Survival and Success of an Apocryphal Childhood of Jesus

Reception of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Middle Ages

Marijana Vukovic

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9783110752854
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This book explores the transformations of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Middle Ages. It also connects the different representations of children, childhood, everyday- and family life in the distinct textual versions to the ancient and medieval settings in which they appear. The text survived and influenced ideas and mentalities that shaped medieval minds in the East and the West, but also enhanced anti-Jewish sentiments.

Chapter 1 New Philology and Early Christian Text

The subject of this book is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a second-century apocryphal Christian story about the childhood of Jesus.¹ Its focal point is the boyhood of the foremost figure in Christianity: Jesus. It is the only exhaustive account of Jesus’ childhood in Christian literature, although it does not present historically based details of Jesus’ childhood.² Understanding the person and the nature of Christ was a central theological preoccupation of the early Christian period.³ However, in the earliest days of Christianity, not the birth and childhood but primarily Jesus’ death and resurrection were of theological interest.⁴ The attentiveness to Jesus’ childhood emerged soon after. Scholars mostly agree that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was constructed to supplement the gaps in the life of Jesus described in the canonical Gospels.⁵ The curiosity about Jesus’ birth and infancy is attested already in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels. However, unlike the synoptic Gospels, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas goes further than the events immediately after Jesus’ birth and sequences the episodes of Jesus’ life from the age of five until he was twelve, which makes it a unique account of this period of Jesus’ life in early Christian literature.⁶

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas furnishes an extraordinary depiction of the young Jesus. In the words of Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, “this is not the loving Savior of the canonical tradition.”⁷ Jesus’ childhood is depicted as a sequence of his startling, miraculous and supernatural actions. Jesus interacts with other people, children, and his parents, Mary and Joseph. A particular emphasis is placed on the relationship with his father. Joseph carries out disciplinary measures towards Jesus, while Mary appears in a few episodes, only to be worried or proud. Jesus plays with children in different ways; however, he takes revenge and punishes those who are unfair and in discord with him. Jesus performs spectacular miracles, molding sparrows out of clay (on a Sabbath) and making them come alive. By throwing a curse, he kills other children and blinds adults. Sometimes, running into Jesus and tearing his shoulder is a sufficient reason for killing a person. However, Jesus can also restore the damage done to those he has cursed: he brings them back to life. Jesus attends school three times; two of these attempts fail because he kills his teachers for being unfair to him.

Because of his frivolous behavior, he attracts the community’s anger. They usually complain to his father, Joseph. In conversation with other people, including his father, Jesus has a serious tone, and the validity of his answers equals those of adults. He makes a teacher look ridiculous by correcting him in the matters of learning. He demonstrates an array of unusual characteristics, such as anger, annoyance, irritation, urge for revenge, lack of sympathy, and he kindles fear in other people.

At the age of twelve, Jesus gets lost in Jerusalem, as in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2). After three days, his parents find him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions. Those who listen to Jesus are amazed at how he questions the elders and explains the critical matters of faith and the prophets’ puzzles and parables. It is, in brief, what the story of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas tells us.

Thomas’ Infancy Gospel was most likely composed in a Greek-speaking context of the second century CE by an anonymous author.⁸ The brief testimony of Irenaeus of Lyons does not tell us how the text looked like in the second century (Irenaeus, Against Heresies (1.20.1)), as Irenaeus only refers to the episode of Jesus and the teacher. Some scholars argue that it must have been composed earlier than 185 CE, possibly even around 125 CE.⁹ Sharon Betsworth and Tony Burke suggest that its provenance is Syrian Antioch or Asia Minor,¹⁰ while Frédéric Amsler argues for a fourth-century Antiochian origin.¹¹ Ludwig Conrady and Arnold Meyer argue for an Egyptian origin.¹²

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was copied in a significant number of medieval manuscripts.¹³ The text swiftly crossed linguistic and cultural borders and got transmitted in many realms of the Christian world and beyond. Like other early Christian writings, it was conveyed to different communities and disseminated in many languages in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Greek, Syriac, Latin, Georgian, Irish, Slavonic, Ethiopic, Arabic, and others. The survival of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel in so many languages testifies to the interest in the text.

However, scholarly opinions disagree regarding the reputation of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Middle Ages. Sever Voicu argues that its transmission was not something that would qualify as a success,¹⁴ while Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše assert that it was one of the most famous early Christian texts down through the ages, without a doubt.¹⁵ An astonishing number of copies in late antique and medieval languages testify to its popularity. Philip Jenkins likewise holds that Thomas’ Infancy Gospel was for some 1500 years one of the most popular Christian writings.¹⁶

During the transmission, the text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the manuscripts was fluid. It has displayed a great deal of textual instability across time and became a multi-variant text. Orality also played a role and influenced the text; possibly, its portions were orally transmitted for a while.¹⁷ Scholars have already worked on categorizing its many textual variants in several languages.¹⁸

Textual variations have not been characteristic of all types of literature that appeared in medieval manuscripts. In the words of Jane Baun, “when it comes to the writings of Plato, the Apostle Paul, or church fathers, completely different attitudes were held by medieval copyists.”¹⁹ Their task was to produce a precise duplicate of the original. However, textual variations were quite commonly present in the literature of anonymous authorship. The lack of an apparent authority behind Thomas’ Infancy Gospel may have contributed to its extensive variations.²⁰

The “apocryphal” characterization of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may have caused an additional entanglement.²¹ Namely, as early as in the second century, when the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appeared, some church fathers warned against its contents.²² The majority of their critical remarks about Thomas’ Infancy Gospel’s apocryphal nature refer to the miracles performed by the child Jesus. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus’ first miracle occurred in Cana after his baptism (2.11). Many early Christian and medieval writers used this argument to assert Thomas’ Infancy Gospel’s apocryphal features. They rejected the miracles of the child Jesus and recommended that one should avoid reading this text.

Irenaeus of Lyons (180 CE) first criticized the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, because “Jesus as a child could not know the unknown.”²³ Irenaeus characterized this story as “apocryphal and...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1  New Philology and Early Christian Text
• Chapter 2  Codex and Genre of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
• Chapter 3  The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as Text: Transformations of Structure
• Chapter 4  Childhood, Family and Everyday Life in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
• Chapter 5  Jesus’ Childhood in East and West
• Appendix The Edition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Latin, Greek, and Church Slavonic manuscripts used in this book
• Bibliography
• Index