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The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a non-canonical text that was part of a popular genre, aretalogy, of the 2nd and 3rd centuries— a miracle literature of Infancy gospels that was both entertaining and inspirational, written to satisfy a hunger for more miraculous and anecdotal stories of the childhood of Jesus than the Gospel of Luke provided. Later references by Hippolytus and Origen to a Gospel of Thomas are more likely to be referring to this Infancy Gospel than to the wholly different Gospel of Thomas with which it is sometimes confused. Some of the episodes from the Infancy Gospel were topics of mediaeval art. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... A biblical canon is a list of Biblical books which establishes the set of books which are considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular Jewish or Christian community. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Several surviving infancy gospels give an idea of the miracle literature that was created in the early Christian church to satisfy the hunger of early Christians for more detail about the early life of their Savior. ... This article is about Jesus of Nazareth. ... The Gospel of Luke (literally, according to Luke; Greek, Κατά Λουκαν, Kata Loukan) is a synoptic Gospel, and the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament. ... Statue of Hippolytus, 3rd century. ... Origen Origen (Greek: ÅŒrigénÄ“s, 185–ca. ... The Gospel of Thomas (full name The Gospel According to Thomas (in Coptic, p. ...

Author

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is, like many such texts, a pseudepigraphical work, for it claims within itself to have been written by "Thomas the Israelite" (in a medieval Latin version). The biblical Thomas (or Judas Thomas, Didymos Judas Thomas, etc.) is very unlikely to have had anything to do with the text. Whoever its initial author was, he seems not to have known much of Jewish life besides what he could learn from the Gospel of Luke, which the text seems to refer to directly in ch. 19; Sabbath and Passover observances are mentioned. Pseudepigrapha (Greek pseudos = false, epi = after, later and grapha = writing (or writings), latterly or falsely attributed, or down right forged works, describes texts whose claimed authorship is unfounded in actuality. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Jude Thomas. ... The Gospel of Luke (literally, according to Luke; Greek, Κατά Λουκαν, Kata Loukan) is a synoptic Gospel, and the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament. ... For other uses, see Sabbath. ... This article is about the Jewish holiday. ...

Dating

The first known probable quotation from its text is from Irenaeus of Lyon, ca 185, which sets a latest possible date of authorship. The earliest possible date is in the 80s AD, when Luke's gospel was probably composed, from which the author of the Infancy Gospel borrowed the story of Jesus in the temple at age twelve (see Infancy 19:1-12 and Luke 2:41-52). Scholars generally agree on a date in the mid- to late-second century AD, since there are two second century documents, the Epistula Apostolorum and Irenaeus' Adversus haereses, which refer to a story of Jesus' tutor telling him, "Say alpha," and him replying, "First tell me what beta is." It is generally agreed that there was at least some period of oral transmission of the text, either wholly or as several different stories before it was first redacted and transcribed, and it is thus entirely possible that both of these texts and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas all refer to the oral versions of this story. Saint Irenaeus (Greek: Ειρηναίος), (b. ... The Epistula Apostolorum (Latin for Letter of the Apostles) is a work from the New Testament apocrypha. ... On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis, commonly called Against Heresies (Latin: Adversus haereses), is a five volume work written by St. ...

Manuscript tradition

Scholars disagree whether the original language of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was Greek or Syriac., based on the finding or lack of badly-translated Greek or Syriac vocabulary or idiom. The few surviving Greek manuscripts provide no clues in themselves, for none of them date before the 13th century (James), while the earliest authorities, according to the editor and translator, Montague Rhodes James, are a much abbreviated 6th century Syriac version, and a Latin palimpsest at Vienna of the 5th or 6th century, which has never been deciphered in full. There is such an unanalysed welter of manuscripts, translations, shortened versions, alternates and parallels, that James found that they have prevented an easy accounting of which text is which. This number of texts and versions reflect the work's widespread popularity into the High Middle Ages. Montague Rhodes James, (August 1, 1862, Goodnestone Parsonage, Kent, England –June 12, 1936). ... A palimpsest is a manuscript page, scroll, or book that has been written on, scraped off, and used again. ...

Content

The text describes the life of the child Jesus, with fanciful, and sometimes malevolent, supernatural events, comparable to the trickster nature of the god-child in many a Greek myth. One of the episodes involves Jesus making clay birds, which he then proceeds to bring to life, an act also attributed to Jesus in Qur'an 5:110. In another episode, a child disperses water that Jesus has collected, Jesus then curses him, which causes the child's body to wither into a corpse, found in the Greek text A, and Latin versions. The Greek text B doesn't mention Jesus cursing the boy, and simply says that the child "went on, and after a little he fell and gave up the ghost," (M.R. James translation). Another child dies when Jesus curses him when he apparently accidentally bumps into him. In the latter case, there are three differing versions recorded the Greek Text A, Greek Text B, and the Latin text. Instead of bumping into Jesus in A, B records that the child throws a stone at Jesus, while the last says the boy punched him. For other uses, see Trickster (disambiguation). ... The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the Ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. ... The Qur’ān [1] (Arabic: , literally the recitation; also sometimes transliterated as Quran, Koran, or Al-Quran) is the central religious text of Islam. ...

When Joseph and Mary's neighbors complain, they are miraculously struck blind by Jesus. Jesus then starts receiving lessons, but arrogantly tries to teach the teacher instead, upsetting the teacher who suspects supernatural origins. Jesus is amused by this suspicion, which he confirms, and revokes all his earlier apparent cruelty. Subsequently he resurrects a friend who is killed when he falls from a roof, and another who cuts his foot with an axe. This article is about the visual condition. ...

After various other demonstrations of supernatural ability, new teachers try to teach Jesus, but he proceeds to explain the law to them instead. There are another set of miracles in which Jesus heals his brother who is bitten by a snake, and two others who have died from different causes. Finally, the text recounts the episode in Luke in which Jesus, aged twelve, teaches in the temple.

Although the miracles seem quite randomly inserted into the text, there are in fact 3 miracles before, and 3 after, each of the sets of lessons. The structure of the story is essentially:

• Bringing life to a dried fish (this is only present in later texts)
• (First group)
  • 3 Miracles - Breathes life into (12) birds fashioned from clay, curses a boy, who then becomes a corpse (not present in Greek B), curses a boy who falls dead and his parents become blind
  • Attempt to teach Jesus which fails, with Jesus doing the teaching
  • 3 Miracles - Reverses his earlier acts, resurrects a friend who fell from a roof, heals a man who chopped his foot with an axe
• (Second group)
  • 3 Miracles - Carries water on cloth, produces a feast from a single grain, stretches a beam of wood to help his father finish constructing a bed
  • Attempts to teach Jesus which fails, with Jesus doing the teaching
  • 3 Miracles - Heals James from snake poison, resurrects a child who died of illness, resurrects a man who died in a construction accident
• Incident in the temple paralleling Luke

Saint James the Just (יעקב Holder of the heel; supplanter; Standard Hebrew Yaʿaqov, Tiberian Hebrew Yaʿăqōḇ, Greek Iάκωβος), also called James Adelphotheos, James, 1st Bishop of Jerusalem, or James, the Brother of the Lord[1] and sometimes identified with James the Less, (died AD 62) was an important figure...

Injilu 't Tufuliyyah

An Arabic text, Injilu 't Tufuliyyah or the Arabic Infancy Gospel translated from a Coptic original gives some parallels to the episodes, "recorded in the book of Josephus the Chief Priest, who was in the time of Christ": Jesus speaking from the cradle and the episode of the swallows made of clay are also found in the Qur'an. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A fanciful representation of Flavius Josephus, in an engraving in William Whistons translation of his works Josephus (37 – sometime after 100 CE),[1] who became known, in his capacity as a Roman citizen, as Titus Flavius Josephus,[2] was a 1st-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and... The Qur’ān [1] (Arabic: , literally the recitation; also sometimes transliterated as Quran, Koran, or Al-Quran) is the central religious text of Islam. ...

However, Islamic apologists claim that the Gospel was translated into Arabic in the post-Islamic period due the difficulty that 16th century Europeans would have in translating early Arabic's defective script into Latin as well as the extreme rarity of written texts in Pre-Islamic Arabia.[1]. (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... A defective script is a script that does not represent all the phonemic distinctions of a language. ... Pre-Islamic Arabia, the history of Arabia before the rise of Islam in the 630s, is not known in great detail. ...

Further reading

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Infancy Gospel of Thomas

• Barnstone, Willis (ed.). The Other Bible, Harper Collins, 1984, pp.398–403. ISBN 0062500317

Image File history File links Wikisource-logo. ... The original Wikisource logo. ...

External links

• Early Christian Writings: Infancy Gospel of Thomas
• Whole Bible website: Infancy Gospel of Thomas
• Gnostic Society Library: Infancy Gospel of Thomas introduction and translations by M.R. James, 1924. From a medieval version in Latin.
• Gnostic Society Library: Infancy Gospel of Thomas introduction and translations by M.R. James, 1924.. From another version.
• Ante-Nicene Fathers vol VIII: Three versions, presented as "Gospel of Thomas"