el as his father.

He feared to go under Archelaus' rule, and instead took his wife and the
child to Nazareth, which had been his own home and that of Mary his wife
before the child was born. Nazareth was in the part of the land called
Galilee, which at that time was ruled by another son of king Herod, a
king named Herod Antipas. He was not a good man, but was not so cruel
nor bloody as his wicked father had been.

So again Joseph the carpenter and Mary his wife were living in Nazareth.
And there they stayed for many years while Jesus was growing up. Jesus
was not the only child in their house, and he had many other playmates
among the boys of Nazareth.

THE STORY OF THE CHILD IN THE TEMPLE

Jesus was brought to Nazareth when he was a little child not more than
three years old; there he grew up as a boy and a young man, and there he
lived until he was thirty years of age. We should like to know many
things about his boyhood, but the Bible tells us very little. As Joseph
was a working man, it is likely that he lived in a house with only one
room, with no floor except the earth, no window except a hole in the
wall, no pictures upon the walls, and neither bedstead, nor chair, nor
looking-glass. They sat upon the floor or upon cushions; they slept upon
rolls of matting, and their meals were taken from a low table not much
larger than a stool.

Jesus may have learned to read at the village school, which was
generally held in the house used for worship, called the "synagogue."
The lessons were from rolls on which were written parts of the Old
Testament; but Jesus never had a Bible of his own. From a child he went
with Joseph to the worship in the synagogue twice every week. There they
sat on the floor and heard the Old Testament read and explained, while
Mary and the younger sisters of Jesus listened from a gallery behind a
lattice-screen. The Jewish boys of that time were taught to know almost
the whole of the Old Testament by heart.

It was the custom of the Jews from all parts of the land to go up to
Jerusalem to worship at least once every year, at the feast of the
Passover, which was held in the spring. Some families also stayed to the
feast of Pentecost, which was fifty days after Passover; and some went
again in the fall to the feast of Tabernacles, when for a week all the
families slept out of doors, under roofs made of green twigs and bushes.

When Jesus was a boy twelve years old, he was taken up to the f