The Gospels are silent about Jesus’ childhood. I agree with those who say that the emphasis by the Gospel writers was on the Incarnation, the Ministry, and the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ. With the exception of the Lukan story of a 12 year old Jesus at the Temple, no stories are told after infancy and before ministry. Even the Lukan story serves to point out that as Jesus became a man (bar mitzvah) he already had a sense of something more. Already we see something of his future teaching ministry in that passage. However, nothing is said of any of the other years.
Human beings being what they are, we tend to ask what we do not know how to answer. Then we come up with imaginative answers. All we really know is that Saint Luke says that the child grew in wisdom and stature. But, we want to know, and so we make up answers. Sometimes they are simply cute little saccharine legends that are utterly implausible. Sometimes we write entire gospels that ended up influencing parts of Church theology for a while. Among the Orthodox, the emphasis on the ministry of the Christ was so strong that the child Jesus is never pictured in a natural fashion. All the icons, even of the infant Jesus, are more adult looking than child looking. We wish to emphasize that even in infancy and childhood, this was the Christ, the anointed one.
But, that has also negatively influenced the image of the infant Jesus in our mind. If you do look at what paintings and icons there are, the infant is always pictured as impassive. It is as though he would be a most unusual child who never appears to laugh, cry, or show any other emotion. But, we do not know that either. Rather, it is as though we look at one of those daguerreotypes from the 19th century that pictures a family. Notice how both adults and children are pictured only in their formal clothes, sitting stiffly, and without a smile. You know that those children pictured had to laugh, play, cry, etc., but you cannot tell from the daguerreotype. It is the same with our icons. We cannot tell what the child Jesus was like nor should we dare to make assumptions, lest we begin to see that child through our cultural expectations of children and begin to make up a “false” Jesus.
When we begin to make assumptions about the infant and the child Jesus, we inevitably begin to build a whole person in our minds, for which we have no evidence. But, the danger is that the image that we build will begin to influence the Jesus that we see in the Gospels. We assume that Jesus grew up poor from his parables, the location of his home, and the fact that his mother was a widow. That is probably quite true, but we do not know for sure. For all we know, Jesus might have made a reasonable living as a carpenter and they may have been middle class. After all, Joseph was present until after Jesus was 12. If he does not die until Jesus is 16, then Jesus would have been quite able to take over the carpentry shop. But, that assumes that Joseph trained Jesus to be a carpenter. All the Gospels say is that he was the son of a carpenter, but he himself is never called a carpenter.
Do you see the problem? We tend to argue that Jesus loved the poor because he grew up poor. Would it change anything if Jesus grew up in the comfortable home of a reasonably successful carpenter? He might love the poor simply because He loves the poor! The reality is that we do not know anything about Jesus’ childhood, only legends. Even Holy Tradition is remarkably silent on the subject save to claim that Jesus had no full brothers and sisters and that Mary is Ever-Virgin. He only had either cousins or half-brothers and half-sisters, depending on which interpretation you follow.
As much as we want to, we need to refrain from building up a Jesus in our minds whom we cannot legitimately reconstruct from what we know. We need to be satisfied with the Jesus found in the Gospels and the Epistles.
Three things come to mind… I fear I need more coffee before I can string them together.
1) Traditional legends of Joseph imply he was a rather well-off carpenter that was picked by Mary’s family because he could care for her. In these stories Jesus grew up rich.
2) As the fully-incarnate God, the brain of the baby Jesus would have been a human brain, incapable of even language conceptions, unable as a new born to see anything more than differences in light and dark – not even yet seeing human faces. This is what it means to “empty himself”. This love of God moves me emotionally just to type up this comment.
3) The “Jesus found in the Gospels” comes dangerously close to an appeal to Sola-Scriptura, an oxymoron that can not account for any of our doctrines without interpretation. The question is whose interpretation is right.
You have a point on the Sola Scriptura. That is why I mentioned that Holy Tradition also does not really speak on his infancy and childhood much. If the story that Joseph was a widower is the right one, then Jesus did grow up much better off than we normally preach. But, if the other tradition, that Joseph was a young man and that Jesus’ brothers and sisters were actually his cousins, is true, then it is unknown how Jesus grew up. Both traditions are found in the Early Church, with the West preferring the young Joseph and cousins while the East preferred the old Joseph and stepbrothers. But, neither was ever ruled to be the definitive one. Rather, the Great Schism meant that the tradition of the West of a young Joseph became their dominant explanation, while the tradition of the East of a widowed Joseph became our dominant explanation.
So, pick an explanation. What is NOT in play, according to Holy Tradition, is that Joseph ever had additional children by Mary or even had sexual congress with her. The area of the infancy and childhood of Jesus is one of the great silences in BOTH Scripture and Holy Tradition.
As to whether Jesus grew up wealthy or poor, I have often wondered what happened to all that gold, frankincense and myrrh he was given in his youth by the magi.
You write:
“But, that assumes that Joseph trained Jesus to be a carpenter. All the Gospels say is that he was the son of a carpenter, but he himself is never called a carpenter.”
Doing a word search in the New Testament for the word ‘carpenter’, I come across exactly two instances – parallel passages where in one, people refer to him as ‘the carpenter’s son’ and in the other people refer to him as ‘the carpenter’:
Matthew 13:55-56
“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?”
Mark 6:3
“Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.”
You are correct. Father Orthoduck even looked up the Mark 6:3 passage in Greek, and it clearly uses the word carpenter without a modifier. So, Father Ernesto stands corrected. Apparently Joseph did train Jesus up to be a carpenter. As you point out, however, there are only two passages in which it is used, and in both of them it is a question that is being asked by the onlookers.
However, Holy Tradition does preserve that it was not simply a question, but that Joseph was indeed a carpenter. There was also an apocryphal writing that dates to about 400 AD called, The History of Joseph the Carpenter.
Not to nitpick, but I had a professor who suggested that instead of “carpenter” it should be “builder” because it was more likely that Jesus and Joseph built out of stone. This is borne out in many of the stories Jesus told, of digging deep for a foundation, or of the building block that was rejected becoming the cornerstone (or capstone), or of counting the cost to build a tower, etc. The line from JC Superstar, “Tables, chairs and oaken chests would have suited Jesus best” may not be accurate. He likely did use wood to make doors or windows, but 2x4s and plywood? Not likely.
So you are suggesting that “contractor” might be a better term for Joseph? The word used in Greek is tekton. The possible lexical definitions are:
1. a worker in wood, a carpenter, joiner, builder
1. a ship’s carpenter or builder
2. any craftsman, or workman
1. the art of poetry, maker of songs
3. a planner, contriver, plotter
1. an author
Definitions two and three are derivative definitions, the first definition is the original base definition. BTW, look at “tekton” and you can see derivative English words like technical, technician, etc. But, given that “builder” and “joiner” are possible definitions, your professor might have a point. But, I would point to the traditional understandings and suggest that those closest to the event might have the best understanding. Notice that the Protevangelium of James pictures Joseph as carrying and axe, and it was written within 60 years of Mary’s death.
It just makes sense to me that Joseph would have been older and thus able to properly care for Mary and the baby. The way scripture protrays Joseph as a man who (before his dream) was going to put Mary away privately and without a fuss makes much mroe sense if Joseph was a more mature individual. A young man might have been more hot headed–and a more mature man would have likely been more accepting of a baby “not his” even if the dream told him the baby was of the Holy Spirit and God Himself–not to mention the fact that an older man who had children of his own already would be more willing to not consummate the marriage and have sons of his own to carry on his name. Just makes sense to me in terms of human development and hormones!!
The Gospel of Thomas details the childhood of Jesus Christ.