An Interview with Joan Taylor, Author of Boy Jesus

Joan Taylor is Professor Emerita of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism, King's College London, and Honorary Professor in Biblical and Early Christian Studies, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne. Her recent books include The Essenes, the Scrolls and the Dead Sea, What Did Jesus Look Like?, and coauthor of Women Remembered: Jesus' Female Disciples.
 
ZA: You are considered a world authority on the history and literature of the first century CE. What early experiences formed you, leading to this lifelong passion?

Taylor: I grew up in a Christian family in which reading the Bible and daily prayer was part of my experience—a great way to draw children into the past. I also loved puzzles: give me a puzzle book and I was busy for hours! I even wrote my own puzzle books. So, when I became a young adult and I wanted to know more about the literature, history, and archaeology of the time of Jesus, I also realized that there was a lot of puzzling to be done to figure out how everything would fit together.

I travelled to Israel-Palestine and read studies of the Bible, Jesus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. As time went on, my reading became wider. I became particularly interested in the writings of a contemporary of Jesus in Egypt, Philo of Alexandria, the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, and other literature besides. Material culture also became a passion for me. I think we can know much more about the past by both bringing different knowledge areas together and reading carefully.

ZA: Why is it important to think about what Jesus was like as a boy? Talk about your approach and research journey for this topic.

Taylor: We commonly think of Jesus as establishing a loving community of disciples who saw each other as siblings (the church). But Jesus’s model was his own family. His family was actually highly esteemed in the Judaean churches of the first and second centuries. Jesus learnt what it meant to be a son, and a brother in relationship with this family. Family stories and identities are crucial in forming an idea about who we are as we grow up.

Also, I started to think about what Jesus would have had to deal with in terms of the difficult times he was born into. My mother grew up during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, and I grew up knowing about some very traumatic experiences she went through and terrible things that had been done. As I explored the history of Jesus’s family and the times he grew up in, it was clear that some truly horrific events would have impacted Jesus and his family,—more than just the ones recorded in Matthew.

ZA: Some scholars may object, saying that your book is simply an exercise in speculation. How would you respond?

Taylor: Historians will always try to probe and learn as much as possible from our texts, and often that requires close analysis and wider contextualization. The Gospels only give us very small glimpses into Jesus’s childhood and early family life, but it is possible to be forensic and tease out information, especially if we draw in more early Christian literature, historical context, and physical remains.

Many historians of Jesus have assumed that the infancy narratives in the Gospels are totally legendary, containing very little truth. But I am particularly interested in how family memories and retellings may have interacted, ending up with the accounts we have. I argue that Matthew’s story did originate with what Joseph told his family, and a version of this account was likely told to Jesus.

In other words, he grew up with family expectations, because he had an auspicious conception that accounted for his naming (‘Jesus’, Yeshua, was understood to mean ‘salvation’). I see Luke’s account as being written responsively to Matthew’s, but it also contains some important pieces of actuality that fit within the wider historical picture. So I see myself as trying to solve a puzzle by moving around the pieces that are still available to us.

“Taylor comes to judicious and fresh conclusions about Jesus’s Judean and Davidic heritage, his family, and his Galilean childhood, emphasizing the precarious and at times dangerous contexts in which Jesus grew up. Taylor’s work emerges from her wide-ranging knowledge of ancient Judaism and Christianity, coupled with exceptional historical facility and a disciplined historical imagination.” 
—JEANNINE K. BROWN, Professor of New Testament, Bethel Seminary

This interview was originally published in the Spring 2025 Zondervan Academic Catalog. View our most recent catalog at ZondervanAcademic.com/ZACatalog.