Here is something that struck me about Jesus’s “unknown years”—the years not expressly described in the Gospel. Jesus was a Jew under the Torah. The Torah suffuses all aspects of life. Thus, in virtue of the fact that Jesus was sinless and hence perfectly fulfilled the Torah, we can know a lot more about his daily life than we know about the daily life of any ordinary historical figure. In Jesus' case, "ought" implied "is".
But even though we can assume he follows the laws commanded, we cannot be sure that he follows the known laws of physics. So maybe it’s a wash.
ReplyDeleteIsn't Jesus New Testament?
ReplyDeleteIs He really a "Jew under the Torah"? Or a "Christian" free from the Law, in the Pauline sense?
Yes, He did "perfectly fulfill the Torah" but isn't that in a sense that implies all the changes to the Law that Christians recognize took place with the advent of the Christ?
I use questions to deliberately hide from providing answers :-) which would be quite tricky to get right. And in essence I agree with your post - I just got a strange feeling that it is not that easy to refer to the relation of Jesus to the Torah in such simple terms.
We also know (related to this) that there was also sometimes a bit of a supererogatory character to some of it -- we have good reason from things said about Jesus' family going up to Jerusalem to think that the family went to Temple worship for major holidays like passover at least semi-regularly, despite the fact that it was not exactly an easy trip -- a walk of eighty miles (probably broken up across about four or five days) one way that, while relatively safe, still mostly had to be done in groups for protection against occasional robbers, due to the distance.
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