74. Did the child Jesus attend school as an ordinary boy?

Of the first thirty years of his life little is recorded beyond the inci­dent of his visit to Jerusalem with Joseph and Mary, when he was twelve years old.

Usually both parents of a Jewish child took an active part in its early education. It was incumbent on the father to teach his offspring the Law and the other Scriptures, which constituted the es­sentials of Jewish education.

Josephus, the historian, states that, at fourteen, he himself had so thorough a knowledge of the Law that the high priests and first men of the town sought his opinion.

Christ's ear­lier years, after he had passed from the first lessons of Joseph and Mary, were doubtless spent in school, with other children of the little Galilean village.