A stained-glass window in St. Edward's Church in Seattle shows Jesus, Mary and Joseph on their flight into Egypt. Credit: CNS/Crosiers

Over the past 40 years, I’ve tried to read as much as I can on the topic of the historical Jesus, the study of the life and times of the man known as Jesus of Nazareth. This branch of scholarship is usually distinguished from reflections on the Christ of faith—that is, theological inquiry and meditations on the one who rose from the dead and who is present to us today through the Holy Spirit.


Boy Jesus

Growing Up Judean in Turbulent Times
By Joan Taylor
Zondervan Academic
368p $30

Of course, they are one and the same. Jesus did not die and then rise as a new person. As Stanley Marrow, S.J., wrote in his commentary on the Gospel of John, for Jesus to rise as anyone other than the man whom the disciples knew would “void the resurrection of all its meaning.”

Over the years, as a nonscholar and nonacademic, I’ve plowed through fine books by the Rev. John Meier, Amy-Jill Levine, Jonathan Reed, John Dominic Crossan, Paula Frederickson, Ben Witherington III and other New Testament scholars, theologians, archeologists and historians to try to understand as much about Jesus of Nazareth as I can. And I’m always surprised by Christians who downplay, ignore or even dismiss these studies, saying, in essence, what really matters is belief in Jesus now.

That is certainly true: Belief in the risen Christ matters. But the more we understand about the man who walked the dusty roads of first-century Judea and Galilee, the more we can understand about the one who is present to us through the Spirit.

So I opened Joan Taylor’s Boy Jesus with great anticipation—and I am happy to say I was not let down. Her new book is a model of careful scholarship that relies on old sources but breaks new ground. It is, in some places, riveting. (The book’s title may be jarring to American ears; we might have preferred Jesus as a Boy or The Boy Jesus. It seems to be a Britishism, like the name of the amusing character Boy Mulcaster from Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.)

Boy Jesus focuses on the incidents in the Gospel narratives relating to Jesus’ younger years, from the Annunciation to the finding in the Temple at age 12. But even before Taylor considers Mary and Joseph, she begins by describing the mise-en-scène, or as German scholars would say, the Sitz im Leben, the “setting in life.” This means a discussion of Jesus as a Jew (his religious background, broadly speaking), a Judahite (coming from a certain ethnic group, homeland or patria) and a Judean (from the geographic region of Judea). The three terms are often used interchangeably—and incorrectly. This is one reason why so many scholars tear out their hair (or rend their garments) when preachers substitute “the Judeans” for “the Jews” while proclaiming the Gospels, in an otherwise laudable effort to avoid giving offense.

Taylor also advances a fascinating if unorthodox reading of the virgin birth. She suggests that people of the time who called Jesus “Son of David” might have read the story of the Annunciation very differently from the standard interpretation today—while still leaving room for the miraculous. It was Joseph’s “seed” that was implanted in Mary, so that Jesus could rightfully be called David’s heir. Taylor writes, “All in all, then, Matthew’s conception and birth of Jesus can well be read as indicating that Joseph is the actual father of Jesus, whose seed (of David) was miraculously implanted in Mary’s womb from the action of the Holy Spirit of God.” (Author’s clarification on 9/12: For the record, I still believe in the traditional approach to the virgin birth.)

One of the themes of this rich book is that some of the Gospel narratives concerning Jesus’ birth and childhood that even reputable scholars sometimes label as ahistorical have more basis in history than we may initially think. As one example, Taylor examines the story of the Massacre of the Innocents and the flight into Egypt, both of which are often thought of as embellishments, if not constructed from whole cloth. She convincingly situates the story within the historically based reports of King Herod’s acts of “great cruelty towards those he considered disloyal.” Herod murdered his own sons and “had few qualms about killing anyone else’s,” she writes. Taylor repeats Augustus Caesar’s quip, “I would rather be Herod’s pig than his son.”

Moreover, she notes, these ruthless actions by Herod would have been widely known, something that the Jewish historian Josephus confirms. “The story of Herod is therefore the story of current events as they would have affected Jesus’s family,” she writes. And with Egypt “long a place of refuge and settlement for Judeans,” is it so hard to believe that Joseph might at some point, out of fear of the murderous Herod, move his family into that part of the world, and become a refugee? There was even a large Jewish community in Alexandria at the time. “Fleeing to Egypt to avoid danger was a reasonable idea,” Taylor suggests, “and Joseph was probably not the only man in Judaea who decided on this path.”

Another surprise, at least for me, was reading about the town of Sepphoris, a short distance from Nazareth. Most books will tell you that the large town (known by the Roman name Autokratoris) had been destroyed after a rebellion was crushed by Varus, the Roman legate to Syria, which included the murder and enslavement of much of its populace. Afterward, Herod set about to rebuild the city into what later became known as the “ornament of all Galilee,” around the time of Jesus’ young adulthood.

It seemed likely to many scholars (and to me, something I mentioned in my book Jesus: A Pilgrimage) that Jesus the tekton (carpenter) perhaps along with Joseph (if he was still alive) would have traveled there to seek work. The Greek theater at Sepphoris, some have suggested, might even have been a place frequented by Jesus. After all, he freely uses the Greek term hypocrite, which comes from theater.

But Taylor reminds us that the destruction of Sepphoris would have been a horror for the young Jesus: 

From the hills above Nazareth, the whole horror could have been watched. Loud noises would have carried. The smoke from burning buildings would have been seen, and smelt. The inhabitants of Nazareth would have known that the Roman army was inflicting terrible things on the nearby city. Some inhabitants would have managed to escape to tell the tale.

Sepphoris, then, far from being a place of possible employment, was probably a place that Jesus avoided. It is unlikely, says Taylor, that any “Son of David” would have “wished to be involved in construction work for the Roman client ruler Herod Antipas, ‘that fox,’” as Jesus described him. 

This is one of Taylor’s most important contributions to literature on the historical Jesus, situating him not only in his time, but in his violent times. She argues that given the political climate, the persecution of the populace (who, as a result, sometimes constructed hiding places in their homes), the bloodthirsty rulers and the ruthless putting down of insurrections (not to mention the widespread poverty), Jesus’ early life might have been marked with trauma.

Taylor’s fine book is in places quite dense, but for Bible nerds and historical Jesus nerds like myself, that density was comforting. All the Greek and Hebrew words, all the quotes from Josephus (and extracanonical Gospels and writings) and all the maps (many of them drawn by Taylor herself) make for a reliable study. And toward the end of her book, somewhat akin to what both John Meier does in the first volume of A Marginal Jew and what Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., does in her book on Mary, Truly Our Sister, Taylor offers a lovely precis of what Jesus’ daily life in Nazareth would have been like, in a chapter called “Growing Up Jesus.”

As a nonacademic, I will go out on a limb and say that Boy Jesus is a significant contribution to the study of the historical Jesus. As a Bible nerd, I will say it was an engrossing, even fun read. Finally, as a believer, I will say that it was in many places consoling and moved me to prayer, as I came to know the Son of David even more deeply.