Infancy Gospel of Thomas

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a non-canonical Christian text that was part of a popular genre 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.

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). An historical 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 anything of Jewish life except for the Passover observance, and certainly had a completed Gospel of Luke to refer to.

Dating

The text cannot be precisely dated and the range of possible dates is extremely large. The latest possible date is that of the first manuscript, sometime in the 6th century AD. Few scholars accept a date near this end of the range. The earliest possible date is in the 80s AD, as that is when Luke's gospel was composed, from which the author of the Infancy Gospel borrowed the story of Jesus in the temple at age 12 (see Infancy 19:1-12 and Luke 2:41-52). Scholars generally focus on this end of the range, and in particular on the mid- to late-second century AD, since there are two documents dated to then, 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." While this is fairly supportive of a second century dating, it is by no means definitive. 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 refer to the oral versions of this story.

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 not clues in themselves, for none of them date before the 13th century (James), while the earliest authorities, accordiung to M.R. 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 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.

Content

The text describes the life of the child Jesus, with fanciful supernatural events. One of the episodes involves Jesus making clay birds, which he then proceeds to bring to life, an act also attributed to Jesus in the Qur'an, thus indicating the text may have had substantial influence on Arabic tradition by the 7th century. In another episode, a child disperses water that Jesus has collected, so Jesus makes the child's body wither into a corpse, and another child is killed by Jesus when he accidentally bumps into him.

When Joseph and Mary's neighbours 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 cruelty. Subsequently he heals a friend who is killed when he falls from a roof, and another who cuts his foot with an axe.

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)

• 3 Miracles - Life into (12) clay birds, turning a boy into a corpse, striking a boy dead and his parents blind
• Attempt to teach Jesus which fails, with Jesus doing the teaching
• 3 Miracles - Reverse his earlier acts, resurrect friend who fell, heal man who chopped his foot with an axe

• 3 Miracles - Carry water on cloth, produce a feast from a single grain, stretch a beam of wood
• Attempt to teach Jesus which fails, with Jesus doing the teaching
• 3 Miracles - Heal James from snake poison, resurrect a child who died of illness, resurrect a man who died in a construction accident
• Incident in the temple from Luke

Injilu 't Tufuliyyah

An Arabic text, Injilu 't Tufuliyyah 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 found their way into the Qu'ran.

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.
• [http://www.gnosis.org/library/inftoml.htm 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"
• "Muhammad, the Qur'an, and Christian Sources": uses of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas