Vukovic - Survival and Success of an Apocryphal Childhood of Jesus: Reception of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Middle Ages

Studies of the Bible and Its Reception (SBR)

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To Sandro, Salome, and our life in Oslo

This book is a revised doctoral thesis defended at the University of Oslo, the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art, and Ideas. Its writing commenced in 2013 and was brought to completion in 2017. The research and writing were facilitated thanks to the generous grant of the Research Council of Norway, which supported the project Tiny Voices from the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe, under whose thematic umbrella my thesis was written. Besides the Research Council of Norway, the financial assistance of the Faculty of Humanities and the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art, and Ideas of the University of Oslo for supporting my research-related travels are greatly appreciated.

My advisor, Reidar Aasgaard, gathered a fantastic crew in Oslo to work on the project in a stimulating and welcoming atmosphere. I wish to refer to Reidar and the team members Ville Vuolanto, Oana Maria Cojocaru, Christian Laes, Cornelia Horn, Marcia J. Bunge, Merethe Roos, and to acknowledge wonderful moments of exchange and encouragement we had during those years.

Some of my most momentous personal episodes sparked those years in Oslo. It may have been a mere coincidence that I was gifted a child of my own while studying childhood and children of the past. My studies and my newly attained motherhood solidified immense personal growth and transformation. Thanks to these fortunate and some other heavy personal episodes, those years in Oslo changed me for good. For better or worse, friends and colleagues presence and support meant the world to me.

In the final phases of my writing, I benefited from the valuable advice of Ingela Nilsson, who was a source of exceptional inspiration and encouragement. I immensely appreciated the critical comments I received from Stephen Davis, Mary Dzon, and Christine Amadou before and during my doctoral defense. I owe much to Liv Ingeborg Lied, who introduced me to the world of New Philology. Cornelia Horn facilitated my research stay in Berlin in 2015, for which I am very grateful. Finally, my appreciation goes to all my friends and colleagues at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, the Department of Theology of the University of Oslo, and the Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society (MF).

My research would not be possible without the source material from different manuscript libraries. For the courtesy of providing access to medieval manuscripts and other resources, I wish to thank the following manuscript libraries: Bibliothque nationale de France (Paris), Bibliothque Saint-Genevive (Paris), Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St Petersburg), State Historical Museum (Moscow), Bibliothque municipale (Dijon), Burgerbibliothek (Berne), Corpus Christi College (Cambridge), and sterreichische Nationalbibliothek (Vienna).

Lastly, my tiny family of three who accompanied me during those seasons was the motive and the inspiration for my work and my life. I wish to acknowledge Sandro and Salome for everything I did during those years, including this book.

The subject of this book is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a second-century apocryphal Christian story about the childhood of Jesus.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas furnishes an extraordinary depiction of the young Jesus. In the words of Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Plee, this is not the loving Savior of the canonical tradition. Jesus childhood is depicted as a sequence of his startling, miraculous and supernatural actions. Jesus interacts with other people, children, and his parents, Mary and Joseph. A particular emphasis is placed on the relationship with his father. Joseph carries out disciplinary measures towards Jesus, while Mary appears in a few episodes, only to be worried or proud. Jesus plays with children in different ways; however, he takes revenge and punishes those who are unfair and in discord with him. Jesus performs spectacular miracles, molding sparrows out of clay (on a Sabbath) and making them come alive. By throwing a curse, he kills other children and blinds adults. Sometimes, running into Jesus and tearing his shoulder is a sufficient reason for killing a person. However, Jesus can also restore the damage done to those he has cursed: he brings them back to life. Jesus attends school three times; two of these attempts fail because he kills his teachers for being unfair to him.

Because of his frivolous behavior, he attracts the communitys anger. They usually complain to his father, Joseph. In conversation with other people, including his father, Jesus has a serious tone, and the validity of his answers equals those of adults. He makes a teacher look ridiculous by correcting him in the matters of learning. He demonstrates an array of unusual characteristics, such as anger, annoyance, irritation, urge for revenge, lack of sympathy, and he kindles fear in other people.

At the age of twelve, Jesus gets lost in Jerusalem, as in Lukes Gospel (Luke 2). After three days, his parents find him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions. Those who listen to Jesus are amazed at how he questions the elders and explains the critical matters of faith and the prophets puzzles and parables. It is, in brief, what the story of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas tells us.

Thomas Infancy Gospel was most likely composed in a Greek-speaking context of the second century CE by an anonymous author.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was copied in a significant number of medieval manuscripts. The text swiftly crossed linguistic and cultural borders and got transmitted in many realms of the Christian world and beyond. Like other early Christian writings, it was conveyed to different communities and disseminated in many languages in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Greek, Syriac, Latin, Georgian, Irish, Slavonic, Ethiopic, Arabic, and others. The survival of Thomas Infancy Gospel in so many languages testifies to the interest in the text.

However, scholarly opinions disagree regarding the reputation of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Middle Ages. Sever Voicu argues that its transmission was not something that would qualify as a success,

During the transmission, the text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the manuscripts was fluid. It has displayed a great deal of textual instability across time and became a multi-variant text. Orality also played a role and influenced the text; possibly, its portions were orally transmitted for a while.

Textual variations have not been characteristic of all types of literature that appeared in medieval manuscripts. In the words of Jane Baun, when it comes to the writings of Plato, the Apostle Paul, or church fathers, completely different attitudes were held by medieval copyists.

The apocryphal characterization of the