Infancy Gospel of Thomas

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (also known as the Infancy of Jesus or Childhood of Jesus, the ' or ' (Greek), and abbreviated as Inf. Gos. Thom. or IGT) is an apocryphal gospel about the childhood of Jesus. Together with the Gospel of James, it was one of the earliest and most influential sources detailing the activities and life of the young Jesus, although neither are included in the New Testament canon. Its creation is generally dated to the second century. The oldest extant fragmentary writing dates to the fourth or fifth century; Latin and Syriac attestations to a short form exist from the fifth or sixth century; and an 11th-century manuscript in Greek (Codex Sabaiticus) contains the earliest extant long form of the work. Variants flourished that expanded the work by combining it with other stories in larger works and anthologies; the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew is one example that proved popular in the Latin-speaking Western Church during the Middle Ages.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas depicts a young Jesus in full possession of divine power who is already dispensing wisdom with authority, even at an early age. It includes several miracles that spread widely and appear in other sources, such as Jesus transforming clay sparrows into live sparrows. The way Jesus wields his power can read rather shockingly to a modern reader, such as where young Jesus curses and kills those who cross him. While the Jesus depicted in this gospel can be an "enfant terrible", he balances this with performing miracles and healing, as well.

The author of the work is not known. Some versions include a pseudepigraphal attribution to "Thomas the Israelite", which might be a reference to Thomas the Apostle, but this attribution appears to date to the medieval period and is only in some manuscripts. The work varies greatly in style from the canonical gospels. It was possibly distributed as an addition to the Gospel of Luke, or possibly as a stand-alone work that has a dependent association to the canonical Gospel texts. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas ends with the story of Jesus in the temple at age 12, and quotes parts of the Gospel of Luke.

Date of creation

thumb|right|upright=1.1|The earliest known surviving fragment of the work, [[Koine Greek 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. There are further references that seem to indicate the spread of the stories; the Syriac form of the third-century Acts of Thomas contains a possible mention. 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

thumb|right|upright=1.1|The Roman Empire in the late 4th century, divided between the [[Western Roman Empire|Latin-speaking West (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.

Later, another child either bumps into Jesus while running, throws a stone, or punches him (depending on the manuscript).

thumb|upright=1.1|Young Jesus sitting on a sunbeam. Illustration from the [[Holkham Bible, a 14th-century Anglo-Norman book that included both canonical and non-canonical stories.|alt=See caption]]

A variety of stories appear in some manuscripts but not others that are not part of Greek A (see episodes not in Greek A). A few examples include Jesus Riding the Sunbeam, Jesus and the Dyer, Making Dead Fish Come Alive, and Jesus Playing with Lions.

Manuscripts and pre-modern translations

thumb|upright=1.1|The start of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Codex Sabaiticus 259, 66r|alt=See caption

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was written in the Koine Greek language, and was rapidly translated to Classical Latin and Syriac.

Early translations

thumb|upright=1.1|G50, an Irish manuscript containing a versified translation of the IGT|alt=See caption

The Syriac translation is thought to originate from the 2nd–6th centuries. It was likely used as a source for an Arabic translation centuries later. The Late Latin version was the first manuscript discovered with a prologue with stories set during the Flight into Egypt described in the Gospel of Matthew. Some Greek manuscripts also include the Egyptian prologue and were likely the source of the Late Latin translation, and have been organized into a recension called Greek D. The 'D' is a reference to , who published in 1927 a 15th-century Greek manuscript with such a prologue.

The infancy gospel was translated into Armenian and Old Georgian by the 6th or 7th century, although the Armenian is lost and the surviving Georgian manuscripts only include the first half of the story.

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

thumb|right|upright=1.1|Christ Child playing with lions near the Jordan River. While not found in the Greek versions, this story is in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.

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.

Earliest manuscripts

Up until 2024, the oldest surviving documents were two sixth-century Syriac manuscripts and a Latin palimpsest from the fifth or sixth century housed in Vienna. 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

thumb|upright=1.1|The start of the Greek B version. The title reads "Book of the Holy Apostle Thomas, concerning the conduct of the Lord when a child."

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. 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. Other scholars against a strong Gnostic connection have argued that stories of Jesus being superior and wise were common among all branches of early Christianity.

Possible links with Judaism and Jewish Christianity

[[File:The son of Annas ruins young Jesus's pools Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew BnF Latin 2688 fol 19v.png|thumb|upright=1.1|The son of the Jewish priest Annas ruins young Jesus's pools; from a 13th-century illustrated manuscript of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.

Many scholars see signs of tensions between Jews and Christians that would fit a 2nd–4th-century milieu. 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."

One element of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas found striking both by modern audiences is its depiction of a rather petty young Jesus. Jesus curses and kills those who cross him repeatedly in the work; perhaps the most striking is the incident where a five-year old Jesus curses and kills a child for the banal reason of running into him in what was presumably an accident, a cruel overreaction. The dead child's parents beg Joseph afterward to teach his child "to bless and not to curse" since Jesus is killing their children. After Joseph scolds his son and asks him why he is making trouble for the family, Jesus responds by miraculously causing those who complained, the parents of the deceased, to be struck blind. Joseph scolds Jesus again, but seemingly ineffectually; the roles of parent and child are reversed.

The story does have variants across manuscripts, seemingly motivated by a desire to better justify Jesus in it, rather than linguistic or translation difficulties. These revisions generally keep Jesus's behavior, but make the other child less sympathetic. For example, a version of the story in the Latin Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 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

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

thumb|upright=0.9|Jesus transforming clay into a bird; an 1870 drawing of 12th-century artwork on the ceiling of [[St. Martin's Church, Zillis|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.

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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: