THE CARPENTER'S SON

by Rosemary Haughton ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1967

In what kind of world did Jesus of Nazareth grow up? ... How did this background affect a boy of the kind we meet in manhood in the Gospel accounts?"" the author asks himself. Yeshua is a real little boy who works, plays and grows up in Nazareth with his cousins, distinguished from his companions only by an extraordinarily sweet nature. Like the others of his village, he expects the Messiah to arrive at any moment, and has not foreknowledge of his own identity. As he grows older, his thoughts often wander to the suffering of the weak or to communication with God, but he is brought back from these preoccupations by a word to the more ordinary concerns of his family. Always a kind and sensitive boy, he has the first intimation of his Call when his cousin Yoseph slaps him and, as he later recalls, ""I carried it, in myself--the evil in him."" There is another sort of revelation at his Coming of Age, when he recites the words of the prayer ""The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,"" but immediately afterward he is swept up in the party given in his honor. Only in the last scene does the author draw upon the Gospel; even then the natural tone of the book is preserved: after uttering immortal words from the New Testament, the 13-year-old Yeshua goes home with his mother and father. The characterization of Yeshua and his family is convincing, the description of life in Gospel times is vivid, and the absence of both sentimentality and worked-up religiosity is most refreshing.

Pub Date: March 1, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1967

Categories: FICTION