Infancy Gospel of Thomas

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For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Anti-Nicene Christian Library Translations from the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 By Alexander Roberts, Editor The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Savior In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God.

With the help and favor of the Most High, we begin to write a book of the miracles of our Lord and Master and Savior Jesus Christ, which is called the Gospel of the Infancy.

In the peace of the Lord, Amen.

We find what follows in the book of Joseph, the high priest, who lived in the time of Christ.

And from the sweat of the Lord Jesus which she sprinkled there, balsam was produced in that region.

Thence they came down to Memphis and saw Pharaoh and remained three years in Egypt.

And the Lord Jesus did in Egypt very many miracles which are recorded neither in the Gospel of the infancy nor in the perfect Gospel.

Not because they were written by his disciples, but also because at the time, there were Gospels circulating named after other Jesus disciples.

We have the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Ascent of James.

These texts that the dating is very debated, but they had a certain degree of credibility because they carried the names of Jesus's followers.

So when, when I saw- started to see that big picture, then it allowed me to go deeper into why do the Gospels teach different theology than what the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew teaches, which is the book referenced by the Ebionites.

Okay.

Uh, another from the inf- uh, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

Ooh, this is a good one.

"This child, Jesus, when five years old, was playing at the ford of a brook.

You know, since this isn't Christian, I'm going to read from a gospel it didn't make into the Bible.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is all about how a child Jesus was a piece of shit and learned how to not be a piece of shit.

You talking about the teen years?

childhood years he's five years old here it's jesus at five after uh that he is jesus was again passing through the village and a boy ran up against him and struck his shoulder and jesus was angry and said to him you shall not go back the way you came and immediately the boy fell down dead and some who saw what had taken place said

It's not considered accurate, and so it's not in the Bible.

And one of the apocryphal books that was written several centuries after Christ by someone who knew nothing of Jewish life is called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

fanciful little stories of what-ifs when Jesus was a little boy and it has things in there that are obviously not true and obvious that the person writing it knew nothing of Jewish life and because of these errors it's never been considered inspired and it's never been part of our Bible but stories from this were floating around the desert and Muhammad would hear these stories and And they got incorporated into his belief system.

So the infancy gospel says that Jesus spoke from the cradle.

One of them fell off the roof of a house and died, and Jesus raised the kid from the dead.

Guess what story is in Islam? The same story.

There's no other place in ancient literature that these stories appear other than this infancy gospel of Thomas that no one then or now takes serious.

But Muhammad heard it.

yeah yes yeah it's like yeah

guys this is based on the uh the infancy gospel of thomas and uh that that you know isn't recognized or canonized by the church but you know still exists or something i don't know is

that is that because it has some bad things in it

i mean maybe because then we cut to fka twigs popping out of jesus what

Yep.

Wow.

And as mentioned earlier, this was inspired by the infancy gospel of Thomas.

An apocryphal gospel about the childhood of Jesus.

There's so much to unpack there.

I've always, I've always been aware of the story of him turning the clay birds into, into living birds, uh, 'cause this is an echo of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is an early Christian text where, where Jesus does exactly that, which I find absolutely fascinating, that a apocryphal Christian text seems to be echoed in th- in this Quranic story.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, uh, if I remember, but you could correct me on this one, uh, Andrew, that in the, uh, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, there's some question also of his, uh, possibly doing that on the Sabbath.

That could be from another, uh, tradition.

But also, it's meant to point to somehow his creative power.

After all, there were several books called Thomas.

We have the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and we have the Book of Thomas the Contender.

But this is evidence that there was significant pushback against any gospel named Thomas.

So these are two factors to consider if anyone asks why the Gospel of Thomas is not in the Bible.