Chapter 1 — The Custom of Examining Children in the Temple at Jerusalem

DTT.01_001,01 It was the custom and established practice throughout the Jewish realm that parents had to bring their children to Jerusalem once they had completed their twelfth year. There, in the Temple, the elders, Pharisees and scribes questioned them about what they had learnt by that age, especially about God and the prophets.

DTT.01_001,02 A small fee had to be paid for the examination. Those who had been examined could, if they wished, obtain a certificate of proficiency by paying another small fee. Children who had excelled in every respect could also be admitted to the Temple schools and might one day become servants of the Temple.

DTT.01_001,03 If the parents could prove that they were descended from the tribe of Levi, their children were readily admitted to the Temple schools. If they could not prove it, admission was harder, and they had to buy their way into the tribe of Levi, as it were, and make a substantial offering to the Temple.

DTT.01_001,04 Daughters were exempt from this examination unless, at their parents’ urging, they chose to take it too in order to be more pleasing to God. In that case the elder women of the Temple examined them carefully in separate quarters, and the girls also received a certificate of the knowledge and skills they had acquired by then. Such girls could later become wives of priests and Levites.

DTT.01_001,05 The boys’ examinations were brief, and the girls’ were briefer still. A few principal questions had been fixed once and for all, and every Jew had long known them by heart.

DTT.01_001,06 The answers to these familiar questions were drilled into the children until they could recite them fluently. The examiner had scarcely finished asking a question before the boy being examined had his answer ready.

DTT.01_001,07 No candidate was asked more than ten questions, so it is easy to see why a boy’s examination hardly ever lasted more than a minute. If he answered the first few questions very well and without hesitation, he was usually excused the rest.

DTT.01_001,08 After this brief examination, the boy was given a small slip. He and his parents had to present it at the same counter where he had paid the examination fee. If he wanted the Temple to issue a certificate on the strength of the slip, he had to pay another small fee when he presented it. Children of poor parents had to bring a signum paupertatis (a certificate of poverty) to be admitted to the examination.

DTT.01_001,09 The examinations were held either at Passover or at the Feast of Tabernacles and usually lasted five or six days. A few days before they began in the Temple, attendants were sent to the inns to find out roughly how many candidates were there.

DTT.01_001,10 Anyone who wished to register in advance could pay a small fee and thereby be examined sooner. Those who paid no fee usually had to go last. The examiners took very little trouble over them, and certificates were generally never issued. They might be promised a certificate later, but usually nothing came of it.

DTT.01_001,11 Sometimes boys of considerable intelligence and talent put questions of their own to the examiners and asked for explanations of this or that passage in the prophets. On such occasions the examiners generally looked vexed and annoyed, for they were seldom better versed in Scripture and the prophets than the poorly equipped teachers of the alphabet in our own day. They knew only as much as they needed to ask about. Beyond that, they were generally in the dark.

DTT.01_001,12 Some elders and scribes also sat in on the examinations, rather like members of an examining board. They did not examine the children themselves, but merely listened to what was being asked. Only in the exceptional case just described, if it seemed worth their trouble, did they intervene. They would begin by rebuking the boy for his foolish presumption in daring to put his examiners in an awkward position and waste their time.

DTT.01_001,13 If the boy was not easily intimidated and persisted in his purpose and his request, he was set aside to wait, more for the sake of appearances before the people than for the sake of any deeper truth. He had to wait until a certain hour in the evening for an explanation of such probing questions, and only then was he given a separate hearing.

DTT.01_001,14 When the appointed hour came, boys like these were always brought out of their hiding place with some reluctance and made to repeat the questions they had asked earlier. One of the elders or scribes would usually give the questioner a highly mystical and as confused an answer as possible, from which the boy clearly learnt nothing. The people beat their breasts and, foolish, mute, deaf and blind, marvelled deeply at the unfathomable depths of the Spirit of God as revealed through the mouth of an elder or scribe. In the end they reproached the boy for his rash impertinence.