Luke Chapter 2 verse 46 Holy Bible
And it came to pass, after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them, and asking them questions:
read chapter 2 in ASV
And after three days they came across him in the Temple, seated among the wise men, giving ear to their words and putting questions to them.
read chapter 2 in BBE
And it came to pass, after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers and hearing them and asking them questions.
read chapter 2 in DARBY
And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.
read chapter 2 in KJV
read chapter 2 in WBT
It happened after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions.
read chapter 2 in WEB
And it came to pass, after three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them and questioning them,
read chapter 2 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 46. - And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple. According to the common way of reckoning among the Hebrews, this expression, "after three days," probably means "on the third day." One day was consumed in the usual short pilgrim-journey. His absence at first would excite no attention; on the second, as they missed him still, they sought him in the various pilgrim-companies; and on the day following they found him in the temple courts, with the doctors of the Law. Sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. In the temple enclosure, says the Talmud, there were three synagogues - one at the gate of the court of the Gentiles, another at the entrance of the court of the Israelites, a third in the south-east part of the inner court: it was in these that the rabbis expounded the Law. Among the famous doctors, or rabbis, then living and teaching in Jerusalem, were the famous Hillel, then very aged, verging, we are told, on his hundredth year; his almost equally illustrious rival, Shammai; Gamaliel, the master of Saul of Tarsus; Jonathan, the compiler of the Chaldee Paraphrase of the sacred books; Simeon, the son and successor of Hillel; Nicodemus, who, some years afterwards, came to Jesus by night, and, when the end was come, reverently assisted in laying the King's Son with all honor in his tomb in Joseph of Arimathaea's garden. We may, with great probability, assume that amongst those "doctors" whom the Boy questioned at that Passover Feast, some if not all of these well-known men were sitting. The apocryphal Gospels, as usual, profess to give us details where the true story is reverently silent. The 'Gospel of Thomas' (second century), for instance, tells us that Jesus, when on the road to Nazareth, returned of his own accord to Jerusalem, and amazed the rabbis of the temple by his solution of the hardest and most difficult questions of the Law and the prophets. In an Arabic Gospel of somewhat later date than that of Thomas, we find the Boy even teaching the astronomers the secrets of their own difficult study. Probably Stier's simple words approach the nearest to the truth here, when he suggests that his questions were "the pure questions of innocence and of truth, which keenly and deeply penetrated into the confused errors of the rabbinical teaching."
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(46) Sitting in the midst of the doctors.--A chamber of the Temple was set apart as a kind of open free school. The "doctors" or teachers--famous "doctors of the Law" (Acts 5:34)--sat "in Moses' seat;" the older students on a low bench; the younger on the ground, literally "at the feet" of their instructor. The relation between master and scholar was often one of affectionate reverence and sympathy, and was expressed by one of the famous scribes in a saying worth remembering, "I have learnt much from the Rabbis, my teachers; I have learnt more from the Rabbis, my colleagues; but from my scholars I have learnt most of all." It is interesting to think that among the doctors then present may have been the venerable Hillel, then verging upon his hundredth year; his son and successor, Simeon; his grandson, the then youthful Gamaliel; Jonathan, the writer of the Chaldee Targum or Paraphrase of the Sacred Books; and Shammai, the rival of Hillel, who "bound" where the latter "loosed."Both hearing them, and asking them questions.--The method of teaching was, we see, essentially and reciprocally catechetical. The kind of questions current in the schools would include such as, What is the great commandment of the Law? What may or may not be done on the Sabbath? How is such a precept to be paraphrased; what is its true meaning? As the Targum of Jonathan included the books of Joshua, Judges 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets, the questions may probably have turned also on the meaning of prophecies, the expectations of the Christ, and the like. The legends of the Apocryphal Gospels make the wisdom of the child Jesus take a wide range over astronomy and other sciences.
