Please don't get your tunic in a swaddle over literary first person tenses (read the "What the Bejeezus Are You Doing?" blog)
ABOUT ME
I was born in a town called Bethlehem in the Roman province of Judaea. We didn't reckon time the same way you do now, but I was born somewhere around 7 to 3 B.C.E. during the Spring while shepherds tended their flocks by night. They only do that in your months of March and April, the time when little lambs are being born. Shepherds came to see me the night I was born, and about a week or so later, some priestly scholars from Persia showed up. There had been a bright star in the sky for a few weeks before my birthday and for a short while afterward: these educated Magi said it was a sign, and they had found me because of it.
My parents, Maryam and Youssef (Mary and Joseph), were surprised to hear that, because they believed the assuring light was from God to them about private revelations they had experienced prior to my birth about me. Astronomical records from China show what you now call a "supernova" was visible for 70 days, including all of March and all of April in 7 B.C.E., so I think that helps pinpoint when I was born.
My father, Joseph, was in construction. You may have come to hear that we were carpenters, but really, there isn't much wood for building in Judaea: most construction is made from stone or mud bricks. We were actually stone cutters, and I was also talented in creative stone work.
We were forced to spend a number of my early years in Egypt, but there was work there for stone masons and artists. There was also an impressive intellectual community made up of people from around the world, including people like the Magi who had visited when I was born. So my earliest years were quite rich and exposed me to many peoples and ideas, under the guidance of my parents who had a deeply personal relationship with God. When we returned to Judaea, my parents had already brought a few of my seven brothers and sisters into the world.
Moral, technical, and academic learning was important to my parents. Even though we were not rich, living in what you would consider a "blue collar" or lower class working town called Nazareth in the region of first century Judaea called The Galilee, they continued to give me the best education and experience they could; and as the oldest son, it was also my responsibility to care for and share learning with my siblings. I went to work at an early age with my father, and we were successful enough to be able to have our own shop in Nazareth and not have to be itinerant workers.
But we did travel regularly to visit friends and family during the various holidays. A very bright and sensitive child, and deeply passionate in my beliefs and my love of God, I made quite an impression on the Pharisees (educated elite class of Jews) in Jerusalem where we spent the Passover Holiday around my 12th birthday. I would make a bigger impression on them about 20 years later, but I had my private life to live before I was called to my Greater Purpose. I knew from the start that I had one, as did my mother and father, but God is tender and thoughtful, as well as unimaginably powerful, and allowed me to be just a man for as long as I needed to be.
In the fullness of time, and after I had spent years living and experiencing all the joys and sorrows, loves and losses, successes and disappointments that infuse a rich life and feed and strengthen the soul, I finally answered the Lord's call to my service.
I may write more in the days to come...
...but I do want to say that most images of me reflect the way people looked at the time they created the work, not what a first century C.E. man who lived around the Mediterranean looked like. As I say to others, you have to understand that it's not what is on the outside that matters so much as what is on the inside.
