Infancy Gospel of Thomas

written on a papyrus from Roman Egypt, created around the 4th or 5th century At least some period of oral transmission of the source material is generally believed to have occurred, either wholly or as several different stories. Eventually it was transcribed, and over time redacted and adapted. The earliest evidence of the text comes from the late second century. Two 2nd-century documents, the Epistle of the Apostles (by an unknown author) and Against Heresies (by Irenaeus), refer to a story of Jesus's tutor telling him, "Say alpha," and Jesus replying, "First tell me what is beta, and I can tell you what alpha is." Irenaeus's work is dated to around 180 CE. Irenaeus did not give a name to the book he quoted from, but he condemned it as spurious and heretical. Further, Irenaeus was probably not condemning the Epistle of the Apostles, an anti-Gnostic work. An early form of the infancy gospel circulating would make sense for the era. In the fourth century, Epiphanius of Salamis's Panarion quotes Jesus's childhood miracles approvingly, while John Chrysostom condemns these stories of childhood miracles as false. ==Authorship==

(green) and the Greek-speaking East (red) The author of the gospel is unknown. The author was probably a gentile Christian, as the work displays no knowledge of Judaism. The author was educated and knew some rare words in an era when literacy was uncommon, but wrote in a style that was overall simple and readable. The geographic origin of the author is also unknown, leaving scholars with little more than guesses. Jan Bremmer weakly suggests Alexandria in Roman Egypt as plausible, but cautions that nothing can be said with certainty on the matter. The early versions of the work were anonymous. No author is indicated in the earliest surviving manuscripts (Latin, Syriac, Georgian, Ethiopic). The Latin version closes with an epilogue where the author claims to have been an eyewitness who witnessed these events personally, another claim that seems to have been added centuries after the original story's circulation. Two other later manuscripts claim authorship by some other figure: one Latin version by John the Evangelist, and one Greek version by James, brother of Jesus. ==Content==

held by the Biblioteca Ambrosiana; the story originates from the IGT.|alt=See caption The text describes the life of the child Jesus from the ages of five to twelve, with fanciful, and sometimes malevolent, supernatural events. He is presented as a precocious child who starts his education early. This summary uses the order in the Greek A recension. A five-year old Jesus is playing in the mud after rain near a river. He organizes the water into pools. With a single word, he miraculously cleanses the water. He then crafts 12 sparrows from the clay while playing with other children. A Jew, displeased with seeing children work on the Sabbath, reports this to Jesus's father Joseph. Jesus gives life to the sparrows and they fly off. Another boy, the son of Annas, breaks the pools Jesus made, letting their water drain out. Jesus pronounces a curse upon the boy, and he instantly withers. The parents ineffectively complain to Joseph. Later, another child either bumps into Jesus while running, throws a stone, or punches him (depending on the manuscript). ==Manuscripts and pre-modern translations==

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was written in the Koine Greek language, and was rapidly translated to Classical Latin and Syriac. Translations into other languages soon followed, including Armenian and Georgian. It proved a popular work, with a wide geographical reach. Translations spread from the Greek-speaking eastern Roman Empire far and wide: to the Latin-speaking Western half of the Empire; to Armenia and Georgia in the east; to Ireland in the north; to Ethiopia to the south. Peter Lambeck rediscovered the work in 1675, examining a manuscript held in Vienna. The IGT became available to a wider audience with the publication of Johann Albert Fabricius's 1703 collection of Christian apocrypha. Fabricius also divided the work into chapters and verses. Greek A is the most studied and well-known form in the modern era. Tischendorf based it on at least 2 manuscripts, and it is the longest Greek form. It consists of nineteen chapters. Scholars have updated this recension with other similar manuscripts, in particular for Tischendorf's chapter 6 where the manuscripts he consulted differed significantly from other manuscripts later found containing Greek A. A manuscript found by Tischendorf on a trip to Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in 1844 was used as a basis for Greek B. It is shorter (11 chapters) and differs from the A text in several parts. Some chapters are abbreviated, other entire chapters left out, and there are a few new lines. A Greek version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was found in Codex Sabaiticus 259, a manuscript created in 1089 or 1090 in Cyprus. Sabaiticus is a good match in its details to Irenaeus's 2nd-century quotation, and its form of the text is called Greek S. It includes new material that distinguishes it and the other surviving Greek versions from the shorter recensions. The scholarship of Tony Burke and Reidar Aasgaard in 2001–2010 identified this as more likely to be closer to the original form than the Greek A and Greek B manuscripts of Tischendorf, a stance that has been corroborated by other scholars of the text. It is unclear when exactly the work was translated into Ethiopic (Ge'ez). Some scholars suggest it was translated directly from Greek and fairly early, before the seventh century; others that it happened after the Early Muslim conquests and that the Ethiopic was translated from an Arabic or Syriac version that spread to Ethiopia. The surviving manuscripts are from later centuries, rendering the matter hard to say for sure. It is included as a chapter of larger collections of the miracles of Jesus. The translation into Church Slavonic was from Greek and the longer recensions. It appears to have probably been translated in medieval Bulgaria, most likely around the 10th or 11th centuries. From there, it spread to Serbia, Ukraine, and Russia. Compositions Just as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may have collected individual stories already in circulation in the 2nd century, the gospel was combined with other works as it spread in later eras. The Syriac version was used as a major source for the Arabic Infancy Gospel, which likely was translated into Arabic from Syriac in the 7th, 8th, or 9th century. The Armenian Infancy Gospel from the 7th century also uses the work as a source, while adding new material and including more details. The most influential was likely the Latin Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which combines the work with the Gospel of James and adds an introduction that claims pseudepigraphally the book was translated from a work of Matthew the Evangelist by Saint Jerome. It was popular throughout the Western church, and helped establish a number of common beliefs about the young Jesus. While early versions of Pseudo-Matthew from the 8th–10th centuries lack IGT material, many manuscripts from the 11th–15th centuries include it. In 2024, a Greek papyrus fragment from the fourth or fifth century was discovered, making this the new oldest surviving manuscript of the infancy gospel. The fragment largely matches the 11th century Codex Sabaiticus version, providing support for the theory that Sabaiticus is a good guide for the content of older Greek versions. ==Title==

The original manuscripts contain a variety of titles. Johann Albert Fabricius called the work ("Gospel of Thomas") in his 1703 collection, and Constantin von Tischendorf's influential 1853 collection of apocrypha spread the title "Gospel of Thomas" further, resulting in that being the standard title in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The manuscripts Fabricius and Tischendorf consulted included an attribution to "Thomas the Israelite". Additionally, the stories do not cover just the "infancy" of Jesus. Various scholars have been unhappy with the "Infancy Gospel of Thomas" title and have suggested alternative names that better describe the topic. Some titles include: • Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Inf. Gos. Thom.; IGT) • (Greek: "The accounts of Thomas the Israelite, the Philosopher, concerning the childhood of the Lord.") • (Latin: "Gospel of Thomas about the infancy of the Savior") • Childhood of Jesus (Infancy of Jesus; Paidika) • (Greek: "Childhood Deeds of our Lord") • (Greek: "The Great Childhood Deeds of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ") • (Syriac: "The Childhood of the Lord Jesus") ==Early Christian groups and ideologies==

Possible links with Gnosticism , a "sayings gospel" discovered in the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt. Many patristic references to the "Gospel of Thomas" were likely to this work, not the infancy gospel. It is now thought that Origen was referring to the Gnostic "Gospel of Thomas", not the infancy gospel which does not appear to have been known by the title of "Gospel of Thomas" in the classical era. On similar grounds, scholarship has shifted on the work's length. The Stichometry of Nicephorus indicated a higher line count for a "Gospel of Thomas" than appropriate for the infancy gospel, resulting in speculation that a longer form of the work that included Gnostic material was denounced, but that this material was removed in orthodox revisions and lost. For the same reasons as above, it is now thought that the stichometry could not have been referring to the infancy gospel at all. No expurgation of Gnostic content happened. More generally, Gnostics cited material shared with proto-orthodox Christians in writings discovered at the Nag Hammadi library, so Gnostics using a particular work does not necessarily imply the work originated from Gnosticism. Additionally, it is possible that Irenaeus rejected any work he considered deviant by associating it with Gnosticism, rendering him a weak source on exactly how tied this story was with Gnosticism. A few scholars such as Oscar Cullman still defended such a possible link after Gero's article. He writes that aspects of the work still seem to potentially fit within a Gnostic milieu, such as Jesus being a font of mystic wisdom from an early age. He cites the extended version of the dialogue between Jesus and his first teacher Zacchaeus in a Slavonic version as potentially representing an older and more Gnostic form of the text. Similar to the Gospel of John, several antagonists are introduced simply as "a Jew" or "the Jews". In Chapter 3, Jesus curses the child of "Annas the High Priest" with charged words. The line in Isaiah 11 prophesying that "A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots" was well-known in the era; the Book of Jeremiah calls Israel a "righteous branch." The story can be read as Jesus essentially revoking this analogy to a thriving tree, and condemning not just the lineage of one child, but of all Israel. Alternatively, Andries van Aarde and Sever Voicu have argued that the original version of the IGT may have come from authors who were Ebionites, a sect of Jewish Christians. Other scholars, including Tony Burke and J.R.C. Cousland, have been skeptical of such a connection, considering it more likely the author was a non-Jewish gentile Christian. A medieval Jewish work, the Toledot Yeshu, contains the story of Jesus animating the birds, although Jesus's age is unspecified in it. The Toledot includes the story of Jesus and the sparrows and does not deny it; it instead attributes it to magic rather than divine power. Others, such as Stephen Davis, have argued that the reverse is more likely true: that the Toledot Yeshu is evidence that Jews were familiar with the infancy gospel traditions, and adapted them. Christology debates J.R.C. Cousland has argued that the author displays a high Christology that emphasizes Jesus's divine nature over his human one, and this was consistent with stories current in Roman society that depicted gods as unpredictable and fickle, yet ultimately benevolent. The older forms of the work generally eschew theologically charged titles of Jesus such as "Messiah" and "Savior" after the first chapter's introduction, instead referring to him usually as "Jesus, the child" and variants. ==Relationship with other works==

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas includes some parallels with canonical gospel stories, in particular the Gospel of Luke. Most scholars do not think references to canonical gospels are extensive. However, they do exist. For example, Jesus stays quiet in parts of Pilate's trial, and young Jesus remains silent at the start of one of his confrontations with a teacher. Some of the miracles can be seen as "prefiguring" future gospel stories. Jesus playing on the Sabbath and being criticized for this is similar to adult Jesus healing on the Sabbath in the synoptic gospels, and his creating specifically 12 clay birds can be seen as a loose reference to the calling of the 12 disciples. The work can be seen to be similar thematically to some Biblical episodes, most clearly in "turn the tables" stories where the seemingly weaker side in a conflict miraculously comes out victorious anyway, with God's help. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of James were both popular sources on the young Jesus, despite the Church councils not including them in the New Testament canon. Jan N. Bremmer argues the Infancy Gospel of Thomas seems to have come first ( CE), while the Gospel of James seems to date a little later ( CE). The History of Joseph the Carpenter, a 4th- or 5th-century Egyptian text, combines the story of Jesus healing a boy from a snakebite with the story of Jesus resurrecting a child who fell from a roof. ==Reception and audience==

Classical reception There is conflicting evidence of the gospel's status in the era of the Roman Empire. While the spread of manuscripts and casual mention of the miracles within suggest acceptance and popularity, the more explicit surviving written references are from disapproving theologians. Due to the comparatively large number of manuscripts for a work of this type, Reidar Aasgaard argues that there likely was not any explicit ecclesiastical censoring of the text. J.R.C. Cousland sees the Jesus of the IGT as a subversive figure whose smashing of polite custom and the establishment would appeal to a popular audience, but get a more ambivalent reaction from Christian leaders after Christianity became an organized and majority religion itself. While the depiction of Jesus can be seen as shocking to later readers, Tony Burke writes that this view of Jesus fit snugly into early Christian thought. Even when it is criticized, such as by John Chrysostom, it is on grounds of it contradicting the gospel of John saying when the first miracle of Jesus was, not on grounds that the character of Jesus was incorrect. More generally, to draw too sharp a distinction between a "popular" audience and a "common" audience was to invent a distinction that did not yet exist. As literacy was quite rare, works that were written down were inherently already a matter of a rare few, even if based on oral stories. Reidar Aasgaard suggests that the compiler, the legends, or both may have credibly been from or circulated in a rural, non-elite milieu, and could have had children as an intended audience, making the work a rare early example of children's literature. Ursula Ulrike Kaiser speculated that parents of children might have been the main audience, relieved to read stories that even Jesus had fights with other children, broke household goods, and disputed with their teachers. Medieval reception .|alt=See caption The large number of surviving manuscripts, in particular medieval manuscripts, attests to the general popularity of the work. Philip Jenkins writes that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears to have been among the most popular Christian writings for 1500 years. The many copies of it and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew found in monastery libraries suggest it was used devotionally. As an example, a copy was held by the noblewoman Cecily Neville, known for her piety. Life of the Virgin, a story that survives only in Georgian, is said to come from 7th century Palestine in Greek there. It seems to include a condemnation of an infancy gospel called The Infancy of Christ that might have been a lost compilation including the IGT, saying that "it is alien to the order of the Church and contrary to what the holy evangelists said and an adversary of truth that was composed by some foolish men and storytellers." The Byzantine historian George Syncellus mentions "the childhood deeds of our Savior" approvingly and implies that Luke the Evangelist was aware of the work and used it as a source for his gospel's account of Jesus in the temple at 12, or at least referenced it. Vincent of Beauvais included details from the IGT in his book Speculum, although cautioned the authorship was unknown. As in the classical era, some medieval theologians condemned the infancy stories on account of them contradicting the gospels; Thomas Aquinas and Jean Gerson both harshly condemn them. As in the classical era, these condemnations do not appear to have been enforced; the text was at its most popular in the 15th century in the Late Middle Ages. Modern reception The popularity of Pseudo-Matthew, one of the main ways late medieval audiences read the work, declined during the Protestant Reformation as the printing press spread in the early modern period. Oscar Cullman was unimpressed with the depiction of Jesus in the work. He writes that if the name "Jesus" had not been included, the reader would never have guessed that the capricious boy depicted in the gospel was the same as the Jesus of the canonical gospels. Cullman says that "the cruder and more startling the miracle, the greater the pleasure the compiler finds in it." The book's reputation has somewhat improved as consensus has shifted that it was not the work of 'heretics', and that rather it was the pious themselves who seemed most drawn to a tale of flashy miracles in everyday life, with verification that the God they worshipped was exceptional and powerful. While the work's sense of ethics may not cohere with modern ethics, Reidar Aasgaard writes in its defense that it still complies with the old narrative law of "all's well that ends well". Everything turns out fine by the end in the story, which softens the problematic nature of Jesus's actions and invites a more sympathetic reading to Aasgaard. ==Analysis==

The mischievous Jesus adds that the other boy is a "henchman of injustice" and that he "threw himself on Jesus's shoulder, wanting to mock him or harm him if possible". Jesus's literacy {{blockquote|When Joseph observed the mind of the child and his age, and saw that he was starting to mature, he again resolved that he [Jesus] should not be unable to read, and so took him out and gave him over to another teacher. The story makes quite a strong emphasis on Jesus's education and his literacy, making it the subject of three separate stories. This is distinctive in that 1st-century Christians do not seem to have emphasized a literate Jesus; there is only a single story in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus writes (Jesus and the woman taken in adultery), and none in the other three canonical gospels. It seems that the idea of a literate Jesus became more prominent in the 2nd century, when the work was likely composed. A literate Jesus might also have served as an apologetic defense against possible pagan or Jewish attacks on Christianity as a religion of the uncultured. The pagan philosopher Celsus disparagingly called Jesus's early followers as "most uneducated" as an example of the rhetoric that some Christians might have sought to counter. Genre While the work is a gospel in the sense that it is about Jesus, it is of a different variety than the four gospels that are included in the canon of the New Testament. Stephen Gero notes that only the Arabic Infancy Gospel version explicitly uses the word "gospel" itself within it, and suggests that the work was only intended to supplement and not supplant the canonical gospels. Ronald Hock has argued that the work is best classified as an "ancient biography". One disputed matter is if the work was created by a compiler taking a variety of independent circulating stories as-is and making a written collection of them, or if an author crafted a unified narrative with a plot. In favor of the former, very similar stories are included, suggesting only the most token of editing. For example, Jesus disputes with three teachers in the gospel; this suggests the compiler possibly recording three different variants of the same story. In favor of the latter, scholars such as Tobias Nicklas, Stevan Davies, and J.R.C. Cousland argue that while the work is clearly episodic storytelling, it does have character development in showing Jesus gradually becoming the Savior depicted in the canonical gospels, as he seems to grow and use his powers more productively in the later stories. Others are skeptical; Hock writes that there is no such development or change in Jesus. Cousland argues that the work has a chiastic form, if imperfectly so, where the second half of the work is a response and correction to the first half. The medieval manuscript tradition and its evolution is complex, but in general, later compilations including the IGT tended to pair the work with others that focused more on Mary and Mariology, in particular in the Latin-speaking Western Church. These compilations cover the Holy Family as a group, draw on the IGT for tales of Joseph, and also include stories of Jesus's grandparents Joachim and Anna, his aunt Mary Cleophas, and so on. The Latin Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew appears to have begun incorporating the Infancy Gospel of Thomas stories in manuscripts in the 11th century. In contrast, the medieval Greek-speaking Byzantine Church tended to keep separate texts, each focused on one particular saint. While Joseph's role is prominent, he is not portrayed particularly positively in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. He is not depicted as understanding his own son's divine nature, and to the extent that the message of the book is that Jesus is Lord and acknowledging this promptly is a sign of wisdom, he does not live up to this. ==Art and culture==

|alt=See caption St. Martin's Church in Zillis, Switzerland was rebuilt in the 12th century. Its wooden ceiling features 153 panels of Romanesque paintings, of which 98 panels depict the life and miracles of Jesus. One panel shows young Jesus transforming clay into birds. The painter was probably familiar with the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which incorporates material from the IGT and was likely the source for the panel. A pictorial representation of the events of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is in the 14th-century work , an illustrated gospel harmony. It used as sources German Christian literature (including sources containing material on Jesus's childhood that originated in the IGT), hagiographies of the Golden Legend, and the Latin Vulgate. '''Episodes from Jesus's childhood as depicted in the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk, a 14th-century gospel translation:''' File:Sbs-0008 026r Jesus trägt Wasser in seinem Schoss heim.TIF|Jesus is carrying water in his garment, after his jar was broken; other children watch in surprise. File:Sbs-0008 026r Jesus überreicht Maria das Wasser.TIF|Jesus hands the water in his garment over to Mary. File:Sbs-0008 026r Jesus setzt die zerbrochenen Krüge zusammen.TIF|Jesus reassembles the water jars of the children who, in an attempt to imitate him, smashed their jars on purpose. File:Sbs-0008 028r Jesus macht die Tonvögelchen lebendig.TIF|Jesus raises the clay birds of his playmates to life. File:Sbs-0008 026v Jesus befiehlt Joseph einen toten Mann aufzuerwecken.TIF|Jesus tells Joseph to raise a dead man. File:Sbs-0008 026v Joseph erweckt den Toten auf der Bahre.TIF|Joseph raises the man on the stretcher from the dead. File:Sbs-0008 026v Zenon fällt vom Dach eines Hauses.TIF|During play, a child Zenon falls off the roof of a house; two Jews accuse Jesus of having pushed him. File:Sbs-0008 026v Jesus erweckt das tote Kind.TIF|Jesus raises Zenon from the dead, so he can testify that Jesus is innocent. File:Sbs-0008 027r Jesus fängt mit anderen Kindern am Sabbat Fische.TIF|Together with other children, Jesus is catching fish on Sabbath. File:Sbs-0008 027r Ein Jude, der die Kinder tadelt, fällt tot um.TIF|A Jew who scolds the children dies on the spot. File:Sbs-0008 027r Die Kinder verklagen Jesus bei den Erwachsenen.TIF|The children complain about Jesus to adult Jews. File:Sbs-0008 027v Jesus erweckt den Toten wieder.TIF|At Mary's and Joseph's request, Jesus raises the dead man. File:Sbs-0008_028r_Jesus_führt_die_Löwen_bis_vor_das_Stadttor.TIF|Jesus plays with lions and guides them up to the town gates. The town people are scared. File:Sbs-0008 028v Jesus streitet mit dem Lehrer.TIF|Jesus quarrels with his teacher in front of other pupils about the nature of the letters. Anne Rice wrote Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, a 2005 novel on Jesus's childhood; in it, she includes material from the IGT. Jesus transforms clay sparrows on the Sabbath, and young Jesus kills another boy with stray words, although her version of Jesus rapidly decides to raise the other boy from the dead afterward. In the afterword, Rice writes that she found the accounts in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of James compelling and containing a deep truth that spoke to her, despite their non-canonical status. The novel was adapted as the 2016 film The Young Messiah. ''The Carpenter's Son'' is a 2025 psychological horror and drama film covering Jesus's early life; according to directory Lotfy Nathan, it is inspired by the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ==Contemporary translations==

Selected modern translations of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas into English are listed below. Translations of the Greek and Latin versions include: • • • • • Translations of other languages include: • Includes a translation of an Arabic version by Slavomír Čéplö (pp. 229–243). (Syriac, Arabic) • (IGT content in Old Czech versions of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew) • (Chapters 36–53 of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy; see also pp. 199–204 for a translation of Greek S) • (Old Irish) • (Old Georgian) • (Church Slavonic, Ukrainian versions) Transcriptions of untranslated Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Slavonic versions can be found at: • (1876 second edition), Tischendorf's compilation of Apocrypha including the Greek A (pages 140–157), Greek B (pp. 158–163), and Latin (pp. 164–180) versions of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas • Contributions to the apocryphal literature of the New Testament, collected and edited from Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum (1865), William Wright's transcription of a 6th century Syriac manuscript (pp. 128–121, right-to-left) • ==Notes==