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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