When Christ said “Let the little children come to me and do not prevent them because the kingdom of heaven is for those who are like them”
Does this mean small children between 0 and 7 years old? or children of all ages?
According to Jewish tradition, thirteen marks the dividing line between child and adult–hence the statement “Today I am a man” that’s in the bar mitzvah ritual speech.
Since he was Jewish it is assumed before their Bar or Bat Mitzvah, so that would be 12 or 13.
I expect that, if Jesus wanted to be more specific, he would have been. He’s clearly stating a teaching, something he wants people to do. If the exact ages were relevant, he’d need to say them.
The full context of the statement seems to be that his disciples were not letting children come up to him, thinking they would bother him. He’s saying that they don’t. And then he uses the absolute faith of a child as an illustration to make a point.
Sure, he’s probably not talking about people over age 13, as those were considered adults in his day. But, other than that, there isn’t really an upper age limit. He would have said so if he wanted one.
There’s children, and then there’s children. I don’t think Jesus means a strict age cut-off; I think he generally just means little kids without any more additional scrutiny intended. The point being that the disciples thought the kids were being a nuisance, as BigT points out.
I expect that, if whoever wrote that story wanted to be more specific, he would have been. But it is not evident to me that any of the things Jesus is supposed to have said and done were transmitted in a reliable way. Taking all the things the Bible says as literally and absolutely true is one of the main problems with exegesis.
Such isn’t really relevant to the question, though. The Jesus described in the writing could be the real deal or some character in a story, but it would still make sense to ask what he actually meant. If someone asked “What did Darth Vader mean by telling Luke he was his father?” you could still answer that question even though Darth Vader isn’t real.
While my answer necessarily includes some subjectivity, I tried to stay in the realm of literary analysis instead of actually getting into religion.
Oh, and exegesis necessarily does this as well. It is even practiced by Christians who do not assume the Bible is literally true. The whole entire concept is that it looks at the text as a text. You can even do it with entirely fictional works.
I see what you mean, OK. Accepted. So this is not about religion, fine with me.
It appears He was talking about babies as apparently those where the only children who seem to be hindered:
Luke 18:15 People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place >his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. >16 But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children >come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs >to such as these. 17 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the >kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
This is much in line with what Jesus said about needing to be born again and Paul comparing those in church to infants needing milk.
Just FTR, a 13th birthday as a demarcation for adulthood did not exactly exist in the first century. There’s lots of discussion in the Talmud about how to tell if someone is an adult by counting the number of whiskers on his chin.
People didn’t keep track of birthdays of people who were not born into royal or priestly families back them, and there was not a celebration of a bar mitzvah that is comparable to what we see now. The whole of rabbinical Judaism, with Torah readings, blessings, and soforth, is post-Temple, post-diaspora.
And, at any rate, even when the Talmud establishes 13 as an age for becoming an adult, when someone’s age is known, that was just the age for being responsible for commandments. It is not the age for marriage-- that’s a few years older, and the age for studying kabbalah is even older-- however, the age for studying Torah is significantly younger.
Did Judaism ever use the age test of reaching over the top of your head to touch the opposite ear? Even today, in cultures where age isn’t tracked precisely, that’s often used to determine when a child is old enough to start school.
I have no idea, and I don’t own a Talmud concordance, but there’s probably one online somewhere.
Do you apply that same assumption of unreliability to ancient secular writings?
I’m no biblical scholar, but I’m wondering if the writer here is implying that the children have not yet internalized the biases and old hatreds that older folks have.
Yes, of course. I particularly like the Greeks, and am very conscious of the fact that only fragments remain of some of the most interesting works (Heraklit, say for instance) and that we only have some hearsay second hand accounts of his ideas, often passed on by his enemies, who do not cite him favourably. And I think it is fascinating that despite the lack of real text to base one’s conjectures on there have been endless disputes about some minutiae. Same applies to Vedic texts, Buddha, ancient Romans, Kelts, Viking texts… One could fill whole weekends debating this, but if you want to go into the details we should perhaps open a new thread before someone accuses us on hijacking this one.
The most common understanding is it’s a reference to uncorrupted, open-hearted receiving of the message; and more literally, that even the very young should be taught it.
The different translators varyingly use “little children”, “infants” or “babies” for the passage in Matthew 19:13-15, Mark 10:13-16, and Luke 18:15-16 – it seems the implication is that it is indeed the very young.
Catholicism and many of its spinoff churches long held that about age 7 was the age at which a child could start telling right from wrong, and thus be eligible to receive the sacraments that require the person to participate consciously. This was not a scriptural but a traditional teaching, though.
About age 6 was when a child began studying Torah, which was when a child “knew right from wrong” (cf. Isaiah, 7:16; something will happen before a particular child, very soon to be conceived, knows to refuse evil, so therefore, in about six or seven years).
A boy’s formal learning currently begins at three, though, which is when he also gets his first haircut, and begins wearing a kippah and tzitzit.
Because Hebrew has words that indicate a general age range when used to refer to young people, more or less like infants, toddlers, children, youth, I would assume Aramaic does as well. But Hebrew also has some words that are less definite, like “kids,” that can mean different things depending on context. “Kids” is appropriate for anyone old enough to walk up through about mid-20s, with the right context. “College kids” sounds fine. “College children” doesn’t. So again, I assume that Aramaic also makes such distinctions.
I don’t know whether Greek does, but I would think it probably does.
That said, I don’t know anything about the original wording of the text.
FWIW, though, there’s not anything really original or startling in the gospels. A lot of it is rehash from the commentary of Hillel, and some of it is just platitudes that exist in a lot of cultures that don’t know anything about Jesus in particular. The so-called “Golden Rule” is in Hillel, and it in ancient Eastern philosophy.
It wouldn’t shock me if there were several different itinerant preachers in first century Judah with similar kinds of messages, who were probably easily confused, one for the other.