the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit;" that "the favor of God was upon him," and that "he kept on increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man;" and this can only mean that, with a sweet attractiveness of childish nature, he spoke, and understood, and thought, as simply as his playmates, in the fields, or on the hill-sides, of Nazareth. The earlier words are the same as are used of John the Baptist in his childhood, and can bear only the same meaning. Both grew in the shade of a retired country life, in the sanctuary of home, apart from the great world, under the eyes of God, and with his grace upon them. It was only in later years that the mighty difference between them was seen, when the fresh leaves of childhood, much alike in all, passed into flower. There was no moment in Christ's life when the higher light began to reveal itself in his soul; life and "grace" dawned together, and grew in a common increase to the end.—Geikie.