Talk:Finding in the Temple

message: I've always wondered: was this Jesus' bar mitzvah? Arch O. LaTalkTCF 06:19, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it was not his bar mitzvah.Stealthisaccount 00:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Wonders

message: I wonder if the idea of a boy being Bar Mitzvah predated its period of first record (in the Talmudic era), in some form or other. The Oral Law consisted of oral customs handed down from one generation to the next, and the consideration of a person as being a "Bar Mitzvah" may have merely been set in print in the Talmudic era after numerous generations of Jewish boys had grown up with intensive scriptural education around the younger teenage years. I suspect that the term "Bar Mitzvah" may have started as a neologism for an older status of age for a Jewish child. Of course, all this is speculation; thus it is on the talk page and not in the article.  —  Rickyrab | Talk 21:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thus, it would not have been unusual for people to go about teaching older children and young adults (like Jesus) Torah, and the more intelligent children (again, like Jesus) might've been interested in learning and talking with experts (such as rabbis and whatever served as the equivalent of a rabbi among the Sadduccees). As for Jesus being found in the Temple, that must've taken some time and effort. The Temple area and associated plaza was and is a big place, and it was at its grandest in the Herodian era, when Jesus was alive (and shortly after).  —  Rickyrab | Talk 21:07, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Speculation

message: Although Jesus did not have a Bar Mitzvah, since they did not exist at the time, I believe the Jewish customs concerning "Coming Of Age" should be mentioned as pertaining to what happened in first century Jewish culture. And the fact this incident has been consistently compared to the Bar Mitzvah tradition maby should get its own "Jewish Coming of Age in the first century" themed sub-section. Colliric (talk) 16:28, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe this connection is primarily a non-Jewish fantasy. If there was some 1st century tradition, related to bar mitzvah or otherwise, which had some sort of legal/theological testing for boys or young men proctored by Jewish scholars/scribes or priests then there might be some precedent for making this connection. That I have never heard anything like this, let alone the bar mitzvah itself ascribed to Jesus lifetime is not to say it unequivocally cannot be the case, but can you provide at least some sort of precedent?  (If anything, I think the "sub-section"ing should be the other way around. This article would be included or linked to within a Jewish coming of age article.) Jyg (talk) 03:43, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bar Mitzvah 

message: This question can be heard more than one way.  I am not intending to raise the question of whether or not a historical Jesus actually had such an experience in the Temple. That would lead to a debate about the historicity of Jesus himself, which I think is unhelpful in this context. My question is one of the historicity of the context and details of the story, particularly with the details of the pilgrimage during the Passover; traveling in groups (I could certainly see the entire Jewish population of Nazareth traveling together); a child free to roam about the traveling group; scholars, scribes, priests or rabbi's actually entertaining questions from a child; others?  Jyg (talk) 21:54, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historicity?