More About That Episode in the Temple

As to the scene in the Temple [when young Jesus was found with the teachers], the amazement probably did not spread much beyond the group actually present: it would have been a nine days' wonder for a handful of people. Nazareth, one imagines, never heard of it. The boy's schoolteacher would have been mildly surprised if some such account as Luke gives had reached him, and would certainly have dismissed it as exaggerated.

Of one thing we can be fairly sure -- the boy never staged a repetition of the incident in school. If he had, the master would probably have decided that it was high time to flog some humility into him, a masters have done to brilliant boys in all ages. But Jesus did nothing so spectacular, in school or out of it. We cannot remind ourselves too often how startled his townspeople were when his public mission began. It is clear that the thirty years in Nazareth contained nothing to prepare them either for his miracles or for the incomparable power of his mind.

To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed