“The story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple already directs the reader toward the final stage of Jesus’ public activity. When Christ declares: ‘I should be in what belongs to my Father,’ he expresses his readiness to undertake the work of saving mankind through his passion, death, and resurrection”, stresses Magdalena Jóźwiak, PhD – assistant professor in the Department of Greek and Latin Patrology of the Institute of Theological Sciences of the Catholic University of Lublin, in her commentary for the Catholic University of Lublin Heschel Center for the Sunday, December 29.
Today’s Gospel directs our eyes to the Holy Family: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, who went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. Passover was one of the three great pilgrimage feasts (along with the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles), and was celebrated to commemorate the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. According to rabbinic order, men aged 13 were required to make the annual pilgrimage because, in the Jewish mentality of the time, once a boy turned 12, he entered adulthood and was obligated to observe the entire Law.
When Jesus was 12, he went to Jerusalem with his parents. Luke’s account shows that Jesus remained in Jerusalem after the festivities were over, unbeknownst to his parents. These, having realized when they escaped a day’s journey back to Nazareth that he was not among the other pilgrims, returned to Jerusalem to find him and only found him after three days. Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the temple, of whom the Evangelist does not write that he was sitting at the feet of the teachers, which would imply that he had adopted the posture of a disciple but was sitting “among the teachers,” that is, he was the center of their attention. Jesus’ intelligence is so great that among the witnesses to the scene, it causes great surprise.
Joseph and Mary’s reaction to finding Jesus in the temple includes astonishment and admonition. Luke expresses astonishment with the word ekplessomai, which in the Gospels means awe and delight caused by Jesus’ teachings and miracles. Ergo, it is not a matter of astonishment at the sight of Jesus but a reaction to the circumstances in which Joseph and Mary found Jesus. The astonishment is followed by an admonition addressed by the mother to the child: “Son, why have you done this to us?” (Luke 2:48).
Jesus’ response is the climax of the pericope. Like a typical Semite, he responds to the Mother’s question by asking: “Why did you seek me?” And the second part of Jesus’ answer, the beginning of which also begins with a question (“did you not know?”) poses many difficulties for translators. The phrase: en tois tou patros mou dei einai me (Luke 2:49) means, “It is necessary that I be in…my Father.” After the genitive in the plural nominative (tois) should stand a noun, which is not present in the text. Such an elliptical way of speaking, i.e., leaving out a segment of a sentence, is characteristic of Koine Greek and opens a wide field of interpretation for translators.
For example, many Church Fathers and early Christian writers (Origen, Ambrose, Augustine) interpret this text as “to be in my Father’s house.” St. Jerome translated this verse in the Vulgate with the phrase: in his, quae Patris mei sunt oportet me esse (=“it is necessary that I be in those of my Father”). Some translations, on the other hand, contain the following: “It is necessary for me to be in those things which belong to my Father.”
These translational proposals can be divided into two groups: a) those that see a local sense in Jesus’ words and b) those that give them a substantive sense. The local context points to the Jerusalem temple. In the temple, Jesus emphasizes his closeness to God and declares that his home is not de facto Nazareth but the temple in Jerusalem. In turn, the further context of Jesus’ words points to “the things of God,” that is, the salvation plan in the broadest sense.
In conclusion, the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple already directs the reader toward the final stage of Jesus’ public activity. When Christ declares: “I should be in what belongs to my Father,” he expresses his readiness to undertake the work of saving mankind through his passion, death, and resurrection.
About the Author:
Magdalena Jóźwiak, PhD – assistant professor in the Department of Greek and Latin Patrology of the Institute of Theological Sciences of the Catholic University of Lublin; PhD in humanities (classical philology, University of Wroclaw), PhD in theology (biblical theology, PWT Wroclaw). Her scholarly research focuses on the borderline between biblical studies and patrology with a special emphasis on the biblical commentaries of St. Jerome of Stridon. Translator of patristic texts, author of several monographs, and over a dozen scientific articles. Co-organizer of periodic international conferences on biblical exegesis and translation. She belongs to the Patristic Section of the Catholic Doctrine Commission of the Supreme Pontifical Council and is a member of the Association of Polish Biblical Scholars.
