{"id":76080,"date":"2020-06-15T04:57:24","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T08:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=76080"},"modified":"2020-06-14T12:30:12","modified_gmt":"2020-06-14T16:30:12","slug":"the-maturity-of-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/06\/the-maturity-of-jesus.html","title":{"rendered":"The Maturity of Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I love my Sunday school class. Not only did they enthusiastically opt for a study of women in the Gospels in conjunction with me working to put the finishing touches on my book,\u00a0What Jesus Learned From Women<\/em>, and not only have some of them volunteered to read a draft of the manuscript and provide feedback, but they continue to help me learn as well.<\/p>\n

We began by tackling the preliminary topic of Jesus learning, regardless of whether it was from women, men, or even on his own. For some people that idea is a non-starter because of their commitment to the doctrine of Jesus\u2019 divinity. How could God learn?!<\/p>\n

I drew attention to the fact that Luke 2:46-47 depicts Jesus in the Temple at age 12 listening to teachers and asking questions, as well as answering them when they asked him things. Yet in most cinematic depictions of the scene, Jesus has switched from the role of exceptional student which Luke depicts, to the role of teacher. Here are two examples, one classic and one recent.<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Luke 2 | Young Jesus Teaches in the Temple | The Bible\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jJJo0Fksivk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The reason for the shift, as I indicated, are theological commitments. In my Sunday school class I noted that the church defined orthodoxy in paradoxical terms, affirming that Jesus was fully human and at the same time fully divine. Not all of us, being Baptists, will necessarily feel obliged to even try to affirm the classic creeds. But even among those who do, there is a tendency to affirm both in theory, but in practice to sacrifice anything that makes one human if it seems to be in tension with divinity.<\/p>\n<p>As we dug deeper into the history of the church\u2019s varied thinking on this topic, I mentioned the apocryphal Gospels which have Jesus speak as a newborn or put his earliest teachers to shame by showing up their ignorance compared to his knowledge and wisdom. Most Christians today wouldn\u2019t go so far as to have him speak as a newborn, and I thought that worth reflecting on further. Most would acknowledge that a newborn\u2019s vocal cords are simply not developed to the point at which speech would be possible, and for that reason alone it would be wrong to imagine Jesus speaking. Why, I asked, are we willing to accept the development of Jesus\u2019 vocal cords, his increase in size, and other aspects of biological development, but not the development of his\u00a0<em>brain<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>Luke goes on to say in 2:52 that Jesus grew in wisdom. That seems to me the clincher verse with respect to this broad topic. Growth in wisdom implies learning. We noted that it doesn\u2019t highlight knowledge as the area of growth, but wisdom, and as I looked into the nuances of meaning for them, I noticed something about the word that sits alongside it in the same verse.\u00a0The Greek word \u1f21\u03bb\u03b9\u03ba\u03af\u1fb3 used in Luke 2:52 is most often translated \u201cstature.\u201d That\u2019s definitely its connotation in the other occurrence in Luke 19:3 where it explains why Zacchaeus climbed a tree in the hope of seeing Jesus. It is also sometimes translated in a way that makes it refer to Jesus increasing in years. Those two possibilities are why different translations have rendered Jesus\u2019 saying about worrying not being able to add a cubit to their lifespan\/height in those starkly different ways. But the Logos Bible app kindly drew another possible meaning to my attention, one that I\u2019ve never heard proposed in discussions of Luke 2:52. The word can also denote\u00a0<em>maturity<\/em>. In the context that seems like it ought to be the first of the various shades of meaning that comes to mind. Which sounds most natural \u2013 to mention growing in \u201cwisdom and height,\u201d \u201cwisdom and years,\u201d or \u201cwisdom and maturity\u201d? Isn\u2019t it obviously the latter? The only reason this rendering isn\u2019t used or even discussed is surely an unwillingness to wrestle with the implications of an immature Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>See more about the meaning of the word \u1f21\u03bb\u03b9\u03ba\u03af\u1fb3 in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/morph?l=h%28liki%2Fa%7C&la=greek&can=h%28liki%2Fa%7C0&prior=sw\/mati&d=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:alphabetic%20letter=*r:entry%20group=19:entry=r(wmale\/os&i=1#lexicon\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Liddell and Scott Lexicon<\/a>. I look forward to exploring this topic further in my Sunday school class. Next week we\u2019ll begin looking at the woman who is also the focus of the first chapter in my book: Mary, Jesus\u2019 mother, the person from whom no one can seriously deny that Jesus must have learned without also denying in the process that Jesus was a human being in any meaningful sense.<\/p>\n<p>On an almost completely unrelated topic, as a result of looking for movie clips and images to accompany this post, I discovered that there is a band called Young Jesus:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Young Jesus - Green [Official Music Video]\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/X44GvGSod1s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love my Sunday school class. Not only did they enthusiastically opt for a study of women in the Gospels in conjunction with me working to put the finishing touches on my book,\u00a0What Jesus Learned From Women, and not only have some of them volunteered to read a draft of the manuscript and provide feedback, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":79388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[5677,6427,7150,16777,13795],"class_list":["post-76080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gospel-of-luke","tag-jesus","tag-learning","tag-maturity","tag-stature","tag-wisdom"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>The Maturity of Jesus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I love my Sunday school class. 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