The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, also known as the Paidika, the Childhood of Jesus, and the Infancy of Jesus, has an unusually complex manuscript tradition. It was popular among Christians during antiquity and the Middle Ages, and spread widely. However, there was no authority keeping copies standardized. As scribes copied and re-copied hand-written manuscripts, changes accumulated.
The structure of the work is largely a collection of self-contained stories. When translated into new languages, the translations often adjusted stories within. New stories were added in some versions, and other stories were removed. The work was also integrated into a variety of larger collections and anthologies. As a result, the topic is more a cluster of related individual books that share similarities, rather than one unified book with minor variations.
Overview Early Christians were interested in more details than those provided by the earliest sources. This led to a proliferation in Christian literature. Works which were not included in the New Testament in the church councils of the 4th, 5th, and 6th stories were later classified as New Testament apocrypha. These included works later classified as "infancy gospels" that detailed both Jesus's birth and his childhood in more detail than the stories found in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew..
One early collection appears to have been called something like "The Boyhood Deeds of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ". It is not known precisely when this collection was made, but surviving writings from 2nd- and 3rd-century Christians indicate that the stories within it were circulating by then in Koine Greek, and there are surviving mostly-complete manuscripts of the work in Latin and Syriac from the 5th and 6th century. This collection appears to have been popular, and spread among the Christian population of the era. This included the creation of translations into other languages. Languages with pre-modern translations include Latin, Syriac, Georgian, Armenian, Ethiopic (Ge'ez), Irish, Medieval Greek, and Church Slavonic. By the late medieval era, the stories spread to various European vernacular languages as well, generally from the Latin version..
The Greek and Slavonic versions include a pseudepigraphic attribution to "Thomas the Israelite", which led to the work being called the "Gospel of Thomas" in the 19th and early 20th century.. However, this attribution is rare in other versions. For consistency and clarity, this article uses the Childhood of Jesus title across versions, to account for the Thomas-less versions.
Episodes not in Greek A
Manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas differ. While some core stories ("pericopes" in scholarly terms) are usually included and shared, some stories appear in some branches of the tradition but not others. The lack of canonical status may have loosened constraints on scribal adjustments somewhat by those who copied and recopied the text..
Being listed here does not mean it was in all manuscripts of an edition, just some of them. This is especially the case for Pseudo-Matthew, with its great number and diversity of manuscripts and languages. Notable other stories found in manuscripts alongside the Greek A pericopes include (using Reidar Aasgaard's titles):.
Playing with Lions: At age 8 and near the Jordan River, Jesus enters a cave with lions and plays with them, to the astonishment of a crowd somehow watching from a safe distance. Found in Pseudo-Matthew (C35-36).. Making Joseph Raise a Dead Man: Jesus tells Joseph to heal a dead man on a stretcher; to Joseph's surprise, he is able to. Found in Pseudo-Matthew. Sharing a Meal with His Family: Jesus and his extended family share a meal; Jesus blesses it and is the first one to eat and drink. Found in Pseudo-Matthew (C42). Jesus and the Dyer: Many variants, but the core is that Jesus helps out a dyer as a child servant, but seemingly errs by combining the dyes and clothes into one big mess. However, when the clothes are pulled from the vat, they are all perfectly dyed the correct colors as ordered. Found in one manuscript (BnF Gr. 239) of Greek A, Ethiopic, Arabic (C11), the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (C37), the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy (C21), Pseudo-Matthew, and Slavonic (Ukrainian MS G C13). Miraculous Repair of King's Throne: Joseph builds a throne for the "King of Jerusalem", but it is too small. Jesus fixes and expands it. Found in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (C39).. Children Made Goats / Children Made Swine: Jesus is playing with children, but they hide after lunch. After Jesus inquires at a home where the others are hiding what the noise is, he is told that it is just animals: goats in earlier variants, pigs in later variants. Jesus says "let it be so", and the hiding children are transformed into the claimed animal. Jesus changes them back to human form at the end in Slavonic and the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, but not the Arabic. Found in the Arabic (C6), Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (C40), East Syriac (P70–72), the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and Slavonic, although the Slavonic version is not particularly close to the other versions... Children Make Jesus King: Jesus' playmates give Jesus a crown of flowers and a royal 'carpet' of clothes, and make passerby bow down before him. Found in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (C41) and East Syriac (P72). Riding the Sunbeam: This story varies, but Jesus walks on, sits on, or rides a sunbeam. Found in Ethiopic (C8), Armenian Gospel of the Infancy (15:5), Pseudo-Matthew (C58), and Slavonic... Healing of a Blind Man: Two mothers are concerned with an illness afflicting their sons, blinding and weakening them. Mary offers them some water which she used to wash her son Jesus. The water cures their blindness. Found in the Arabic Infancy Gospel (C27-28) and Slavonic. Jesus and the Blacksmith: A blacksmith cannot shoe a horse. Jesus takes the legs off the horse, takes the legs to the anvil where they are shoed directly, then reattaches the legs to the horse. He orders the blacksmith to throw an old woman into the fire; he then reforges her body. Found in Slavonic (Ukrainian versions only; MS G C22). Healing of Man with Serpent: A man has had a serpent wrapped around his neck for three years. Jesus tells the serpent to go back to the ground. Found in East Syriac (P73–74). Healing of Boy on an Ass: A boy on a donkey has been beaten by thieves and had his belongings stolen. His father weeps for the family. Jesus heals the boy. Found in East Syriac (P75). Making Dead Fish Come Alive: Jesus plays with a salted fish and orders it to swim again, which it does. The circumstances differ; sometimes Joseph cooks and salts some fish first, sometimes it occurs in Egypt. Other adults are terrified. Found in Greek D (P4) and in Pseudo-Matthew (C59).. Healing of Child's Snakebite: A boy is bitten by a venomous snake. Jesus commands the snake to suck back its poison, curses it and causes it to burst open, then heals the poisoned boy. Found in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (C42) and in East Syriac (P72-73).. Pagan Temple: Jesus tears down a pagan temple. In some accounts, he rebuilds it. Found in Slavonic (both groups; Ukrainian MS G C17).
Greek
Koine Greek is believed to be the original language of composition of the Childhood of Jesus. As early as the 2nd century, the Christian polemicist Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in Greek, mentioned a story found in early versions of the Childhood of Jesus, albeit with hostility. However, the very oldest surviving complete manuscripts are generally in other languages; for a variety of reasons, including the fall of the Greek-Christian dominated Byzantine Empire, the surviving Greek manuscripts tend to be from the medieval period.
There is one piece of surviving Greek evidence from antiquity, Papyrus Hamburg Graeca 1011, a fourth- or fifth-century papyrus fragment. Its importance as a witness to old forms of the Childhood of Jesus was realized in 2024. The fragment largely matches the 11th-century Codex Sabaiticus version where they can be compared. This suggests that likely a similar edition of the Childhood of Jesus existed at the time; if the fragment was a witness to an independent rendition of the same story, then the rendition was carried over near-exactly by the later compiler.
The surviving Greek versions include an introduction from the author (Chapter 1), with it claiming to have been written by "Thomas the Israelite". Due to the popularity of the Greek edition among scholars, this resulted in the title of the work in the modern era often being "Gospel of Thomas" and later "Infancy Gospel of Thomas". However, this feature is not generally shared with most other versions, and was most likely added only in the medieval era. This was presumably a reference to Thomas the Apostle, also known as Judas Thomas, who was thought in some early Christian traditions to be a brother of Jesus and thus familiar with his activities...
Another reference that crept into the longer Greek versions but not seen in most translations is a loose reference to 1 Corinthians 13:1. Jesus complains that Zacchaeus's teaching "is like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal which can’t provide the sound or glory or power of insight.".
The Greek form is the most heavily studied version. Translations of it include, but are not limited to:
(See also online versions at Greek S, Greek A, Greek B, Greek D) (Greek A; see also The Gospel of Thomas (II.), pp. 144–151, Greek B).
(see also Appendixes to the Gospel of Thomas, pp. 66–70.)
Greek S
Greek S is a recension based on the oldest surviving complete manuscript, Codex Sabaiticus 259. Sabaiticus 259 was commissioned by a kouboukleisios named Basil on Valva on the island of Cyprus. It was copied by a monk named Gerasimos in 1089 or 1090 according to the date of the colophon. It was transferred to various locations over time, including time spent at the Monastery of Mar Saba (hence "S" for Sabaiticus). The manuscript is now held by the library of the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem. There are some minor difficulties of interpretation as the copyist of this manuscript was quite bad at Greek spelling..
The work is an "intermediate" form of the text; longer than the short recensions seen in Syriac and Early Latin, but shorter than Greek A and Greek D, as it lacks chapters 17 and 18.. It also places Greek A chapter 10 after Ga 16 but before Ga19. While the manuscript is from the 11th century, scholars have suggested this form of the work could have originated as early as between the 4th and 7th centuries. Notably, the Slavonic translation seems to be a late 10th or early 11th century work, yet already working from Greek A. It is also the oldest form featuring the introduction attributing itself to "Thomas the Israelite".
Scholarly notice of the manuscript came substantially later than exploration of the other recensions. The scholarship of Sever J. Voicu (1991), Tony Burke (2001, 2010), and Reider J. Aasgaard (2009) raised the profile of Greek S as an important witness to the evolution of the Childhood of Jesus and a more relevant witness to the form of the work in late antiquity than the medieval Greek A..
One odd difference in Greek S involves the fate of the child who fell from the roof, Zeno (or Zenon). After Jesus resurrects him so that he can exonerate Jesus as not the cause of his fall, Jesus then tells Zeno to "fall asleep" – that is, die again. Why exactly this happens is unclear, but the later Greek versions do not include this, and leave Zeno alive..
Greek A