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Christ Child

Synkrisis: Comparative Approaches to Early Christianity in Greco-Roman Culture

SERIES EDITORS:
Dale B. Martin (Yale University) and L. L. Welborn (Fordham University)

Synkrisis is a project that invites scholars of early Christianity and the Greco-Roman world to collaborate toward the goal of rigorous comparison. Each volume in the series provides immersion in an aspect of Greco-Roman culture, so as to make possible a comparison of the controlling logics that emerge from the discourses of Greco-Roman and early Christian writers. In contrast to older history of religions approaches, which looked for similarities between religions in order to posit relations of influence and dependency, Synkrisis embraces a fuller conception of the complexities of culture, viewing Greco-Roman religions and early Christianity as members of a comparative class. The differential comparisons promoted by Synkrisis may serve to refine and correct the theoretical and historical models employed by scholars who seek to understand and interpret the Greco-Roman world. With its allusion to the rhetorical exercises of the Greco-Roman world, the series title recognizes that the comparative enterprise is a construction of the scholars mind and serves the scholars theoretical interests.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Loveday Alexander (Sheffield University)

John Bodell (Brown University)

Kimberly Bowes (University of Pennsylvania)

Daniel Boyarin (University of California, Berkeley)

Fritz Graf (Ohio State University)

Ronald F. Hock (University of Southern California)

Hans-Josef Klauck (University of Chicago)

Stanley K. Stowers (Brown University)

Angela Standhartinger (Marburg University)

STEPHEN J. DAVIS

CULTURAL MEMORIES OF A YOUNG JESUS

Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund and the Frederick W. Hilles Publication Fund of Yale University.

Copyright 2014 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

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Set in Sabon Roman type by Westchester Book Group.
Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davis, Stephen J.

Christ Child : cultural memories of a young Jesus / Stephen J. Davis.

pages cm.(Synkrisis: comparative approaches to early Christianity in Greco-Roman culture)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-300-14945-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Jesus ChristChildhood.

I. Title.

BT320.D38 2014
232.92dc23

2013035683

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book has taken shape over the past half decade, and to paraphrase President Barack Obama, I did not build it alone. Before me, other scholars did foundational work that made my own research possible. Above all, I must acknowledge my indebtedness to the text critical work of Tony Burke, whose CCSA volume, De infantia Iesu evangelium Thomae graece (2010), is an indispensible resource for people working on early Christian infancy traditions. I also stand on the shoulders of other recent scholars whose research has proven invaluable in a variety of different ways: among them, Reidar Aasgaard, Chris Frilingos, Stephen Gero, Cornelia Horn, Lucas van Rompay, and Sever Voicu on sources related to Jesus childhood; Jan and Aleida Assman, Paul Connerton, Astrid Erll, and Maurice Halwachs on the sociology of cultural memory; and Wolfgang Iser, Hans Robert Jauss, Stanley Fish, William A. Johnson, and Peter Kivy on reading and (oral) performance. I hope that my approach to this material contributes meaningfully to the ongoing conversation about the readerly uses to which Jesus childhood has been put, from antiquity to the present day.

Several trips to visit European churches, libraries, and museum archives have helped facilitate my research and writing. In December 2009, I made a brief visit to St. Martins Church in the village of Zillis, Switzerland, with funds from my Yale research account, to examine the painted panel ceiling that is . I am also grateful to the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University for three separate A. Whitney Griswold Faculty Research Grants.

The first Griswold grant funded a weeklong visit to Oxfordshire, England, in June 2009, where I examined a copy of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (Oxon. Bodl. Or. 350), housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, and visited medieval chapels featuring wall paintings related to Jesus childhood.

The second Griswold grant sponsored a trip to Athens, Greece, in June 2010, where I conducted research into the representation of children in funerary reliefs at the National Archaeological Museum and paid a visit to the Department of Childhood, Toys, and Games at the Benaki Museum. I am very grateful to the department director, Maria Argyriadi, for giving me special access to the Benaki collection and for a stimulating conversation during my visit.

The third Griswold grant helped cover travel and incidental expenses related to a three-week stay in June 2011 at the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum at the Westflische Wilhelms-Universitt Mnster, where I researched ancient and medieval Jewish traditions related to Jesus childhood. My deepest thanks go to the institute director, Prof. Dr. Folker Siegert (now emeritus), who served as my official Gastgeber for that fortnight and who (along with his wife, Inge) showed me warm and generous hospitality.

My research stay in Mnster was also supported by a renewal of my Humboldt Fellowship, and I want to express my gratitude to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and to the Humboldt Haus for making that research possible. Thanks are also due to Stephen Emmel, who had originally served as my Humboldt Gastgeber during my initial fellowship year in 20067. Our conversations over coffees and dinners are fond memories from my return visit in 2011. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention my dear friends Wolfgang and Heidi Zierau, who (along with their daughter, Nicole) hosted me for dinner one evening during the late stages of Heidis battle with cancer. That battle ended in January 2012, and I hope that this book does its small part to honor her memory.

My preparation of this book for publication also benefited from opportunities to present the results of my research at different workshops and conference venues. I presented material from with the members of the Association pour ltude de la littrature apocryphe chrtienne (AELAC) in Dole, France.

An earlier version of appeared under the title Bird Watching in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas: From Childs Play to Rituals of Divine Discernment, in a Festschrift for my Yale colleague Harold Attridge, entitled Portraits of Jesus: Essays in Christology, ed. S. E. Myers (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 12553. I want to thank the editor of that volume, Susan E. Myers, and the editors at Mohr Siebeck for permission to include a revised version of that piece in this book.