Survival and Success of An Apocryphal Childhood of Jesus: Marijana Vuković

Marijana Vuković
Survival and Success of an Apocryphal Childhood of Jesus

Studies of the Bible
and Its Reception
Editorial Board:
Constance M. Furey, Joel Marcus LeMon,
Brian Matz, Thomas Römer, Jens Schröter,
Barry Dov Walfish, and Eric Ziolkowski
Volume 21
Marijana Vuković
Survival and Success
of an Apocryphal
Childhood of Jesus
Reception of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas

in the Middle Ages
ISBN 978-3-11-075272-4
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-075278-6
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To Sandro, Salome, and our life in Oslo
Acknowledgements
This book is a revised doctoral thesis defended at the University of Oslo, the De-
partment of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art, and Ideas. Its writing com-
menced 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 writ-
ten. Besides the Research Council of Norway, the financial assistance of the Fac-
ulty 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, Cor-
nelia Horn, Marcia J. Bunge, Merethe Roos, and to acknowledge wonderful mo-
ments 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 In-
gela 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 Philol-
ogy. 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, Re-
ligion, and Society (MF).
My research would not be possible without the source material from differ-
ent manuscript libraries. For the courtesy of providing access to medieval
manuscripts and other resources, I wish to thank the following manuscript li-
braries: Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris), Bibliothèque Saint-Gene-
viève (Paris), Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St Petersburg),
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110752786-001
VIII Acknowledgements
State Historical Museum (Moscow), Bibliothèque municipale (Dijon), Burger-

bibliothek (Berne), Corpus Christi College (Cambridge), and Österreichische
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 acknowl-
edge Sandro and Salome for everything I did during those years, including this
book.
Contents
Chapter 1
New Philology and Early Christian Text 1
Chapter 2
Codex and Genre of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas 40
The oldest witness 43
Late antique Syriac tradition 47
Georgian evidence 51
Eleventh-century Byzantine evidence 56
Eleventh-century Latin evidence 59
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the thirteenth-century Byzantium 64
Thirteenth-century Latin manuscripts 67
Slavonic evidence 76
Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Byzantine manuscripts 83
Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Latin manuscripts 89
Apocryphal manuscript geography and the changing genre of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas 93
Chapter 3
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as Text: Transformations of Structure 101
Pseudo-temporal order 104
Narrative logic 119
Pseudo-duration 127
Intra- and inter-lingual connections 157
Chapter 4
Childhood, Family and Everyday Life in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas 161
Presence of Joseph and Mary 164
Jesus’ obedience to his parents 170
Parents’ punishment and encouragement 178
Jesus’ siblings 183
Jesus and his peers 185
Jesus and teachers 189
Jesus’ education 193
Jesus’ physical work 203
Jesus’ anger and cursing 204
Jesus’ family and community 209
X Contents
Housing 215
Healing and sorcery 222
Theology, non-contested matters, and the humanization of the child
Jesus 224
Chapter 5
Jesus’ Childhood in East and West 229
Appendix
The Edition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Latin, Greek, and Church
Slavonic manuscripts used in this book 236
Bibliography 289
Manuscripts 289
Secondary literature 289
Index 309
Chapter 1
New Philology and Early Christian Text
The subject of this book is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a second-century apoc-
ryphal Christian story about the childhood of Jesus.¹ Its focal point is the boy-
hood of the foremost figure in Christianity: Jesus. It is the only exhaustive ac-
count of Jesus’ childhood in Christian literature, although it does not present
historically based details of Jesus’ childhood.² Understanding the person and
the nature of Christ was a central theological preoccupation of the early Christi-
 The second-century dating of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel is based on Irenaeus’ testimony in his
Against Heresies (1.20.1). This evidence, however, does not attest that the written text existed, nor
it reveals the textual form in the second century. Irenaeus refers to the episode of Jesus and the
teacher. As for the title, I use the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT), as the most conventional title
in the scholarship. Different scholars name the text differently. Elliott prefers the title The Child-
hood Deeds of Jesus. Pheme Perkins thinks that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a modern title
given to what may have been called The Childhood Deeds of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Some other
scholars yet call it Paidika (S. Davis, S. Voicu, G. van Oyen). Horn and Phenix call this text
the Infancy Gospel of Pseudo-Thomas. Gero notes that different versions of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas have various titles. Only the Arabic infancy narrative is explicitly called the Gospel
of the Infancy. Some scholars question its ascription to Thomas, as well as its name “Gospel.”
See James Keith Elliott, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives (Leiden:
Brill, 2006), xiii; Pheme Perkins, “Christology and Soteriology in Apocryphal Gospels,” in The
Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, eds. Andrew Gregory, Tobias Nicklas, Christopher
M. Tuckett, and Joseph Verheyden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): 196 – 212, 197; Geert
van Oyen, “Rereading the Rewriting of the Biblical Traditions in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
(Paidika),” in Infancy Gospels, eds. Claire Clivaz, Andreas Dettwiler, Luc Devillers, and Enrico
Norelli (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011): 482– 505; Cornelia B. Horn and Robert R. Phenix, “Apoc-
ryphal Gospels in Syriac and Related Texts Offering Traditions about Jesus,” in Jesus in apokry-
phen Evangelienüberlieferungen: Beiträge zu außerkanonischen Jesusüberlieferungen aus verschie-
denen Sprach- und Kulturtraditionen, eds. Jörg Frey, Jens Schröter, with Jakob Spaeth (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2010): 527– 555; Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, eds., The Apocryphal Gospels:
Texts and Translations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 5; Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko
Pleše, eds. and tr., The Other Gospels: Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 5; Stephen Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas. A Study of the
Textual and Literary Problems,” Novum Testamentum 13 (1971): 46 – 80, 59.
 The question of whether apocryphal literature can contribute to our understanding of the his-
torical Jesus has been much debated, with a great deal of emotive language. See Reidar Aas-
gaard, The Childhood of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Cambridge:
James Clarke & Co., 2009), 2; Simon Gathercole, “Other Apocryphal Gospels and the Historical
Jesus,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, eds. Andrew Gregory, Tobias Nick-
las, Christopher M. Tuckett, and Joseph Verheyden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): 250 –
268, 250.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110752786-002
2 Chapter 1 New Philology and Early Christian Text
an period.³ However, in the earliest days of Christianity, not the birth and child-
hood but primarily Jesus’ death and resurrection were of theological interest.⁴
The attentiveness to Jesus’ childhood emerged soon after. Scholars mostly
agree that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was constructed to supplement the
gaps in the life of Jesus described in the canonical Gospels.⁵ The curiosity
about Jesus’ birth and infancy is attested already in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels.
However, unlike the synoptic Gospels, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas goes further
than the events immediately after Jesus’ birth and sequences the episodes of
Jesus’ life from the age of five until he was twelve, which makes it a unique ac-
count of this period of Jesus’ life in early Christian literature.⁶
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas furnishes an extraordinary depiction of the
young Jesus. In the words of Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, “this is not the lov-
ing Savior of the canonical tradition.”⁷ Jesus’ childhood is depicted as a se-
quence of his startling, miraculous and supernatural actions. Jesus interacts
with other people, children, and his parents, Mary and Joseph. A particular em-
phasis is placed on the relationship with his father. Joseph carries out discipli-
nary 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.
 Paul Foster, “Christology and Soteriology in Apocryphal Acts and Apocalypses,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, eds. Andrew Gregory, Tobias Nicklas, Christopher M.
Tuckett, and Joseph Verheyden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): 213 – 232, 213.
 Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, Gospels and Related Writings
(Cambridge: James Clarke and Co. Ltd, 1991), 414; Ronald F. Hock, The Infancy Gospels of James
and Thomas (Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 1995), 2.
 Many scholars have repeated this argument. Occasionally, some scholars argue that “it was
not a mere supplement, a primitive attempt to ‘fill in the gaps’ of canonical account, but a val-
uable Christian text in its own right.” See Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha 1, 78; Chris
Frilingos, “No Child Left Behind: Knowledge and Violence in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,”
Journal of Early Christian Studies 17, No. 1 (2009): 27– 54, 34, n. 30; Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Chris-
tianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), 206; Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (London:
Bloomsbury Academic, 1992), 312; François Bovon, “Évangiles canoniques et évangiles apocry-
phes: La naissance et l’enfance de Jésus,” Bulletin des facultés catholiques de Lyon 58 (1980):
19 – 30, 25.
 I here demonstrate that the different manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas give differ-
ent information about Jesus’ age at the beginning and the end of the story. In general, scholars
have repeated that the story covers Jesus’ young years from five to twelve. However (to take one
example), the text in some Slavonic manuscripts analyzed in this study starts from Jesus’ age
three.
 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 6.
Chapter 1 New Philology and Early Christian Text 3
Jesus performs spectacular miracles, molding sparrows out of clay (on a Sab-
bath) 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 un-
fair to him.
Because of his frivolous behavior, he attracts the community’s anger. They
usually complain to his father, Joseph. In conversation with other people, includ-
ing 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 mat-
ters 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 Luke’s Gospel (Luke
2). After three days, his parents find him in the Temple, sitting among the teach-
ers, 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 In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas tells us.
Thomas’ Infancy Gospel was most likely composed in a Greek-speaking con-
text of the second century CE by an anonymous author.⁸ The brief testimony of
Irenaeus of Lyons does not tell us how the text looked like in the second century
(Irenaeus, Against Heresies (1.20.1)), as Irenaeus only refers to the episode of
Jesus and the teacher. Some scholars argue that it must have been composed ear-
lier than 185 CE, possibly even around 125 CE.⁹ Sharon Betsworth and Tony Burke
suggest that its provenance is Syrian Antioch or Asia Minor,¹⁰ while Frédéric
Amsler argues for a fourth-century Antiochian origin.¹¹ Ludwig Conrady and Ar-
nold Meyer argue for an Egyptian origin.¹²
 The earliest witnesses to this story, Irenaeus of Lyons, Justin Martyr, and a few others, come
from the second century. However, these testimonies do not amount to evidence that a fully de-
veloped text existed at this point. See Sharon Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives
(London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 147; Stephen J. Davis, Christ Child: Cultural Memories of a Young
Jesus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 36.
 See, e. g., Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 147.
 Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 147; Tony Burke, De infantia Iesu evangelium
Thomae graece (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 206 – 212.
 Frédéric Amsler, “Les Paidika Iesou, un nouveau témoin de la rencontre entre judaïsme et
christianisme à Antioch au IVe siècle?” in Infancy Gospels. Stories and Identities, eds. Claire Cli-
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was copied in a significant number of medi-

eval manuscripts.¹³ 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 dissemi-
nated 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,¹⁴ while Bart Ehrman and
Zlatko Pleše assert that it was one of the most famous early Christian texts
down through the ages, without a doubt.¹⁵ An astonishing number of copies in
late antique and medieval languages testify to its popularity. Philip Jenkins like-
wise holds that Thomas’ Infancy Gospel was for some 1500 years one of the most
popular Christian writings.¹⁶
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.¹⁷ Scholars have
already worked on categorizing its many textual variants in several languages.¹⁸
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 at-
titudes were held by medieval copyists.”¹⁹ Their task was to produce a precise
vaz, Andreas Dettwiler, Luc Devillers, and Enrico Norelli (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011): 433 –
458, 434.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 207; Ludwig Conrady, “Das Thomasevangelium: Ein wissenschaft-
licher kritischer Versuch,” ThStKr 76 (1903): 377– 459; A Meyer, “Kindheitserzählung des Tho-
mas,” in Neutestamentlichen Apokryphen, ed. Edgar Hennecke (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1924):
93 – 102, 96.
 See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 127– 172.
 Sever J. Voicu, “Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha,” in Infancy Gospels, eds. Claire
Clivaz, Andreas Dettwiler, Luc Devillers, and Enrico Norelli (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011):
401– 417, 412.
 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 3.
 Philip Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ: The Thousand-Year Story of the Survival and Influ-
ence of the Lost Gospels (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 77.
 See Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 14– 34.
 Most notably, see Burke, De infantia Iesu.
 Jane Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium: Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Me-
dieval Greek Apocrypha (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 35.
duplicate of the original. However, textual variations were quite commonly pre-
sent in the literature of anonymous authorship. The lack of an apparent authority
behind Thomas’ Infancy Gospel may have contributed to its extensive varia-
tions.²⁰
The “apocryphal” characterization of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may
have caused an additional entanglement.²¹ Namely, as early as in the second
 As Burke argues, this text’s ascription to a named author is only a secondary feature found in
Byzantine, Second Latin, and Slavonic manuscripts. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 205.
 The designation “Apocrypha” still somewhat escapes scholars’ definition. Scholars agree
that the concept is difficult to define. It is likewise hard to place very diverse writings under
the same umbrella. Different scholars have assessed the Apocrypha in different ways. In the
view of Wilhelm Schneemelcher, who built on the work of Edgar Hennecke, New Testament
Apocrypha are defined as “the writings which were excluded from ecclesiastical usage very
early. It occurred to a small extent even before the canon’s completion, at the end of the second
century and in the third century. These writings then continued to have a separate existence
among groups outside the Great Church or again with works which for various motives availed
themselves of the forms and Gattungen of the New Testament, for didactic purposes, for prop-
aganda, or entertainment.” In his view, there was a clear boundary between canonical and apoc-
ryphal writings in Christianity from very early on, when Apocrypha were excluded from ecclesi-
astical use. However, other scholars take the term “apocryphal” as referring to books not
included in the NT canon, a definition that pushes the line of distinction to the time when
the canon was finally established in the fourth century. However, since there was no NT
canon when the earliest of the “apocryphal” texts emerged, it remains unclear how many (if
any) of them were ever conceived explicitly as competitors for inclusion in the NT canon.
Other scholars have a slightly different way of looking at the issue, arguing that the formation
of the NT canon was a process that lasted from the end of the first century until the mid-fourth
century. In this process, several prominent early theologians, including Irenaeus, Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius, had their say about the writings very soon after they ap-
peared. As for terminology, New Testament Apocrypha has been in use for a while but is current-
ly replaced by “Early Christian Apocrypha.” The debate whether to use “New Testament Apoc-
rypha” or “Early Christian Apocrypha” remains open. Tuckett emphasizes that it is challenging
to define “Apocrypha,” as well as to discard the term “NT” and adopt “Early Christian.” In his
view, these terms are prone to change. Some scholars suggest that we should perhaps call apoc-
ryphal literature “early non-canonical Christian literature.” However, the term “apocryphal” in
the sense of “non-canonical” is debatable. Not all non-canonical texts are apocryphal, but all
apocryphal texts are non-canonical. Other scholars have taken a different direction by saying
that the word “apocryphal” first appeared not connected with the canon’s history but in the
Church’s conflict with Gnosticism and other heresies. The linking of the term “apocryphal”
with heresy brought in other interpretations. As a transliteration of the Greek word ἀπόκρυφος,
scholars linked it to the meaning of “secret” or “hidden.” Ehrman notes that contemporary
scholars misleadingly comprehend “Apocrypha” as “hidden books,” either because they con-
tained secret revelations or because they were not meant for general consumption. Βefore the
thirty-ninth Festal Letter of Athanasius from 367 CE, the word “apocryphal” was used for
books with secret teachings. Other scholars think that the adjective “apocryphal” is wrong if
taken in its primary meaning of “hidden.” J. K. Elliott holds that if the meaning of “apocryphal”
is “spurious” and “secondary,” then it may well be allowable. “Unorthodox” and “heretical” are
also to be avoided. The apologist Irenaeus equated “apocryphal” with “false” (νόθος). The con-
viction that “apocryphal” books had a specialized readership consisting of specific circles or
“communities” is nowadays gradually repudiated by scholars, who increasingly hold that
there is nothing to support such views; some books “acclaimed to be apocryphal” were written
for general audiences. Some scholars have argued that apocryphal literature was in danger of
being lost due to being swamped, ignored, and suppressed. These texts were less copied,
read less frequently, and as a result, they were often forfeited or forgotten. Thomas Rosén sim-
ilarly argues that Apocrypha were transmitted secretly in the Slavonic context since they had no
identifiable corpus of texts, separate from canonical literature, but were usually bound together
in manuscripts, despite the attempts of the Church to eradicate the apocryphal writings. Other
scholars think that Apocrypha were the popular literature of the pious for many centuries. Averil
Cameron argues that “even after the acceptance of the canon and their exclusion from it, the
popularity and influence of the apocryphal narratives was so enormous and so widespread at
all levels that they must rank high among the contributors to the early Christian world-view.”
Scott Johnson notes that “the popular apocryphal texts had a defining ‘elasticity’ which largely
helped them survive the attempts to suppress apocryphal literature in subsequent centuries.”
Recently, views have become more nuanced and inclusive. Larry Hurtado holds that “Early
Christian Apocrypha” contain a diversity of texts, some of which linked to dissident, “heretical”
groups and ideas, but also other texts intended to supplement and expand upon early “Ortho-
dox” texts and ideas or to promote a version of Christian edification and perhaps entertainment.
The “Christian Apocrypha” is not a fixed corpus of writings. Based on this, some scholars have
begun to see Apocrypha as complementary to canonical literature. They argue that Apocrypha
about Jesus’ life supplement what was “missing” in the canonical literature. As Averil Cameron
states, “on the level of story, the infancy gospels constitute a world of discourse complementary
to and filling many gaps left blank in the Gospels.” Early Christian Apocrypha expand and elab-
orate the traditions of the “canonical” writings. The latest bid for interpretation comes from
Christopher Tuckett, who adopts the definition by Markschies and Schröter (2012), saying that
“Apocrypha” are the texts which either have the form of biblical texts which became canonical
or tell stories about characters in the biblical texts which became canonical or convey words
purportedly spoken by these characters. In this sense, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is an apoc-
ryphal text that focuses on the main character of the biblical texts – Jesus – while its form may
not be necessarily linked to the genre of “gospel” as in the biblical gospels. See Christopher
Tuckett, “Introduction: What is Early Christian Apocrypha?” in The Oxford Handbook of Early
Christian Apocrypha, eds. Andrew Gregory, and Christopher Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2015): 3 – 12; Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha I, 9 – 14, 78; Jens Schröter, “The
Formation of the New Testament Canon and Early Christian Apocrypha,” in The Oxford Hand-
book of Early Christian Apocrypha, eds. Andrew Gregory, and Christopher Tuckett (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 2015): 167– 184, 167– 8, 183; Péter Tóth, “Way Out of the Tunnel? Three
Hundred Years of Research on the Apocrypha: A Preliminary Approach,” in Retelling the
Bible: Literary, Historical, and Social Contexts, eds. Lucie Doležalová, and Tamás Visi (Frankfurt:
Peter Lang, 2011): 45 – 84, 50 – 57; Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make it
into the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 4; James Keith Elliott, “Mary
in the Apocryphal New Testament,” in Origins of the Cult of the Virgin Mary, ed. Chris Maunder
(London: Burns and Oates, 2008): 57– 70, 57; Larry W. Hurtado, “Who Read Early Christian Apoc-
century, when the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appeared, some church fathers
warned against its contents.²² The majority of their critical remarks about Tho-
mas’ Infancy Gospel’s apocryphal nature refer to the miracles performed by
the child Jesus. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus’ first miracle occurred
in Cana after his baptism (2.11). Many early Christian and medieval writers
used this argument to assert Thomas’ Infancy Gospel’s apocryphal features.
They rejected the miracles of the child Jesus and recommended that one should
avoid reading this text.
Irenaeus of Lyons (180 CE) first criticized the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, be-
cause “Jesus as a child could not know the unknown.”²³ Irenaeus characterized
this story as “apocryphal and spurious” (ἀποκρύφων καὶ νόθων γραφῶν), meant
to “bewilder foolish men.” John Chrysostom (386 – 398) announced in his Homily
17 on John that the miracles of Jesus in this text were false (ψευδῆ).²⁴ In the sev-
rypha?” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, eds. Andrew Gregory, and Chris-
topher Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): 153 – 166, 153 – 155; Kim Haines-Eitzen,
The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 2012); Thomas Rosén, The Slavonic Translation of the Apocryphal Gospel of
Thomas, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Slavica Upsaliensia 39 (Uppsala: Coronet Books
Inc., 1997), 13; James Keith Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament. A Collection of Apocryphal
Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 46 – 47; Averil Ca-
meron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991), 90, 98; Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, “Apocrypha and the Liter-
ary Past in Late Antiquity,” in From Rome to Constantinople: Studies in Honour of Averil Cameron,
eds. Hagit Amirav and Bas ter Haar Romeny (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2007): 47– 66, 47; To-
bias Nicklas, “The Influence of Jewish Scriptures on Early Christian Apocrypha,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, eds. Andrew Gregory, and Christopher Tuckett (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015): 141– 152, 141; Jörg Frey, “Texts about Jesus: Non-canonical Gos-
pels and Related Literature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, eds. Andrew
Gregory, and Christopher Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): 13 – 48, 14– 15, 26;
Christoph Markschies, and Jens Schröter, eds., Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Über-
setzung I. Band: Evangelien und Verwandtes, Teilband 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012); Tony
Burke, and Brent Landau, eds., New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2016), xii; Perkins, “Christology and Soteriology in Apoc-
ryphal Gospels,” 197; Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 18 – 21.
 The overview of these authors is described in detail by Tony Burke. Burke, De infantia Iesu,
3 – 44.
 Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 1.20.1; Dominic J. Unger, and John J. Dillon, tr., St. Irenaeus of
Lyons. Against the Heresies (New York: Newman Press, 1992), 76; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 4.
 “It remains clear that those miracles, which they say are Christ’s childhood deeds, are false.
For if he had begun from his early age to work wonders, neither would John have been ignorant
of him, nor would the multitude have needed a teacher to make him known.” Jacques-Paul
Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca 59 (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1862), 110; Philip
Schaff, ed., Saint Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of John and the Epistle to the Hebrews, A
enth century, Maximus the Confessor was explicit about Thomas’ Infancy Gospel,
referring to the miracles and this text as lying outside the Church’s canon.²⁵
Anastasius of Sinai, a seventh-century monk, held the same view. In his Hodegos
13, he said that the “so-called childhood miracles of Christ were false (ψευδῆ)
and were to be rejected.”²⁶ Again, George Syncellus from Constantinople in the
eighth–ninth century denied the possibility that Jesus performed miracles as a
child.²⁷ Euthymius Zigabenus, in twelfth-century Constantinople, explicitly
called the childhood miracles of Christ “a forgery” (πλάσμα).²⁸
In the West, high and late medieval authors were also critical in various
ways of the apocryphal features of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel, even if many used
it in some form.²⁹ A thirteenth-century Dominican Vincent of Beauvais incorpo-
rated details of the Liber de Infantia salvatoris (IGT) into his pastorally aimed en-
cyclopedia, although he asserted that this text was of unknown authorship and
was dubious (quedam etiam quia de veritate dubitatur).³⁰ Thomas Aquinas noted
that the Liber de infantia salvatoris contradicted the Scripture and was apocry-
phal; it could not be used as an authority (apocryphus).³¹ He harshly condemned
it.³² The fifteenth-century French theologian Jean Gerson went even further; he
recommended that it be burned.³³
Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church 14 (Grand Rapids:
Eerdman, 1975), 60; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 6.
 Michel van Esbroeck, ed. and tr., Maxime le Confesseur. Vie de la Vierge 479 (Leuven: Peeters,
1986), 52, 19 – 53, 8; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 8.
 Jacques-Paul Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca 89 (Paris: J.-P. Migne,
1865), 229C; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 9 – 10.
 William Adler, and Paul Tuffin, tr., The Chronography of George Synkellos. A Byzantine
Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 385 –
386; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 12– 13.
 Jacques-Paul Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca 129 (Paris: J.-P. Migne,
1864), 1153B; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 14.
 As Burke previously provided an overview of the Greek apologists who commented on the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Mary Dzon has supplied a similar list of the Western authors. See
Mary Dzon, “Cecily Neville and the Apocryphal Infantia salvatoris in the Middle Ages,” Mediae-
val Studies 71 (2009): 235 – 300, 274– 289.
 Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum quadruplex sive Speculum maius: naturale, doctrinale, morale,
historiale 6.64– 66 (1624, Reprint: Graz, 1964); Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 279 – 280. The title Liber de
infantia salvatoris, as in the Gelasian Decree, probably refers to Thomas’ Infancy Gospel, but
there is no scholarly consensus. Dzon and Beyers agree that it is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 268, n. 107; Rita Beyers, “The Transmission of Marian Apocrypha in the
Latin Middle Ages,” Apocrypha 23 (2012): 117– 140, 119.
 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 3.36.4; Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 282.
 Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 283.
These authors’ opinions were disregarded in the Middle Ages, considering

that Thomas’ Infancy Gospel was copied in manuscripts in various cultural con-
texts. The text was undoubtedly not suppressed because it was labeled apocry-
phal by prominent ancient and medieval Christian writers. As John McGuckin
states, “texts that are still alive will survive any degree of official disapproval
as long as there is a community ready to invest time and money renewing the
literature of a previous age that still seems to it to be relevant and significant.”³⁴
Asking why the Churches did not manage to suppress Apocrypha, Sever Voicu
concludes that attempts to eliminate this literature were mostly occasional
and rarely systematic despite the theoretical condemnations.³⁵ Christian Apocry-
pha were “theoretically forbidden,” but they were used in practice. They could
have been considered “less useful than other readings” for Christians. John
Haughey similarly argues about Apocrypha that “although some patristic au-
thors deride these stories, many of the faithful passed on some of them.”³⁶ Nei-
ther early Christian tradition nor medieval Christianity was restricted at any time
only to those writings that had gained canonical status.³⁷ Jenkins’ book about
“alternative gospels” asserts that they not only survived the canonization proc-
ess but remained influential in the official Church for centuries to come.³⁸
However, in copying apocryphal texts, such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,
“the goal of text-workers was very different from copying authoritative writings;
they were much freer to adapt, update, and refashion their material,” as Baun
notes.³⁹ Various manuscripts and versions of apocryphal texts contain living
texts, which are active historical phenomena in their own right and whose manu-
script histories are complex and unstable.⁴⁰ Apocryphal texts were unconstrain-
ed by linguistic boundaries, easily transmitted, and exposed to textual modifica-
tions. Medieval copyists and narrators were much freer to transform,
 Jean Gerson, “Considérations sur Saint Joseph,” in Œuvres complètes 7: L’Œuvre française
(292 – 339), ed. Palémon Glorieux (Paris: Desclée, 1966): 63 – 94, 76; Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 286.
 John McGuckin, “The Early Cult of Mary and Inter-Religious Contexts in the Fifth-Century
Church,” in Origins of the Cult of the Virgin Mary, ed. Chris Maunder (London: Burns and
Oates, 2008): 1– 22, 3 – 4.
 Voicu, “Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha,” 402.
 John C. Haughey, “Christ Child: Cultural Memories of a Young Jesus (Book Review),” Theo-
logical Studies 76, No. 1 (2015): 209 – 210.
 Schröter, “The Formation of the New Testament Canon and Early Christian Apocrypha,” 184.
 Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ.
 Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium, 35.
 See Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium, 35; see also Alger Nick Doane, “The Ethnography of
Scribal Writing and Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Scribe as Performer,” Oral Tradition 9, No. 2 (1994):
420 – 439.
appropriate, and reformulate their material. Indeed, Apocrypha may have had
more exciting afterlives than canonical texts (from a contemporary scholarly per-
spective) because of their diverse appearances. Tony Burke argues that apocry-
phal Christian texts were more prone to change and expansion over the centuries
than the canonical texts, which achieved a measure of rigidity early on.⁴¹
How should such textual variations be assessed, scholarly speaking? In the
words of Mark Amodio and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, textual variations gen-
erally ought not to be judged based on how greatly they diverge from some
romanticized, idealized, and conveniently absent Ur-text, but rather seen as
the evidence of a performance of a specialized kind, which in its physicality
and uniqueness is an analog to oral performance.⁴² In the view of Alger Nick
Doane, variations are to be seen as the “textual sites where we can discern
that a scribe has contributed on his own to a basically fluid text from an indef-
inite store of memorial possibilities, substituting not necessarily his own for
the ‘author’s reading,’ but at least probably departing from his immediate ex-
emplar.”⁴³ In other words, textual variations are valuable for communicating
information about the setting in which they emerged, about the process of
their copying in manuscripts, or even scribes who copied and audiences who
read or listened to texts.
The fact that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, as many other texts from Early
Christianity, lacks information about its author, original version, and original
language impelled scholars to investigate these critical questions, which domi-
nated scholarship for a while.⁴⁴ Scholars had no way of knowing how to ap-
proach such a text, where an author is unknown, and an original form is difficult
to place in time and space. Their main idea was to search anew for the lost Ur-
text. In this book, I aim to shed new light on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, de-
spite the hindrances: the absence of information about the original language,
 Tony Burke, “‘Social Viewing’ of Children in the Childhood Stories of Jesus,” in Children in
Late Ancient Christianity, eds. Cornelia B. Horn, and Robert R. Phenix (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2009): 29 – 43, 31.
 Mark C. Amodio, and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Introduction,” in Unlocking the Word-
hord: Anglo-Saxon Studies in Memory of Edward B. Irving Jr, eds. Mark C. Amodio, and Katherine
O’Brien O’Keeffe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003): 3 – 13, 6.
 Alger Nick Doane, “‘Beowulf’ and Scribal Performance,” In Unlocking the Wordhord: Anglo-
Saxon Studies in Memory of Edward B. Irving, Jr, eds. Mark C. Amodio, Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003): 62– 75, 68.
 We lack information about the original language and the original textual form of this anon-
ymous text, although the principal scholarly view is that the original language is Greek. See
Burke, De infantia Iesu, 173 – 220.
original form, authorship, and the apocryphal characteristics of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas, thanks to which most scholars have turned their back on it thus
far. My main preoccupation concerns the redactions of the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas in the manuscripts.
Thus, this book addresses variations: variations in manuscripts, genre, tex-
tual and contextual variations. The textual forms of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
are studied in the historical and cultural contexts and in connection to the en-
vironments in which they were copied and used.⁴⁵ How have different medieval
communities molded this text in manuscripts in various environments? What did
the text come to mean to different medieval groups who read and used it? Do the
variations open a view onto various contexts? Do they reveal the attitudes and
worldviews of the groups that transmitted and used this text? Were these
ideas adopted from earlier textual forms, or were they the very own ideas of
these groups? This book aims to trace and analyze Thomas’ Infancy Gospel’s af-
terlife and evolution from Late Antiquity until the late Middle Ages in various
medieval settings.
The work on manuscripts is crucial in the study of transmission and textual
variations. I engage closely with manuscripts and consider them an essential
part of my research. The text’s distribution in the manuscripts is uneven over
time. Only their small number have been preserved from the fifth to the eleventh
centuries. According to the extant material, this text’s production and copying
apparently increased in the high Middle Ages, with a peak of production in
the fifteenth century.⁴⁶ Whether the number of extant manuscripts of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas from a particular period implies the text’s popularity at that
time and place deserves further scholarly discussion.⁴⁷
Studying the use of Apocrypha from the fifth to the sixteenth centuries is un-
doubtedly a desideratum in the scholarship. Jenkins emphasizes that many
scholars working on “alternative” scriptures focus on the “early church” from
the first four centuries and pay little attention to the post-400 era.⁴⁸ In his
 In support of this approach, see Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 32: Aasgaard suggests that
“each manuscript, variant, and version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas can be studied in their
own right and on their own terms.”
 See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 127– 171.
 Some scholars have discussed the links between the number of extant manuscripts and the
popularity of texts. See Ingela Nilsson, Erotic Pathos, Rhetorical Pleasure: Narrative Technique
and Mimesis in Eumathios Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysminias (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis
Upsaliensis, 2001), 13, n. 15; Panagiotis Agapitos, “Narrative, Rhetoric, and ‘Drama’ Rediscov-
ered: Scholars and Poets in Byzantium Interpret Heliodorus,” in Studies in Heliodorus, ed. Ri-
chard Hunter (Cambridge: The Cambridge Philological Society, 1998): 125 – 156, 126 – 127.
 Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 18.
view, the absence of secondary literature on the post-400 era leads one to think
that the “alternative” scriptures must have disappeared or faded into insignifi-
cance after this time.⁴⁹ Even if Jenkins’ statement does not entirely correspond
to the growing number of recent works written on post-400 Apocrypha, he is un-
doubtedly correct to demand a higher number of studies in this field.⁵⁰
To target the variations of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I here discuss the
questions related to the manuscript collections in which the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas appears, its genre and position in the manuscripts, the questions regard-
ing the textual variation, and the social, cultural, and religious implications that
this text reflects in the different manuscripts. The interpretative framework of
New Philology, which evaluates manuscripts within their places of production
and copying regardless of the original provenance of texts, is the most fitting
frame for this material. I will explain it in more detail below.
Studying manuscripts brings in the questions of physical settings in which
the text was copied and used. Where were the manuscripts copied? Was their
production conducted in monastic or secular contexts? Further, the text of Tho-
mas’ Infancy Gospel is bound together with other texts in the manuscripts. Texts
sometimes appeared in separate libelli in the Middle Ages; however, more com-
monly, they were placed in manuscripts where the framework of the manuscript
contents determined their function. What kind of manuscripts contained this
text? With what other texts was this text bound? What do the contents tell us
about the use of the manuscript collections? Answering such questions provides
an understanding of the perceptions and attitudes towards the text in different
settings.
Sometimes, the manuscripts were compiled based on genre or according to
what was understood to be their texts’ central theme. Thomas’ Infancy Gospel
was of diverse genres and had a different primary focus in different manuscripts.
Genre and focus may explain how Thomas’ Infancy Gospel in these manuscripts
should be understood. These questions and concerns are the subject of Chapter 2.
In this chapter, I use a range of manuscripts from various backgrounds (Latin,
Greek, Church Slavonic, Georgian, and Syriac). Their assortment is discussed fur-
ther below.
The next point: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas that we have in front of us is a
combination of oral and written elements noted down in folios. If we consider
that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas begins with the episodes Prologue (1) and
 Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 18.

 See, e. g., Burke and Landau, New Testament Apocrypha; see also Annette Yoshiko Reed,
“The Afterlives of New Testament Apocrypha,” Journal of Biblical Literature 134, No. 2 (2015):
401– 425, 406.
Cleaning of Pools (2.1) – where Jesus plays by a rushing stream, forms the pools,
and cleans them – the text covers from four up to twenty-two folios in the manu-
scripts.⁵¹ The episodes in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are at times differently
aligned in the manuscripts. Occasionally, a different selection of episodes is
made. The text’s opening and ending are also not fixed; sometimes, the text ap-
pears in combination with other texts, with which it forms a cycle.
In literary studies, texts as literary compositions are analyzed according to
literary and genre rules. The text always has a specific inner dynamic that utterly
depends on literary mechanisms. It is textual criticism’s task to uncover all the
text’s multiple layers in its numerous varieties. The manuscript forms of the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas diverge in structure, the order of episodes, and the du-
ration of individual episodes. Above all, its varieties from manuscript to manu-
script reveal that they may have been exposed to different influences. These
concerns are addressed in Chapter 3. This chapter focuses on the textual forms
in the manuscripts from the eleventh to the fifteenth century written in Latin,
Greek, and Church Slavonic.
In the further analysis of the same body of material, I study in Chapter 4 how
this text in the various manuscripts reflects the social, cultural, and religious
background of their authors, scribes, and would-be audiences. The different tex-
tual forms build upon the mentality of their scribes and would-be readers and
listeners. They are adjusted when translated or copied. More precisely, I follow
up the question of whether childhood, everyday, and family life as depicted in
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are represented differently in different manuscripts
and what it means in the context of our understanding of children, everyday and
family life in various medieval milieus.
Scholars have already acknowledged that childhood may have differed in
differing locations throughout history.⁵² I have anticipated that the text in its de-
 I analyze the structure of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in more detail in Chapter 3. The com-
plete structure of IGT – the nineteen-episode form – as present in some manuscripts and known
from two editions, Burke’s and Tischendorf’s, is used here regarding its numeration to mark the
single episodes for the sake of a better overview. The titles of the episodes are mostly taken from
Aasgaard. The entire structure goes as follows: Prologue (1), Pools (2.1) Sparrows (2.2– 2.5),
Annas’ Son (3), Careless Boy (4), Joseph’s Rebuke (5), First Teacher (6 – 8): Dialogue (6), Lament
(7), Exclamation (8), Zeno (9), Injured Foot (10), Water in Cloak (11), Harvest (12), Carpenter (13),
Second Teacher (14), Third Teacher (15), James’ Snakebite (16), Dead Baby (17), Dead Laborer
(18), Jerusalem (19). See Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 246 – 7; Burke, De infantia Iesu,
340 – 389; Constantin von Tischendorf, Evangelia apocrypha, editio altera (Leipzig: Hermann
Mendelssohn, 1876), 140 – 157.
 See Roy Lowe, “Childhood through the Ages,” in Introduction to Early Childhood Studies, eds.
Trisha Maynard, and Nigel Thomas (London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2004): 65 – 74, 68.
scription of the childhood of Jesus brings in some ideas and attitudes about chil-
dren, family, and everyday life, given that it is one of the rare early Christian
texts that depict childhood in such detail. There is a caveat, namely, that it is
the childhood of Jesus, a divine figure. It is likely that the description of his
childhood, to some extent, dogmatically pertains to the figure of Jesus as Christ
rather than represents ordinary children. Even if this is true, I shall argue that
the understanding of Jesus’ divine nature by the other characters (of the story)
in many textual forms of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is diminished for the
sake of presenting him as an ordinary child.⁵³
The fact that the primary purpose of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was not to
talk about children, everyday, and family life in any of the environments allows
us to glean into what it tells us about these topics. The text had differing purpos-
es in the manuscripts in which it appeared, depending on the context. Jesus is a
child in this text, but it is still Jesus, not children that readers and listeners wish-
ed to read and listen about. It is why we can sift the ideas and attitudes about
children, everyday and family life through these lines as a reflection of the men-
talities of their authors, scribes, and audiences.
Thus, in the study of various genres, styles, voices, periods, and purposes of
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I analyze the manuscripts in which it appears, as
well as its textual variance and textual fixity, but I also situate the text in the his-
torical and cultural contexts. Furthermore, I analyze its potential to reveal some-
thing about the perceptions and attitudes towards children, childhood, family,
and everyday life in the various medieval environments. Some elements certainly
have no local interferences, but they present only the contents correctly transmit-
ted from other environments and earlier periods. I am, however, particularly in-
terested in those elements where local beliefs, practices, and preferences had
their say in the text. Such an approach that focuses on this text’s manuscripts,
particularly in this combination of manuscripts and languages, has not been ap-
plied to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in earlier research, which was in large part
dominated by very different preoccupations.
It is interesting to observe the local meddling in Christian texts in general,
not only this one. As Baun pointed out, such freedom to intervene during the
transmission was not shared by all genres of Christian literature. It was restricted
first and foremost to anonymous literature and consequently to Apocrypha. In
 See Mary Dzon, “Boys Will Be Boys: The Physiology of Childhood and the Apocryphal Christ
Child in the Later Middle Ages,” Viator 42, No. 1 (2011): 179 – 225, 184. Dzon argues here that there
is a possibility that the way medieval people thought about the nature of children had an impact
on the reception of apocryphal legends that portray the boy Jesus as a real child who does things
that are both childlike and childish.
this sense, it was the fact that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was anonymous and
apocryphal that led to its exposure to changes and revisions. Even the promi-
nence that Jesus, the protagonist of the story, enjoyed in Christianity could not
save it from such changes.
In this study, I draw the textual forms directly from manuscripts. Such an
interpretative framework pertains to “New (Material) Philology,” which I briefly
mentioned above. This framework appreciates the diversities among the manu-
script versions and evaluates a source based on its form within a particular set-
ting. New (Material) Philology is a philological school that studies the history of
a period or a group by using the written sources that appeared as cultural prod-
ucts of the same period and the same group to understand their perspectives on
their history. This framework is beneficial in studying anonymous texts, where
the origin and the original version of texts are disregarded, and texts are studied
in the contexts where they were utilized.
New Philology initially emerged within the theoretical framework of Colonial
Studies in the 1970s, more precisely through studying colonized people’s history
by using their written sources.⁵⁴ According to Matthew Restall, in New Philology,
the study of native language sources is crucial to understanding indigenous so-
cieties. The school is thus both a model and a method; “new” refers to the inno-
vation both in emphasizing the role of natives in Colonial history through the
study of native language sources (the model) and in analyzing those sources phi-
lologically (the method).⁵⁵
 See James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Con-
querors of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972); James Lockhart, Beyond the Codices: The
Nahua View of Colonial Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); James Lockhart,
Nahuatl in the Middle Years: Language Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period (Ber-
keley: University of California Press, 1976); James Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest
Central Mexican History and Philology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); James Lock-
hart, Of Things of the Indies: Essays Old and New in Early Latin American History (Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press, 1999); James Lockhart, Lisa Sousa, and Stephanie Wood, eds., Sources and
Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistory (The Wired Humanities Project
at the University of Oregon, 2007); Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Matthew Restall, and Amara Solari, 2012 and the End of
the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse (Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Pub-
lishers, 2011); Matthew Restall, The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yu-
catan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); Matthew Restall, “A History of the New Phi-
lology and the New Philology in History,” Latin American Research Review 38, No. 1 (2003):
113 – 134; Susan Schroeder, Chimalpahin and the Kingdoms of Chalco (Tucson: University of Ari-
zona Press, 1991).
 Restall, “A History of the New Philology,” 113 – 134.
In Medieval Studies, New Philology has been employed since the beginning
of the 1990s, emerging first within medieval French and Norse Studies. It was
elaborated in Norse Studies by Matthew Driscoll.⁵⁶ A special issue of Speculum
in 1990 was dedicated to New Philology.⁵⁷ Bernard Cerquiglini’s remark that
“medieval writing does not produce variants,” but that it is in itself a variance
has been commonly repeated.⁵⁸ Medieval culture did not just live with diversity;
it cultivated it.⁵⁹
Another prominent scholar, Siegfried Wenzel, suggests that we can no longer
consider codex as a mere receptacle, preserving the text under investigation. In-
stead, a modern editor must look at the manuscript “holistically” as a total unit
to investigate its physical makeup, composition, and history.⁶⁰ As suggested by
Stephen Nichols, one appropriately “postmodern gesture” of New Philology is
the return to manuscripts, not merely as sources of editions, but also as “the
original texts.”⁶¹
New Philology now emerges in medieval studies as a valuable groundwork
for studying manuscript varieties. This approach has been encouraged by a gen-
eral instability and differences between medieval textual versions. Arguing that
“variation is what medieval text is about,” it relies on the premise that it is pos-
sible to have as many versions of a text as we have manuscripts.⁶² The versions
speak to the specific backgrounds and contexts of their use. New Philology per-
ceives literary works as components inseparable from their materiality. As Dris-
coll notes, “one needs to look at ‘the whole book,’ and the relationships between
the text and the form and layout, illumination, rubrics, and other paratextual
features, and, not least, the surrounding texts.”⁶³ Such an approach allows us
 Matthew James Driscoll, “The Words on the Page: Thoughts on Philology, Old and New,” in
Creating the Medieval Saga: Versions, Variability, and Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse Saga
Literature, eds. Judy Quinn, and Emily Lethbridge (Odense: University Press of Southern Den-
mark, 2010): 85 – 102; Matthew James Driscoll, “The Long and Winding Road: Manuscript Cul-
ture in Late Pre-modern Iceland,” in White Field, Black Seeds: Nordic Literacy Practices in the
Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Anna Kuismin, and Matthew James Driscoll (Helsinki: Finnish Lit-
erature Society, 2013): 50 – 63.
 Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 65, No. 1 (1990).
 Stephen G. Nichols, “The New Philology: Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,”
Speculum 65, No. 1 (1990): 1– 10, 1; Bernard Cerquiglini, Eloge de la variante. Histoire critique de
la philologie, Collection: Des Travaux (Paris: Seuil, 1989).
 Nichols, “The New Philology,” 9.
 Siegfried Wenzel, “Reflections on (New) Philology,” Speculum 65, No. 1 (1990): 11– 18, 14.
 Suzanne Fleischman, “Philology, Linguistics, and the Discourse of the Medieval Text,” Spec-
ulum 65, No.1 (1990): 19 – 37, 25.
 Driscoll, “The Words on the Page,” 90.
 Driscoll, “The Words on the Page,” 90.
to comprehend how a text was used, performed, understood, or enacted as a sep-

arate unit or part of the whole manuscript. A book is a physical object. It goes as
the physical object through a series of processes in which a potentially large
number of people are involved. Codices and manuscripts derive from processes
that are socially, economically, and intellectually determined. Such factors influ-
ence the form of the text and are part of its meaning.
In New Philology, texts of any manuscript are first and foremost witnesses to
the time in which the manuscript was copied rather than when texts were orig-
inally written. This framework is generally skeptical towards injecting editorial
interpretations into the text that destroy the individual manuscript’s integrity
and damage the data’s reliability. New Philology suggests a faithful rendering
of the text exactly as found in the manuscript, without emendations. In New Tes-
tament studies, one of the most significant contributions in the last fifty years
has been the realization that the focus on the “original text” has overlooked
the value of variant forms.⁶⁴
Following New Philology, the texts of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel published in
the Appendix are transcribed as they appear in the manuscripts, without any
spelling and grammar adjustments or corrections according to a “classical”
model.
Besides New Philology as an overarching framework, several other ap-
proaches are utilized here. In Chapter 2, I employ the studies of medieval “mis-
cellany” manuscripts, which have attracted scholarly attention during the last
decades.⁶⁵ The miscellanies are collections that contain various works by differ-
ent authors compiled together in manuscripts. The study of miscellanies repre-
sents the framework of this chapter since the manuscripts containing the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas are, for the most part, miscellanies.
This trend in scholarship has developed through the work of Stephen G.
Nichols, Siegfried Wenzel, Lucie Doležalová, Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Andrew Tay-
 Bart D. Ehrman, “The Text as Window: New Testament Manuscripts and the Social History of
Early Christianity,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, eds. Bart D. Ehr-
man, and Michael W. Holmes (Leiden: Brill, 2013): 803 – 830, 803.
 See Edoardo Crisci, and Oronzo Pecere, eds., Il codice miscellaneo. Tipologie e funzioni. Atti
del Convegno internazionale Cassino 14 – 17 maggio 2003 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004); Ria Jansen-
Sieben, and Hans Van Dijk, eds., Codices miscellanearum. Brussels Van Hulthem Colloquium 1999
– Colloque Van Hulthem, Bruxelles 1999, Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique 60 (Brusells: Bib-
liothèque royale de Belgique, 1999); Lucie Doležalová, and Kimberly Rivers, eds., Medieval
Manuscript Miscellanies: Composition, Authorship, Use (Krems: Institut für Realienkunde des Mit-
telalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 2013).
lor, Eva Nyström, and others.⁶⁶ Their debates evolved around the concept of mis-
cellanies and the terminology used in naming them.⁶⁷ The term “miscellany” par-
tially implies that there is no specific organizational principle in a manuscript. In
the view of some scholars, the term miscellany “does little to address the dynam-
ics of individual examples and sheds little light on the relationship of the texts to
their codicological context.”⁶⁸ The concern is that the term is misleading and
suggests an arbitrary organization of the manuscript contents in which there
may be a clear organizing principle.⁶⁹ Siegfried Wenzel argues that it is necessary
to search for a better term than “miscellany.”⁷⁰ An alternative term is “antholo-
gy,” which implies a specific organization. Anthologies are understood to have
organizational principles and more sophisticated aims. However, Julia Boffey
points out the uncertainty of “where an anthology, a miscellany, or even simply
a compilation begins and ends.”⁷¹
 Lucie Doležalová, “Multiple Copying and the Interpretability of Codex Contents: ‘Memory
Miscellanies’ Compiled by Gallus Kemli (1417– 1480/1) of St. Gall,” in Medieval Manuscript Mis-
cellanies: Composition, Authorship, Use, eds. Lucie Doležalová, and Kimberly Rivers (Krems: In-
stitut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 2013): 139 – 165; Stephen G.
Nichols, and Siegfried Wenzel, eds., The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Mis-
cellany (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Stephen Kelly, and John J.
Thompson, eds., Imagining the Book (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); Andrew Taylor, Textual Situa-
tions: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2002); Doležalová and Rivers, Medieval Manuscript Miscellanies; Greti Dinkova-Bruun,
“Medieval Miscellanies and the Case of Manuscript British Library, Cotton Titus D.XX,” in Medi-
eval Manuscript Miscellanies: Composition, Authorship, Use, eds. Lucie Doležalová, and Kimberly
Rivers (Krems: Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 2013): 14– 33;
Eva Nyström, Containing Multitudes: Codex Upsaliensis Graecus 8 in Perspective, Acta Universi-
tatis Upsaliensis, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia 11 (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 2009).
 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book; Judith Herrin, A Medieval Miscellany (London: Weiden-
feld and Nicolson, 1999); Margaret Wade Labarge, A Medieval Miscellany (Ottawa: Carleton Uni-
versity Press, 1997); Kelly and Thompson, Imagining the Book; Taylor, Textual Situations; Eric H.
Reiter, “The Reader as Author of the User-Produced Manuscript: Reading and Rewriting Popular
Latin Theology in the Late Middle Ages,” Viator 27 (1996): 151– 170.
 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 3.
 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 3.
 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 7.
 Julia Boffey, “Short Texts in Manuscript Anthologies: The Minor Poems of John Lydgate in
Two Fifteenth-Century Collections,” in The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval
Miscellany, eds. Stephen G. Nichols, and Siegfried Wenzel (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of
Michigan Press, 1996): 69 – 82, 82.
Barbara Shailor has proposed that “miscellaneous” manuscripts may not be

as mixed or diverse as they appear at first sight.⁷² In her view, miscellaneous
manuscripts were seldom miscellaneous for the audiences and individuals
who produced, read, and used them. Labeling them as such reveals our inability
to understand the manuscripts in their immediate cultural context.⁷³
Further, several recent scholarly works in this field have discussed the “non-
autonomy” of medieval texts within the manuscript contents. These studies
maintain that texts’ meaning may be altered in a manuscript by the presence
of other texts.⁷⁴ In manuscript miscellanies, texts do not necessarily appear ac-
cidentally and autonomously next to one another.⁷⁵ Diana Müller argues that in-
dividual texts take on new meanings when transmitted in the company of related
texts.⁷⁶ The meaning of a text changes depending on which other texts it is
placed next to.
A similar pattern can be applied to genres. The manuscripts’ texts may have
been arranged according to what texts medieval scribes and copyists understood
to belong to the same genre. In this way, the genre could play a role as an essen-
tial manuscripts’ organizing principle. Simultaneously, a single text may em-
brace various genres depending on the manuscripts in which it is placed. Schol-
ars have thus far contributed to the subject of ancient and medieval genres in
many textual case studies. In my view, we should liberate ourselves from the
idea of a preconceived, fixed textual genre and instead explore the contexts of
these texts (for example, in manuscripts).⁷⁷
The question of genre is fascinating when studied along with textual revi-
sions. According to some scholars, not all the genres of medieval literature
 Barbara A. Shailor, “A Cataloger’s View,” in The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Me-
dieval Miscellany, eds. Stephen G. Nichols, and Siegfried Wenzel (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Univer-
sity of Michigan Press, 1996): 153– 167.
 Shailor, “A Cataloger’s View,” 167.
 Diana Müller, “Non-autonomous Texts: On a Fifteenth-Century German Gregorius Manu-
script (Constance, City Archive, Ms. A I 1),” in Medieval Manuscript Miscellanies: Composition,
Authorship, Use, eds. Lucie Doležalová, and Kimberly Rivers (Krems: Institut für Realienkunde
des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 2013): 84– 101.
 Müller, “Non-autonomous Texts,” 84.
 Müller, “Non-autonomous Texts,” 84.
 See, e. g., Tomas Hägg, The Art of Biography in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012); Michal Beth Dinkler, “Genre Analysis and Early Christian Martyrdom Narratives: A
Proposal,” in Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins At Seventy, eds. Joel Baden, Hindy Naj-
man, and Eibert Tigchelaar (Leiden: Brill, 2016): 314– 336; Maureen Barry McCann Boulton, Sa-
cred Fictions of Medieval France: Narrative Theology in the Lives of Christ and the Virgin, 1150 –
1500 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), 15 – 16.
were uniformly reworked in the Middle Ages. The tendency to rewrite works into
a high style was not the trend of all of Byzantine literature – for example, we do
not find this tendency in historiography.⁷⁸ Baun argues that Apocrypha were
transmitted with extensive adjustments and revisions in the Middle Ages,
while the works of the authoritative figures such as Plato, the Apostle Paul, or
the Church fathers were copied faithfully and with greater attention to detail.⁷⁹
Some scholars argue that genre is determined by the interaction between
words on the page and readers’ community.⁸⁰ It is not an author but the commu-
nity of readers who decide about the genre of texts. A text means what a com-
munity of readers permits it to mean. The authorial intention has very little to
do with this. Such an understanding of genre allows the same text to be inter-
preted to be of different genres in different communities. Anna Taylor argues
that genre ideas are culturally based and cannot be applied across times and cul-
tures.⁸¹
In Chapter 2, I also discuss palimpsests and composite manuscripts in which
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was placed. These two codicological features be-
tray a great deal about the attitudes towards the text. Palimpsests evidence
the erasure of texts, which were scraped or washed off. The same folios were
reused for another document. Today, advanced technological methods allow
us to reconstruct texts erased at some point in time. Erasure could signify neg-
ligence, irrelevance, oblivion, prohibition, and other dissenting notions that
qualify a text to be of secondary importance. However, a necessity could have
also emerged to replace a less relevant text with a more important one. The era-
sure questions – why a certain text was erased and what other text it gave space
to – inevitably occur when we study palimpsests. Another equally intriguing
question, while not easily answerable, is who did the erasure.
 Ihor Ševčenko, “Levels of Style in Byzantine Prose,” Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinis-
tik 31/1 (1981): 289 – 312, 301. For the views that argue in favor of the pervasive and omnipresent
rewriting activity performed on various genres, including historiography, see Stavroula Constan-
tinou, “Metaphrasis: Mapping Premodern Rewriting,” in Metaphrasis: A Byzantine Concept of Re-
writing and Its Hagiographical Products, eds. Stavroula Constantinou and Christian Høgel (Lei-
den: Brill, 2020): 3 – 60, 9 – 10; Réka Forrai, “Rewriting: A modern theory for a premodern
practice,” Renæssanceforum. Tidsskrift for Renæssanceforskning 14 (2018): 25 – 49, 35.
 Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium, 35.
 K. L. Noll, “The Evolution of Genre in the Hebrew Anthology,” in Early Christian Literature
and Intertextuality I: Thematic Studies, eds. Craig A. Evans, and H. Daniel Zacharias (New
York: T&T Clark, 2009): 10 – 23, 10.
 Anna Taylor, “Hagiography and Early Medieval History,” Religion Compass 7, No. 1 (2013):
1– 14, 3.
Composite manuscripts consist of libelli, which independently existed before

they were bound together in manuscripts. The binding should always be contex-
tualized in the time when it occurred. Greti Dinkova-Bruun calls such manu-
scripts “secondary miscellanies.”⁸² She emphasizes that these are codices con-
taining various parts written at different times by different scribes, which did
not originally belong together but were bound within the same covers later.⁸³
Concerning miscellany manuscripts, there is always a question of whether the
individual elements make a coherent composition and interact in a meaningful
way or present unrelated sections. At times such adjoining occurred randomly.
Jason O’Rourke discusses the scribal methodology in assembling manu-
scripts and collecting booklets (libelli) later merged in composite manuscripts.⁸⁴
He suggests that it is difficult to look into a composite manuscript for a system in
the texts’ assembling. We should observe separate libelli rather than manuscripts
as wholes. It is so because libelli could have been in circulation long before the
composite manuscripts were compiled. Libelli were less expensive than manu-
scripts. The amount of time needed for a single scribe to produce a libellus
was considerably lesser than the time required to create a whole manuscript.⁸⁵
Libelli had a separate life before they joined composite manuscripts. Binding li-
belli into a larger whole somewhat distorts our perception of the manuscripts as
the products of the “large-scale forward planning.”⁸⁶ Even if we think of manu-
scripts in general and composite manuscripts as products carefully and meticu-
lously planned, it appears that their binding, particularly of “secondary miscel-
lanies,” was sometimes conducted in ways that are difficult to comprehend.
Unlike libelli, manuscripts with the set contents required a considerable
amount of resources. The written sources had to be available at the time of
the manuscripts’ copying. Unavailable sources required traveling, possibly to dis-
tant places. It is always a question whether coherent miscellany collections were
compiled based on available sources or the ordering and traveling were included
in the process. All these issues influence our knowledge of the texts’ importance,
their use, and the settings in which they appeared.
 Dinkova-Bruun, “Medieval Miscellanies and the Case of Manuscript British Library,” 14– 33.
 Dinkova-Bruun, “Medieval Miscellanies and the Case of Manuscript British Library,” 14– 33,
15. Unlike these, “primary miscellanies” present compilations created from the beginning with
an overarching idea and a vision of their purpose. Their contextualization is unproblematic.
 Jason O’Rourke, “Imagining Book Production in Fourteenth-Century Herefordshire: The
Scribe of British Library, MS Harley 2253 and his ‘Organizing Principles’,” in Imagining the
Book, eds. Stephen Kelly, and John J. Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005): 45 – 60, 53.
 O’Rourke, “Imagining Book Production,” 53.
 O’Rourke, “Imagining Book Production,” 53.
In Chapter 3, I combine the methodological framework of narratology with

New Philology. I analyze textual varieties with the help of Gérard Genette’s struc-
tural narratology. Genette is one of the initiators of structural narratology. When
it comes to the applicability of structural narratology in interpreting the works of
ancient and medieval literature, Genette’s work comes in handy. Several publi-
cations of structuralist studies of hagiography have shown the convenience of
this approach.⁸⁷ A large amount of ancient and medieval literature still awaits
analysis concerning their structure. Ever since it was elaborated, narratology
has been used to study biblical texts and other early Christian literature.⁸⁸ Schol-
ars affirm that the study of the dynamics of narrative must be high on biblical
scholars’ agenda.⁸⁹
In his study of narrative structures, Genette starts from the narrative. He un-
derstands narrative (among several other definitions) as a statement, a written
discourse that tells about an event or several events.⁹⁰ Narrative equals text.
The story presents narrative contents, i. e., a succession of events, actual or ficti-
tious, that are the narrative discourse subjects.⁹¹
In Chapter 3, I study the structure and textual transformations of Thomas’
Infancy Gospel in the manuscripts. Narrative structure has substantial implica-
tions for the meaning of the narrative.⁹² The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is exam-
ined regarding the order of the episodes and their pseudo-duration. The order of
episodes of this narrative is directly linked to the narrative structure and its
meaning. Order means the sequence in which the specific episodes of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas are arranged. The order is not identical in the various manu-
scripts. The narratological category of order is relevant to the beginning and the
 See e. g., Monique Goullet, and Martin Heinzelmann, eds., La réécriture hagiographique dans
l’Occident médiéval: Transformations formelles et idéologiques (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003).
 See R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel. A Study in Literary Design (Philadel-
phia: Fortress Press, 1987); James L. Resseguie, Narrative Criticism of the New Testament: An In-
troduction (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2005); François Tolmie, Narratology and
Biblical Narratives: A Practical Guide (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2012); Lénart J. de
Regt, Jan de Waard, and Jan P. Fokkelman, eds., Literary Structure and Rhetorical Strategies in
the Hebrew Bible (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1996).
 See Tolmie, Narratology and Biblical Narratives, 1.
 Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1980), 25.
 Genette, Narrative Discourse, 25 – 7.
 Mieke Bal, Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto: Toronto University
Press, 1997), 13.
end of the narrative.⁹³ It complies with the Aristotelian notion that narrative is
defined by having a beginning, a middle, and an end.⁹⁴
Genette studies the order by examining the relations between the time of the
story and the narrative time. He observes the connections between the order of
the events in the story and their narrative arrangement.⁹⁵ Genette calls the for-
mer temporal order, while he calls the latter pseudo-temporal order. I am con-
cerned with pseudo-temporal order. Studying the order consists of paying atten-
tion to the arrangement and place of the episodes in the narrative; some
episodes are present in some textual forms while not in the others.
Genette also studies the connections between the variable duration of events
or story sections and the pseudo-duration (in fact, the text’s length) of their tell-
ing in the narrative.⁹⁶ In his view, these are the connections of speed. The Infancy
Gospel of Thomas contains some sections that could be interpreted by speed.
Speed is the relationship between a temporal dimension and a spatial dimen-
sion, that is, between the story’s duration and the length of the text on a page.
However, my primary focus within duration is on pseudo-duration, or the
length of the text sections. Analyzing pseudo-duration reveals the presence
and absence of the contents in the specific episodes. To study the pseudo-dura-
tion of the episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas means acknowledging that
the individual episodes use more or fewer words in retelling certain events. The
individual sections’ structural analysis and the comparison of these sections’
length regarding the topics they present reveal their focus and the subjects
and ideas emphasized in them.
In addition to pseudo-duration, which defines the folding and unfolding of
narrative sections where the same subject matter is told in more or fewer words,
other aspects of the narrative handling are also relevant here. If we compare
Thomas’ Infancy Gospel in two different manuscripts, much of the two versions
will correspond. Once we look at them for differences, we will turn to the studies
of these relationships among texts which Genette discusses within transtextual-
ity. According to Genette, transtextuality is “all that sets the text in a relation-
ship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts.”⁹⁷ Intertextuality is, accord-
 Irene J. F. de Jong, Narratology and Classics: A Practical Guide (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 87.
 de Jong, Narratology and Classics, 89.
 Genette, Narrative Discourse, 35.
 Genette, Narrative Discourse, 86 – 112.
 Gérard Genette, The Architext: An Introduction (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1992), 83 – 84.
ing to Genette, only a segment of transtextuality.⁹⁸ In comparing the two textual

forms that are expected to resemble each other, their varieties are more signifi-
cant in estimating the specificities of the individual manuscripts.
The varieties are studied here with the aid of one specific aspect of Genette’s
theory, which states that individual episodes are affected by simple reductions
and augmentations, which influence their form and the more sophisticated sub-
stance changes in narratives. Genette discusses two types of transformation:
abridging the text, reduction, and extending, augmentation. ⁹⁹ The reduction
and augmentation mean the production of another text, briefer or longer,
which derives from it, but not without being altered in various ways.¹⁰⁰
Genette makes use of several terms regarding the two categories of reduction
and augmentation. Excision is a cut-off, the simplest version of reduction; it
means simple omitting or subtracting. The most literal way of cutting off is am-
putation. This feature is visible in Thomas’ Infancy Gospel, where one textual
form contains a specific section, and another does not have it. Where excision
presupposes reduction with a moralizing or edifying function, it is called expur-
gation. ¹⁰¹ The second type of reduction is concision, which means narrating in a
more concise style. Concision produces a new text, which does not necessarily
preserve any word of the original text.¹⁰² The third form of reduction is conden-
sation, which is only indirectly related to the text to be reduced. It is mediated by
a mental operation absent from the two other forms of reduction, a sort of auton-
omous synthesis produced from the memory of the body of the text, where every
detail of the text is forgotten, and only the meaning is retained.¹⁰³
Augmentation takes several forms. The extension is augmentation by massive
addition, the simplest form of augmentation.¹⁰⁴ The expansion is an augmenta-
tion of the text by large amounts of new additions but with stylistic embellish-
ments. Finally, utilizing amplification, a text grows in size without necessarily
keeping any of the words previously used; nevertheless, the meaning stays the
same.
 Ingela Nilsson, “The Same Story but Another: A Reappraisal of Literary Imitation in Byzan-
tium,” in Imitatio – Aemulatio – Variatio, eds. Andreas Rhoby, and Elisabeth Schiffer (Vienna:
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010): 195 – 208, 202.
 Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (London: University of Nebraska
Press, 1997), 228.
 Genette, Palimpsests, 229.
 Genette, Palimpsests, 235.
 Genette, Palimpsests, 235.
 Genette, Palimpsests, 238.
 Genette, Palimpsests, 254.
Within this framework, Genette studied the relationships between hyper-

and hypo-texts, the earlier and later dated texts in the transmission. Such a
study presupposes that we have information about the dating of textual forms.
This study is not possible here since the original provenance and the original
composition of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel are unknown. Moreover, it would contra-
dict New Philology, which studies the text in connection to the manuscripts in
which it appears. Accordingly, I go beyond the distinction between hyper- and
hypo-texts and focus only on textual differences. I also do not discuss augmen-
tations and reductions of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel with the implication that one
textual form is earlier than the other. Finally, I do not rely on the studies of ge-
nealogical relationships of this text conducted by previous scholars, where they
claim that one textual form is earlier than the other. The differences that I dis-
cuss do not indicate the relative temporal precedence among the textual forms
but relate only to the manuscripts’ dating.
Chapter 4 starts from the idea that texts reflect their own time’s beliefs and
attitudes. With anonymous texts, which have a complex textual transmission, an
uncertain original language, and multiple varieties in the manuscripts, it is dif-
ficult to identify the time in question. Is it the time when this text was originally
written and translated into different languages or copied in the manuscripts in
later centuries? Such texts contain something of the various stages they have
gone through. They reflect the environments in which they were used, but
they also may preserve ideas originating from their authors to the extent to
which later scribes kept them.
Various persons may have influenced such texts. An author or several au-
thors may have produced an original text. Through the transmission process,
translators may have inserted their ideas. Scribes and copyists as mediators re-
produced this text in manuscripts. They may have attempted to present its epi-
sodes in different ways and intended to make the text more accessible to a con-
temporary audience as a written product. They may also have adjusted the text to
specific agendas or copied it following their previous knowledge, understanding,
experience, or the common understanding of the environment in which they
lived. Scribes and copyists may have been aware of what the intended audiences
of this text would understand best. Thus, they acted as mediators between the
text and the audience. The differences in this text in the manuscripts may reflect
everyday life matters common in specific environments where the text was used.
Therefore, it is not only the author or the audience but also a complex chain of
people, consisting of authors, translators, scribes as mediators, and audiences
that influenced such textual transformations.
In Chapter 4, I approach the textual forms of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel by
searching for words and phrases that describe children, childhood, everyday,
and family life. The different words and phrases referring to these subjects in the
various manuscripts may imply differences in their authors, scribes, and audien-
ces’ social, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Scribes and copyists could have
thought of their would-be audience during the transmission and could have
changed the text according to what their audience would understand best. Alter-
natively, they could have kept the textual layers as they found them, in this way
possibly preserving the remnants of the text left by the authors. The sections re-
lated to children, childhood, family, and everyday life described in the same way
and with the exact words in the different manuscripts are understood as a shared
cultural norm adopted in other realms, a sort of cultural capital faithfully trans-
ferred from one domain to another. However, some depictions of children and
childhood might pertain to the theological understanding of Jesus, which pres-
ents a caveat of this chapter.
The manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are numerous,
and their total number is unknown.¹⁰⁵ The manuscript numbers depend on
the extent of their preservation; we have fewer manuscripts from Late Antiquity
than the later Middle Ages. Dealing with all the manuscripts of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas would be an impossible task.
However, my aim in this book is different. I select among the earliest pre-
served manuscripts those representing different textual variants of Thomas’ In-
fancy Gospel, categorized by previous scholars.¹⁰⁶ The foundational work on dis-
tinguishing the textual variants of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has already been
conducted.¹⁰⁷ My approach to the manuscripts representing different variants is
justified by the expectation to encounter altered texts in such manuscripts. I con-
 The complete presentation of IGT manuscripts (other than Latin) is in Burke, De infantia
Iesu, 127– 171. For Latin manuscripts, see Jan Gijsel, and Rita Beyers, eds., Libri de nativitate Ma-
riae, 1: Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium, textus et commentarius; 2: Libellus de nativitate Mariae, tex-
tus et commentarius (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997).
 As for terminology, I use the term (textual) form most neutrally, meaning a structure that
differs in some/any respect from the other form of the same text. I use the variant to signify a
document belonging to a particular group, a family of manuscripts, which display certain sim-
ilarities and are considered a group by scholars. Aasgaard uses this term in the same sense. On
the other hand, Burke uses the word recension to denote different manuscript families in the
Greek tradition. Aasgaard argues against recension. I borrow the term version from other schol-
ars. For languages other than Greek, Burke uses the word version. Gero uses the word version in
the sense of Aasgaard’s variant and Burke’s recension. To mark the most specific textual form
that appears only in a particular manuscript, I use the word manuscript, meaning a textual
form in a manuscript. See Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 32– 3; Burke, De infantia Iesu;
Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas.”
 See Burke, De infantia Iesu.
sult the earliest manuscripts within a tradition or a particular variant to isolate

them as the textual transmission’s key markers. I focus on complete texts rather
than fragments. My selection of the manuscripts is based on their genealogical
relationships (because the variants used here are connected) and their manu-
script histories of transmission.¹⁰⁸
A more significant portion of attention is given to Latin, Byzantine, and Sla-
vonic manuscripts; less consideration is given to Georgian and Syriac manu-
 The connections of the textual versions of IGT are in scholarship linked to the quest for the
original text. Very soon after the emergence of various manuscripts of this text in different lan-
guages, theories about the genealogical relationships, the original version, and the original lan-
guage began to appear. Against the standard view that Greek was the original language, the idea
of a Syriac origin of this text was supported by Michel Nicolas, Joseph Variot, Benjamin H. Cow-
per, and Paul Peeters. Gero favored Greek as the original language, but he nevertheless held that
the Syriac version preserved the early textual layers better than the Greek variant Ga. Voicu rec-
ognized that shorter versions of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas reflect the earlier versions, espe-
cially Ethiopic and Syriac. At the same time, he also identified the version in the manuscript Sa-
baiticus 259 as a distinct version (Gs) and earlier than the other Greek witnesses. Voicu located
the origin of Lm before the fifth-century palimpsest, which made it the earliest attestation of this
text. In his seminal work, De infantia Iesu, Burke discusses the development of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas, the origins of the text, the transmission, and the history of research. He considers
Greek as the original language of this text. Based on the previous study of Gero, Voicu, and van
Rompay, Burke summarizes genealogical relationships among the textual versions. The closest
correspondence is between the Syriac and Georgian versions of this text. The Latin Lm and Lv
variants and the Irish version all derive from a standard early Latin translation. Burke claims
that the Ethiopic text is too unreliable, and the manuscripts are too late to trust where it departs
from the other versions. Burke supports the short recension theory, according to which the text
closest to an original version must be in some of the short recensions. He admits that the best
witnesses of the original form are not Greek. Among the Greek variants, the Gs variant is closer
to the early versions than Ga and Gd. Burke argues that Gs is the best available witness to an
early form of this text in its original language of composition. Burke presents Georgian, Syriac,
Ethiopic, Latin Lv, and Lm variants as short recensions in his stemma. He included the Greek
variants, the Slavonic versions, and the Lt variant among the extended recensions. Among
them, the most concise is the Gs variant. The addition of some chapters in this text led to Ga,
a Slavonic version, Gd and Lt variants. See B. Harris Cowper, The Apocryphal Gospels and
Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ (London: Williams and Norgate, 1867), 128;
L’Abbé Joseph Variot, Les Évangiles apocryphes. Histoire littéraire, forme primitive, transforma-
tions (Paris: Berche et Tralin, éditeurs, 1878), 46 – 47; Michel Nicolas, Études sur les évangiles
apocryphes (Paris: Michel Levy Frères, 1866), 199, 331; Paul Peeters, Évangiles apocryphes II: L’é-
vangile de l’enfance (Paris: Auguste Picard, 1914), i–lix; Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,”
55 – 57; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 94, 122, 188, 189, 195, 197; Sever J. Voicu, “Notes sur l’histoire du
texte de l’Histoire de l’enfance de Jésus,” Apocrypha 2 (1991): 119 – 132, 130 – 132; Sever Voicu,
“Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha,” 411; Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 8; Sever
J. Voicu, “La tradition latine des Paidika,” Bulletin de l’AELAC 14 (2004): 13 – 24, 15.
scripts, which I examine only regarding their contents. The Latin manuscripts
provide a significant point of departure in my analysis. Their manuscripts’
body is the largest. Further, they display significant differences between the
two main variants. When describing the Latin corpus, Burke differentiates the
main categories as the variants Lv (the earliest Latin variant contained in a pal-
impsest), Lm (early Latin variant), and Lt (late Latin variant).¹⁰⁹ When one casts
a glance at the manuscripts containing the Latin Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the
volume by Jan Gijsel, who described their vast body and probably collected in-
formation about most of them, Burke’s categories seem blurred.¹¹⁰ Both variants
Lm and Lt appear in the manuscripts Gijsel describes; yet, he does not explicitly
state which variant is contained in a manuscript. The variant Lv appears only in
a single fifth-century palimpsest.¹¹¹
When the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appeared in the medieval Latin West (in
both variants Lm and Lt), it commonly arrived within the group of texts called
the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. Scholars have previously defined the Pseudo-Mat-
thew to consist of chapters 1– 17 (a Latin translation of the Greek Protevangelium
of James),¹¹² chapters 18 – 24 (the episodes in Egypt – The Prologue in Egypt),¹¹³
adding several otherwise unattested miracles performed by Jesus on his way to
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 144– 45.

 Gijsel and Beyers, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium.
 The earliest testimony to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears in the manuscript Vienna,
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 563 in the form of a palimpsest (Vienna palimpsest). This
text of the Lv variant containing the early fragments was discovered by Tischendorf and pub-
lished twice in the mid-nineteenth century (from 1851 to 1853) in his Evangelia apocrypha. In
the 1970s, Guy Philippart recovered it from the palimpsest and published it along with the ac-
companying material. Guy Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes latins du Vindobonensis 563
(Ve siècle?) Évangile selon S. Matthieu Évangile de l’Enfance selon Thomas Évangile de Nic-
odème,” Analecta Bollandiana 90, No. 3 – 4 (1972): 391– 411, particularly 406 – 408; Constantin
von Tischendorf, Evangelia apocrypha, editio altera (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1876); Con-
stantin von Tischendorf, De evangeliorum apocryphorum origine et usu: disquisitio historica criti-
ca (Den Haag: Thierry and Mensing, 1851), 214– 15.
 The Protevangelium of James is an early Christian story about the childhood of Mary, Jesus’
mother, probably originally written in Greek. The Protevangelium of James ends with an angel’s
instruction to Joseph to take the mother and the child Jesus and flee to Egypt. The Prologue in
Egypt usually begins at this point. See more in Gijsel and Beyers, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium;
Libellus de nativitate Mariae.
 Enrico Norelli contributed to our knowledge about the Prologue in Egypt in his 2001 article,
concluding that it got attached to IGT in a three-stage process. He set the origin of the story in
post-70 Palestine. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 121– 122; Enrico Norelli, “Gesù ride: Gesù, il maes-
tro di scuola e i passeri. Le sorprese di un testo apocrifo trascurato,” in Mysterium regni, minis-
terium verbi. Scritti in onore di mons. Vittorio Fusco, ed. Ettore Franco (Bologna: Edizioni Deho-
niane, 2001): 653 – 684.
Egypt,¹¹⁴ and the pars altera (episodes 26 – 42, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas).¹¹⁵
The manuscripts demonstrate divergences in the structure of the Gospel of Pseu-
do-Matthew.
The pars altera of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew is nothing else but the Lm
variant of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel. It was considered an original part of the Gos-
pel of Pseudo-Matthew until the mid-twentieth century.¹¹⁶ Gijsel, however, dis-
proved it and omitted the pars altera in his edition of the Pseudo-Matthew. ¹¹⁷ Gij-
sel records the pars altera within the manuscripts of the Pseudo-Matthew, to the
most part. It is not the case with the Lt variant. Burke complains that the Lt var-
iant’s presence is uncertain in these manuscripts. Gijsel sometimes refers to this
variant by different names.¹¹⁸ Three hagiographical numbers mark the Lm var-
iant: BHL 5337, 5339, 5342, which means that it exists in three various forms ac-
cording to the Bollandist denomination. The Lt variant has only one BHL num-
ber, 4151n.
The Pseudo-Matthew gained immense popularity in the medieval West.¹¹⁹
Gijsel reports 196 manuscripts divided into five families (A, P, Q, R, J) that con-
tain the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. ¹²⁰ Based on Burke’s reference to Gijsel’s
work, I counted 76 manuscripts that contain the Lm variant of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas, mainly from the families later in date (Q, R).¹²¹ The majority of these
manuscripts are dated quite late, to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The
 See Pamela Sheingorn, “Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of Jesus,” in The Christ Child
in Medieval Culture: Alpha es et O!, eds. Mary Dzon, and Theresa M. Kenney (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2012): 254– 292, 256. Gijsel argued that a monk living in the West revised the
Protevangelium during the seventh century and added chapters 18 – 24, the miracles of Jesus
in Egypt.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146; Rita Beyers, “Introduction générale aux deux textes édités,” in
Libri de nativitate Mariae. Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium: Textus et commentarius, ed. Jan Gijsel
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1997): 1– 34, 13. The episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are marked
by numbers as in Tischendorf’s edition of this text in the De evangeliorum apocryphorum origine
et usu.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium. Tischendorf’s edition remains the only edition of the
Lm variant, based on the manuscripts Vat. Lat. 4578 from the fourteenth century, Florence, Lau-
renziana, Gaddi 208 from the fourteenth century, and Paris, BnF, lat. 1652, from the fifteenth cen-
tury.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 151, n. 2.
 Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 105.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium. Elliott, for example, says that over 130 manuscripts
contain this text. J. K. Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,” 60.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 147; Beyers mentions that there are approximately 40 manuscripts
of Lm among these. See Beyers, “The transmission of Marian Apocrypha,” 120, n. 17.
rest of the 120 manuscripts described by Gijsel either contain the Lt variant of
Thomas’ Infancy Gospel or do not contain any of these variants. Alternatively,
they combine the Lm with the Lt variant in some of the later manuscripts. The
body of manuscripts described by Gijsel is vast; I did not go beyond the informa-
tion given by Gijsel and Burke in search of additional manuscripts that may con-
tain this text.
Manuscripts containing some form of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew are pre-
served from the eighth century. Scholars argue that the redaction of the Gospel of
Pseudo-Matthew should be dated to approximately this period.¹²² However, the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas as part of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew first appears
in the eleventh-century manuscript, Paris, BnF, lat. 1772, which contains the Lm
variant.¹²³ Unfortunately, the text ends after several episodes. It is analyzed here,
together with the two other early Latin manuscripts, the thirteenth-century
Dijon, Bibl. mun. 38 (20) (Lm),¹²⁴ and the twelfth-thirteenth-century manuscript
 Elliott suggests the eighth or the ninth century, while Rita Beyers dates it from the mid-sixth
century to the last decades of the eighth century. Sheingorn accepted the opinion of Gijsel that a
monk living in the West in the seventh century, with only a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible
and a primitive narrative technique, revised the Protevangelium of James (Chapters 1– 17), and
added chapters 18 – 24. Avner argues that the Pseudo-Matthew was dated to the sixth century.
It was influenced by the Protevangelium of James, the text most likely composed in Syria or
Egypt. Jenkins thinks that it was probably written in the seventh century and integrated the orig-
inal Greek text of the Protevangelium with the stories of Jesus’ infancy, creating a family history
of Jesus’ parents (it is sometimes called Liber de infantia). In his later publication, Elliott argued
that the Pseudo-Matthew originated from the sixth to the seventh century and contained the first
17 chapters close to a Latin version of the Protevangelium of James, and chapters 18 – 24, close to
the Arabic Infancy Gospel. See Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 262, n. 87; Elliott, Apocryphal New Testa-
ment, 86; Beyers, “Introduction gènèrale aus deux textes édités,” 13; Sheingorn, “Reshapings of
the Childhood Miracles of Jesus,” 256; Rina Avner, “The Initial Tradition of the Theotokos at the
Kathisma: Earliest Celebrations and the Calendar,” in The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzanti-
um, eds. Leslie Brubaker, and Marry B. Cunningham (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 9 – 30, 28;
Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 105; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146; Elliott, “Mary in the Apoc-
ryphal New Testament,” 60.
 In Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 129, this manuscript is dated to the end of the elev-
enth century, while Beyers later notes the beginning of the twelfth century (Beyers, “The Trans-
mission of Marian Apocrypha,” 120, n. 16.). Paris 1772 is a parchment codex of 97 folios
(265x160 mm). Philippe Lauer, Bibliothèque nationale. Catalogue général des manuscrits latins
2 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1940), 168, reports 98 folios. Thomas’ Infancy Gospel is on folios
88v-90r, with a distinct title: De infantia domini Jesu Christi postquam reversus est in Galilea de
Egipto.
 It is the earliest manuscript that contains the full text of Lm. Among four thirteenth-century
manuscripts that Gijsel describes to contain the Lm variant of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel, I ob-
tained this manuscript. Among the other three, Madrid, Biblioteca nacional 9783, Londres, Col-
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 288 (Lt variant).¹²⁵ In the analysis of the
manuscript contents in Chapter 2, I make use of six additional manuscripts.¹²⁶
The manuscripts containing one or the other variant of Thomas’ Latin Infan-
cy Gospel (or a mixed variant) within the Pseudo-Matthew emerge in more signif-
icant numbers in the thirteenth century. Ten manuscripts among those described
by Gijsel from the thirteenth century contain the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
Among them, Gijsel reports four that contain the Lm variant.
The Lt variant has caused more confusion among scholars thus far. Accord-
ing to Burke, this later Latin variant has ample untapped manuscript evidence.¹²⁷
Gijsel has not paid particular attention to this variant, while Burke wrote about
Lt without having a precise overview of the material.¹²⁸ Burke stresses that a
lege of Arms, Arundel XXIV, and Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, B III 26, the manuscript
from Madrid contains a mixed Lm and Lt version. Dijon is a parchment codex of 194 folios
(178x130 mm). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is on folios 9v-20r, starting with the opening sen-
tence: Et factum est post regressionem ihesu de egypto. See Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium,
118.
 It is the second earliest manuscript in Gijsel’s corpus that contains the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. The manuscript is a composite parchment compilation (251x185 mm, 124 fol.) of sepa-
rate libelli, written by different scribes at different times and bound together in the thirteenth
century. The libellus, which contains the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, is dated to the thirteenth cen-
tury. The text is on folios 79r-82r and starts without any title. See Montague Rhodes James, A
Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 58 – 63; Richard Vaughan, and John Fines, A Handlist
of Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Not Described by M.R. James
(Cambridge: Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1960); Nigel Wilkins, Catalogue des manuscrits
français de la Bibliothèque Parker (Parker Library), Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Cambridge:
Corpus Christi College, 1993).
 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek lat. 563 (fifth-century palimpsest), Paris, Biblio-
thèque Sainte-Geneviève, 3014 (thirteenth-fourteenth century), Madrid, Bibliotheca Nacional,
9783, dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, London, British Library, Harley 3199,
dated to the fourteenth century, Paris, BnF lat. 6041 A, dated to the fourteenth century, and
Berne, Burgerbibliothek, 271, dated to the fourteenth century. Manuscript Vienna 563 is analyzed
in Chapter 2 because it is the earliest manuscript of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel. I selected the other
manuscripts in Chapter 2 because they display variety regarding their contents. One should bear
in mind that many other manuscripts in this period contain the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 150.
 Burke names four manuscripts of Lt that are already published: Berne Burgerbibliothek, 271
(Lts), Vat. lat. 4578 (Lta), Paris BnF lat. 1652 (Ltd), and Florence Laurenziana Gaddi 208 (Ltb).
Berne and Vat. lat. 4578 preserve the separate Lt variant, while Paris BnF lat. 1652 and Florence
Gaddi 208 combine Lt with Lm variant. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in Berne 271 was published
a century before Tischendorf in Sinner’s catalog of the Berne Library. Tischendorf edited the
other three manuscripts as the Evangelium Thomae Latinum in De evangeliorum apocryphorum
origine et usu. The rest of the manuscripts that Burke mentions in his work, containing all or
complete assessment of the Lt tradition is needed.¹²⁹ The reason is that the Lt

variant of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel could also appear unrelated to the Gospel
of Pseudo-Matthew in manuscripts.
Fourteen known Greek manuscripts of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel exist, but
only eight have been edited.¹³⁰ Burke categorizes them in four variants (recen-
sions): Gs, Ga, Gd, Gb.¹³¹ I here use three Greek manuscripts, which represent
three textual variants of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel, coined by Burke as Gs, Ga,
and Gd recensions:¹³² the eleventh-century Jerusalem, the Library of the Patri-
archate, Codex Sabaiticus 259 (1089/1090) (Gs),¹³³ the fourteenth–fifteenth centu-
part of the Lt material, are unpublished. He refers to them because they are mentioned in other
publications. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 149 – 160, particularly 150; Johann Rudolf Sinner, Catalogus
Codicum Mss. Bibliothecae Bernensis, annotationibus criticis illustratus 1 (Berne: Ex officina ty-
pographica illustr. Reipublicae, 1760), 246– 258.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 160.
 Mike R. Whitenton, “The Moral Character Development of the Boy Jesus in the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 38, No. 2 (2015): 219 – 240, 219, n. 1.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 127– 144.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 127– 144. Here I choose the manuscripts based on their dating (I
select the earliest dated manuscripts) and their completeness (I opt for complete texts rather
than fragments). The fourth, Gb recension (BHG 779pb), is represented by two manuscripts –
Sinai, St. Catherine, Cod. Sinaiticus gr. 453, dated to the fourteenth–fifteenth century, and
Sinai, St. Catherine, Cod. Sinaiticus gr. 532, dated to the fifteenth–sixteenth century. Both are
from St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, where the manuscripts were discovered. Gb is considered
a “selectively abbreviated” text, and it will not be used here. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 140.
 Codex Sabaiticus 259 is a parchment codex of 317 folios (260x212 mm). The Infancy Gospel
of Thomas is on folios 66r–72v, bearing the title Τὰ παιδικὰ μεγαλεῖα τοῦ δεσπότου ἡμῶν καὶ
σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Burke argues that Sabaiticus presents a version of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas that has far fewer borrowings of content or style from the NT and has more sophis-
tication than has previously been allowed. This manuscript has been discussed in scholarship
and edited several times. The most important recent contributions to the study of this manu-
script are those by Burke and Aasgaard. Tony Burke, “Completing the Gospel: The Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas As A Supplement To The Gospel of Luke,” in The Reception and Interpretation of
the Bible in Late Antiquity, eds. Lorenzo DiTommaso, and Lucian Turcescu (Leiden: Brill, 2008):
101– 120, 106; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 127– 128; Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus; Michel van Es-
broeck, “Review of Aurelio De Santos Otero, Das kirchenslavische Evangelium des Thomas,”
Analecta Bollandiana 87 (1969): 261– 263, 262; Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus, ΙΕΡΟΣΟΛΥ-
ΜΙΤΙΚΗ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΗ II (Jerusalem Library II) (1894, reprint: Brussels: Culture et Civilisation,
1963), 384– 388; Paul Van Den Ven, La légende de S. Spyridon, évêque de Trimithonte (Louvain:
Institut orientaliste de l’Université de Louvain, 1953), 61– 63; Costas N. Constantinides, and Rob-
ert Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus to the Year 1570 (Nicosia: Cyprus Research
Centre, 1993), 63 – 68.
ry Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. hist. gr. 91 (Ga),¹³⁴ and the fifteenth-century Athens, Eth-
nike Bibliotheke, Cod. Atheniensis gr. 355 (Gd).¹³⁵ I make use of two additional
Greek manuscripts in Chapter 2.¹³⁶
 Eight manuscripts represent the Ga recension (BHG 779p). Within this group, Burke de-
scribes a separate family of four manuscripts Alpha (α), while he lists the other three without
grouping them. Although these manuscripts have differences, they still constitute the same
group against the other recensions. The group includes the manuscripts Vienna, ÖNB, Cod.
hist. gr. 91, dated to the fourteenth–fifteenth century, Mount Athos, M. Vatopediou, Cod. Vatopedi
37, dated to the fourteenth century, Paris, BnF ancient fonds gr. 239, dated to the fifteenth cen-
tury, and four manuscripts belonging to the Alpha family: Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,
Univ. 2702, dated to the fifteenth century, Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, A 187, dated
to the sixteenth century, Samos, Bibliotheke Metropoleos, Ms gr. 54, dated to the fifteenth–six-
teenth century, and Athos, M. Megistes Lavras, Cod. Lavra Θ 222, dated to the fifteenth century.
The manuscript Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. hist. gr. 91 is written on paper and consists of 208 folios (220/
225x150 mm). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is on folios 199v–204r, with a distinct title, Λόγος
ἰσραηλίτου φιλοσόφου εἰς τὰ παιδικὰ κεφὰλεια τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χρίστου. Although it is
quite late, this manuscript contains the complete form of Ga text. It has been unpublished so far.
Scholars connect it to the Slavonic translation. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 129 – 140; Herbert Hunger,
Katalog der griechischen Handschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek I (Vienna: G.
Prachner, 1961), 94– 102.
 The Gd recension (BHG 779n) is represented by three manuscripts: Athens, Ethnike Biblio-
theke, Cod. Atheniensis gr. 355, dated to the fifteenth century, Rome, BAV, Palatinus gr. 364,
dated to the fifteenth century, and Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. theol. gr. 123, dated to the thirteenth cen-
tury. This variant has the Prologue in Egypt added and has the attribution to James (rather than
Thomas), besides its considerably different language and syntax. The manuscript Athens, Eth-
nike Bibliotheke, Cod. Atheniensis gr. 355 is written on paper, of 180 folios (230x170 mm). The
Infancy Gospel of Thomas is on folios 61v-68v, without any title. Armand Delatte published
this text in 1927. It is the only manuscript containing a complete Gd variant. Burke emphasizes
that this manuscript has been unfairly neglected in scholarship so far. Whitenton, “The Moral
Character Development,” 220, n. 1; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 82, 142; François Halkin, Catalogue
des manuscrits hagiographiques de la Bibliothèque nationale d′ Athènes (Brussels: Société des
Bollandistes, 1983), 45; Armand Delatte, “Evangile de l’enfance de Jacques: Manuscrit no. 355
de la Bibliothèque Nationale,” in Anecdota Atheniensia 1 (Paris: Champion, 1927): 264– 271.
 One of these manuscripts is Mount Athos, M. Vatopediou, Codex Vatopedi 37, (209/212x140/
144 mm, 272 folios). It is a paper manuscript dated to the fourteenth century, while some sections
are dated to the sixteenth century. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this manuscript is on folios
21v–28r. Codex Vatopedi 37 is the earliest dated manuscript representing the Ga variant. The
other manuscript is the thirteenth-century Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. theol. gr. 123. It is a paper manu-
script of 209 folios (265/278x195/210 mm). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is on folios 192r–193v.
This manuscript is highly damaged, but it is otherwise the earliest manuscript that contains the
Gd variant. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 132– 134; Sophronios Eustratiades, and Arcadios of Vatopedi,
deacon, Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts in the Library of the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mt.
Athos, HTS 11 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924. Reprint New York: Kraus, 1969),
13 – 14; Hunger, Katalog der griechischen Handschriften, 74– 81.
Thomas’ Infancy Gospel also appears in sixteen Slavonic manuscripts from

the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, among which six medieval manu-
scripts (from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century) and ten early modern
manuscripts.¹³⁷ The three earliest medieval Slavonic manuscripts used here are
St Petersburg, Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 13.3.17, dated to
1337– 55,¹³⁸ Moscow, Russian State Historical Museum, Collection of A. I. Hludov,
Cod. 162,¹³⁹ dated to the fourteenth century, and Belgrade, National Library, Col-
lection of P.S. Srećković, Codex 637, dated to the fourteenth century.¹⁴⁰
Of four extant Syriac manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I
use two manuscripts in the analysis of their contents: Göttingen, Universitätsbi-
bliothek, syr. 10, dated to the fifth to the sixth century, containing this text on
folios 1v-4v,¹⁴¹ and the manuscript London, British Library, Add. 14484, dated
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 161; Rosén, The Slavonic Translation, 19.
 The manuscript St Petersburg 13.3.17 contains 185 folios (210x125 mm) and twenty-six lines
per page. Jacimirskij, Rosén, and Otero edited this manuscript. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is
on folios 177r-183v, with the opening line Deeds and childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ (Дѣанїа и
дѣтство Господа нашег Исуса Христа). The manuscript is persistently entitled in scholarship
as Codex no.15, although the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences refers to it as MS 13.3.17.
See A. Jacimirskij, Из славянских рукописей – Тексты и заметки, Ученые записки Имп. Моск.
Университета (From the Slavonic Manuscripts – Texts and Notes) (Moscow, 1898); Aurelio de
Santos Otero, Das kirchenslawische Evangelium des Thomas (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967); Rosén, The
Slavonic Translation.
 The Serbian Slavonic manuscript Hludov, Codex 162 contains 254 folios (265x205 mm). A.
Popov edited the Infancy Gospel of Thomas of this manuscript in 1872. The text is on folios 200v-
206r, with the title Reading of the childhood of Jesus Christ (Чтениѥ дѣтьства Іс[уса]
Х[ристо]ва). Burke, De infantia Iesu, 74; Andrey Nikolaevich Popov, Описание рукописей и
каталог книг церковной печати библиотеки А. И. Хлудова (Description of Manuscripts
and Catalogue of Books of Church Library of A. I. Hludov) (Moscow, 1872), 320 – 325.
 The manuscript from Belgrade, Srećković, Codex 637, which was formerly kept in the Na-
tional Library, is used in this book in the edited form. Fire destroyed the manuscript in the
World War II bombing of Belgrade in 1941. The textual version was preserved only in the earlier
edition made by Novaković. He described and edited the Infancy Gospel of Thomas from this
parchment, mid-fourteenth-century manuscript. It contained 194 folios and was entitled “Sbor-
nik.” One other Slavonic manuscript fragment is among medieval witnesses, yet it will not be
used here due to its fragmentariness. This fragment reveals a section of the episode First teacher
(6). It is Fragm. Glag. Br. 99, the fifteenth-century Croatian Glagolitic fragment from the Archives
of the Croatian Academy of Sciences in Zagreb. Biserka Grabar, “Glagoljski odlomak Pseudo-To-
mina Evandjelja” (Glagolitic Fragment of the Gospel of Pseudo-Thomas), Slovo 18 – 19 (1969):
213 – 233; Stojan Novaković, “Apokrifi jednoga srpskog ćirilskog zbornika XIV vijeka” (The Apoc-
rypha of a Cyrillic Collection of the Fourteenth Century), Starine 8 (1876): 36 – 92, 36 – 39, 48 – 55.
 See Willem Baars, and Jan Helderman, “Neue Materialien zum Text und zur Interpretation
des Kindheitsevangeliums des Pseudo-Thomas,” Oriens Christianus 77 (1993): 191– 226, 193;
(1994): 1– 32; H. Duensing, “Mitteilungen 58,” ThLZ 36 (1911): 637; Arnold Meyer, “Kindheitser-
to the sixth century, containing the text on folios 12v-16r.¹⁴² Finally, a single Geor-
gian manuscript which contains the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Tbilisi, Codex A
95, dated from the tenth to the twelfth century, is here analyzed regarding its
contents.¹⁴³
A long trajectory of research of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel has been exposed to
changing trends. The text has attracted much scholarly interest, but it has also
caused bewilderment and disgust.¹⁴⁴ After its discovery in the seventeenth cen-
tury and until the nineteenth century, it was mainly estimated negatively.¹⁴⁵ The
miracles of Jesus were called “ridiculous” and “immoral,”¹⁴⁶ “puerile, malevo-
lent and cruel,”¹⁴⁷ or just “crude,”¹⁴⁸ while Jesus was a “hero of ridiculous and
zählung des Thomas,” in Neutestamentlichen Apokryphen, ed. Edgar Hennecke (Tübingen: J. C.

B. Mohr, 1924): 93 – 102; Alain Desreumaux, “Deux anciens manuscrits syriaques d’œuvres apoc-
ryphes dans le nouveau fonds de Sainte-Catherine du Sinaï,” Apocrypha 20 (2009): 115 – 136,
117– 129; Sebastian Brock, Catalogue of Syriac Fragments (New Finds) in the Library of the Mon-
astery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai (Athens: Mount Sinai Foundation, 1995), 73 – 74.
 W. Wright published this manuscript in 1865. William Wright, Contributions to the Apocry-
phal Literature of the New Testament, collected and edited from Syriac Manuscripts in the British
Museum, with an English translation and notes (London: Williams and Norgate, 1865), 11– 16; Wil-
liam Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired Since the Year 1838 I
(London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1870), 98 – 99.
 This manuscript is deposited in the Georgian National Center of Manuscripts in Tbilisi. It is
a parchment manuscript about whose dimensions and the number of folios different scholars
report differently. Garitte reports that the manuscript has 658 folios, 480x350 mm, written in
two columns, and thirty-two lines per page, written in hutsuri minuscule. Garitte and Esbroeck
rely on Zhordania. However, Djorbadze says that the manuscript’s dimensions are 455x345 mm,
and the manuscript consists of 1310 pages (he probably means 655 folios). The editors T. Bre-
gadze, M. Qavtaria, and L. Qutateladze argue for the same 655 folia and 455x335 mm. Tamar Bre-
gadze, Mikhael Qavtaria, et alii, eds., Kartul Xelnatserta agtseriloba I.1 (The Description of Geor-
gian Manuscripts I.I) (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1973), 361; Gérard Garitte, “Le fragment géorgien de
l’Evangile de Thomas,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 51 (1956): 511– 520, 515, n. 1; Tedo Zhorda-
nia, Opisanie rukopisei Tiflisskago cerkovnago muzeia I (Description of the Manuscripts of the
Church Museum, Tbilisi) (Tbilisi: Gutenberg, 1903), 96; Michel van Esbroeck, Les plus anciens
homéliaires géorgiens: étude descriptive et historique (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut Orientaliste,
Université Catholique de Louvain, 1975), 55; Wachtang Djobadze, Early Medieval Georgian Mon-
asteries in Historic Tao, Klarjetʿi, and Šavšetʿi (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992), 188.
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 2.
 See, e. g., Davis, Christ Child, 6 – 7.
 Calvin Ellis Stowe, Origin and History of the Books of the Bible (Hartford, Conn.: Hartford
Pub. Co., 1868), 206; Adam Fyfe Findlay, Byways in Early Christian Literature: Studies in the Un-
canonical Gospels and Acts (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1923), 173; Burke, De infantia Iesu, IX, n. 1.
 Cowper, The Apocryphal Gospels, 129; Burke, De infantia Iesu, IX, n. 2.
 Oscar Cullmann, “The Infancy Story of Thomas,” in New Testament Apocrypha 1. Gospels
and Related Writings, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, tr. R. McL. Wilson, 439 – 452 (Louisville:
shabby pranks”¹⁴⁹ and “an enfant terrible who seldom acts in a Christian way.”¹⁵⁰
Some scholars discarded the text as “utterly worthless” and “lacking in good
taste, restraint and discretion.”¹⁵¹ It has been linked to various heretical groups,
and it was eventually characterized as a “neglected outsider placed at some mar-
gin” of the early Christian literature.¹⁵²
Thus far, editing,¹⁵³ genealogical studies, the quest for the original lan-
guage,¹⁵⁴ and the links to heresy dominated the research of this text.¹⁵⁵ In recent
James Clarke and Co. Ltd., 1991), 443; Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 68; Burke, De in-
fantia Iesu, IX, n. 4.
 Jacques Hervieux, The New Testament Apocrypha, tr. D. W. Hibberd (New York: Hawthorn
Books Inc., 1960), 106; Burke, De infantia Iesu, IX, n. 5.
 Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 68; Burke, De infantia Iesu, IX, n. 6.
 Cowper, The Apocryphal Gospels, 129; Cullmann, “Infancy Gospels,” 442; Burke, De infantia
Iesu, IX, n. 7, 8.
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 2– 3; see also Richard Simon, Nouvelles observations sur
le texte et les versions du Nouveau Testament (Paris, 1695); Arnold Meyer, “Erzählung des Tho-
mas,” in Neutestamentliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung, eds. Edgar Hennecke, and
Wilhelm Schneemelcher (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1904): 63 – 67; Andries Gideon Van Aarde,
“The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Allegory or Myth – Gnostic or Ebionite,” Verbum et ecclesia
26, No. 3 (2005): 826 – 850; Andries Gideon Van Aarde, “The Ebionite Perspective in the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas,” in The Apocryphal Gospels within the Context of Early Christian Theology, ed.
Jens Schröter (Leuven: Peeters, 2013): 611– 626.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 46 – 48, 53 – 54, 66 – 68, 78, 81, 92– 95, 110, 113, 145 – 147, 293 – 539;
Simon, Nouvelles observations, 5 – 9; Johann Albert Fabricius, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti
1 (Hamburg, 1703), 127– 167; Giovanni Luigi Mingarelli, “De Apocrypho Thomae Evangelio …
epistola,” in Nuova Raccolta d’opuscoli scientifici e filologici 12, ed. A. Calogiera (Venice, 1764):
73 – 155; Johann Karl Thilo, Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti 1 (Leipzig: Vogel, 1832), lxxiii–
xci, 277– 315; Tischendorf, Evangelia apocrypha; Richard Adelbert Lipsius, Die Apokryphen apos-
telgeschichten und apostellegenden (Braunschweig: C. A. Schwetschke und sohn, 1890), 24; De-
latte, “Evangile de l’enfance de Jacques,” 264– 271; Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 4– 6, 219 –
242; Jacques Noret, “Pour une édition de l’Evangile de l’Enfance selon Thomas,” Analecta Bol-
landiana 90 (1972): 412; Rosén, The Slavonic Translation of the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas, 37; Wright, Contributions, 6 – 16; Garitte, “Le fragment géorgien,” 511– 520; Michail N. Sper-
anskij, “Славянские апокрифические евангелиа” (Slavonic Apocryphal Gospels), Труды
восьмого археологического съезда в Москве 1890 II (Москва, 1895); Michail N. Speranskij,
Южнорусские тексты апокрифического евангелия Фомы (Southern Russian Texts of the
Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas) (Moscow, 1895. Kiev, 1899); A. I. Jacimirskij, Из славянских
рукописей – Тексты и заметки, Ученые записки Имп. Моск. Университета (From the Sla-
vonic Manuscripts – Texts and Notes) (Moscow, 1898); Santos Otero, Das kirchenslawische Evan-
gelium; Grabar, “Glagoljski odlomak,” 213 – 233; Rosén, The Slavonic Translation; Beyers, “Intro-
duction générale,” 13; Gijsel and Beyers, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium; Dzon, “Cecily Neville,”
262; Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 105; Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,”
60; Sinner, Catalogus Codicum Mss. Bibliothecae Bernensis, 246– 258; Tischendorf, Evangelia
years, Thomas’ Infancy Gospel acquired wider scholarly attention with different
innovative approaches.¹⁵⁶ Although the negative assessment is abandoned to a
apocrypha, xliv–xlvi; Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 391– 411; Gijsel and Beyers, Pseudo-
Matthaei Evangelium; Hock, The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas.
 Cowper, The Apocryphal Gospels, 128; Variot, Les Évangiles apocryphes, 46 – 47; Nicolas,
Études sur les évangiles apocryphes, 199, 331; Peeters, Evangiles apocryphes 2, i–lix; Gero,
“The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 46 – 80; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 94, 122, 174, 188 – 197, 222;
Voicu, “Notes sur l’histoire,” 119 – 132; Sever J. Voicu, “Verso il testo primitivo del Paidika tou
Kuriou Ièsou ‘Racconti dell’infanzia del Signore Gesù,’” Apocrypha 9 (1998): 7– 95; Voicu,
“Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha,” 411; Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 8, 11;
Voicu, “La tradition latine des Paidika,” 13 – 21; Tony Burke, “Authorship and Identity in the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas,” Toronto Journal of Theology 14, No.1 (1998): 27– 43.
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 2– 6, 9 – 10, 164– 165; Richard Simon, Nouvelles observa-
tions sur le texte et les versions du Nouveau Testament (Paris, 1695), 3 – 5; Burke, De infantia Iesu,
47, 62, 116, 269 – 275; Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 148; Dzon, “Cecily Ne-
ville,” 262; Davis, Christ Child, 6 – 7; Pahor Labib, Coptic Gnostic Papyri in the Coptic Museum
at Old Cairo (Cairo: Government Press, 1956); Meyer, “Erzählung des Thomas,” 63 – 66; Van
Aarde, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 826 – 850; Van Aarde, “The Ebionite Perspective”.
 Studies of the genre: Hock, Infancy Gospels, 96 – 97; Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 8, 10,
49 – 52; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 250 – 261; Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 148 –
150; Hägg, The Art of Biography, 175 – 178; Studies of social settings: Nicolas, Etudes, 295 – 99;
Meyer, “Erzählung des Thomas,” 65 – 66; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 69; Johannes Baptist Bauer,
“Die Entstehung Apokrypher Evangelien,” Bibel und Liturgie 38 (1964): 268 – 271, 269 – 70; Aas-
gaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 191; Joan Elizabeth Taylor, “Review: Stephen J. Davis, Christ Child:
Cultural Memories of a Young Jesus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014),” Theology 118,
No. 2 (2015): 128 – 129; Davis, Christ Child; Studies of children and childhood: Burke, De infantia
Iesu, 268 – 289; David M. Litwa, “‘From where Was this Child Born?:’ Divine Children and the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” In Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterra-
nean God, ed. David M. Litwa, 69 – 85 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014), 69 – 85; Aasgaard,
The Childhood of Jesus, 216; Davis, Christ Child, 12, 14; Stevan Davies, The Infancy Gospels of
Jesus: Apocryphal Tales from the Childhoods of Mary and Jesus (Woodstock, Vermont: Skylight
Paths, 2009), xxiii; Ursula Ulrike Kaiser, “Jesus als Kind: Neuere Forschungen zur Jesusüberlie-
ferung in den apokryphen Kindheitsevangelien,” in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferun-
gen: Beiträge zu außerkanonischen Jesusüberlieferungen aus verschiedenen Sprach- und Kulturtra-
ditionen, eds. Jörg Frey, Jens Schröter, with Jakob Spaeth (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 253 –
269, 266 – 267; Mary Dzon, “Wanton Boys in Middle English Texts and the Christ Child in Minne-
apolis, University of Minnesota, MS Z822 N81,” in Medieval Life Cycles: Continuity and Change,
eds. Isabelle Cochelin, and Karen Smyth (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 81– 145, 129; Lucie Paulissen,
“Jésus enfant divin: Processus de reconnaissance dans L’Évangile de l’Enfance selon Thomas,”
Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 22, No. 1 (2004): 17– 28; Whitenton, “The Moral Character Devel-
opment,” 219 – 240; Gilian Clark, “The Fathers and the Children,” in The Church and Childhood,
ed. Diana Wood, 1– 27 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 20; Sheingorn, “Reshaping of the
Childhood Miracles of Jesus,” 256; J. R. C. Cousland, Holy Terror: Jesus in the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017); Studies of gender: Eric Stewart, “Sending
a boy to do a man’s job: Hegemonic masculinity and the ‘boy’ Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of
certain extent, one can occasionally read that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas ap-
pears “at first sight as a barbarous piece of apocryphal doggerel, replete with
silly miracle stories and examples of such homicidal violence as would shock
any right-minded individual.”¹⁵⁷ John Meier says that “the portrait of this sinister
super boy belongs more in a horror movie than a gospel.”¹⁵⁸ Thus, this subject of
scholarly analysis continues to draw attention and cause controversies.
In this book, several scholarly views are taken as a point of departure. To
start with, Reidar Aasgaard suggests that “each manuscript, variant, and version
can be studied in their own right and on their own terms.”¹⁵⁹ Ehrman and Pleše
likewise suggest that the quest for the “original” form is not self-evidently the
best way to proceed in the study of this text since there is no reason to privilege
the earliest form of the text over other forms.¹⁶⁰ In whatever form one finds them,
all the stories in the account contribute to our understanding of how different
Christian storytellers in different times and places told stories about the young
Jesus.¹⁶¹ “Various storytellers (and authors) added some incidents to the narra-
tive and deleted others; they edited the stories they inherited and put their
stamp upon them.”¹⁶²
In this work, I study the variations of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel, its changing
genre, its transformations in the different contexts, and the different social, cul-
tural, and religious issues presented in the text of various manuscripts. I trace
the imprints that different authors, scribes, and communities left on the text.
Thomas,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 71, No. 1 (2015): 1– 9; Aasgaard, The Child-
hood of Jesus, 111; Reidar Aasgaard, “From Boy to Man in Antiquity: Jesus in the Apocryphal In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas,” THYMOS: Journal of Boyhood Studies 3 (2009): 3 – 20; Betsworth, Chil-
dren in Early Christian Narratives, 3, 159, 162; Studies of audience: Aasgaard, The Childhood of
Jesus, 192; Simon Gathercole, “The Childhood of Jesus. Decoding the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel
of Thomas (Review),” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63, No. 1 (2012): 104; Betsworth, Chil-
dren in Early Christian Narratives, 157; Bovon, “Évangiles canoniques et évangiles apocryphes,”
19 – 30, 25; Frilingos, “No Child Left Behind,” 27– 54, 34– 35, n. 30; Tony Burke, “The Childhood
of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Review),” Journal of Early Chris-
tian Studies 18, No. 3 (2010): 470 – 471; Davis, Christ Child, 11– 14, 12; Kaiser, “Jesus als Kind,”
253 – 269, 268 – 269; Clark, “The Fathers and the Children,” 20; Sheingorn, “Reshapings of the
Childhood Miracles of Jesus,” 256.
 Aidan Breen, “The Childhood of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas
(Review),” Medieval Review (2011): 1– 4.
 John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991),
115.
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 32.
 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 4.
 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 4.
 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 4.
This approach has been in part already employed by Stephen Davis and Mary
Dzon. In his Christ Child: Cultural Memories of a Young Jesus, Davis explores
the afterlife of several characteristic episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
as shaped through the cultural memory of its ancient audiences and in the con-
text of later Jewish-Christian and Christian-Muslim encounters. In her Quest for
the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages and several other articles, Mary Dzon
demonstrates how this apocryphal text entertained different social strata, nour-
ished piety, inspired imitation, and framed the medieval religious imagination in
the late medieval West.¹⁶³ While Davis focuses on the above-mentioned interre-
ligious encounters and Dzon concentrates on Latin sources, I am interested in
the Latin, Byzantine, and Slavonic manuscripts and their medieval contexts.¹⁶⁴
In what follows, Chapter 2 examines the contents of the manuscripts and
discusses the places where the manuscripts were copied, kept, and used. In
agreement with New Philology, the materiality of the text needs to be primarily
investigated and stated clearly in the opening of this work. Chapter 3 examines
the structural and literary aspects of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. In the form
we have today, Thomas’ Infancy Gospel is a text on paper/parchment. However,
the very definition of a text is challenged when we face its loose form. This text
has no fixed beginning or end. It is very often combined with other texts. Thus,
Chapter 3 analyzes the order of the episodes, the narrative logic, and the pseudo-
duration of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel. Chapter 4 discusses the various words and
phrases describing children, childhood, everyday, and family life in the different
manuscripts. The chapter examines the examples that depict Jesus’ relationships
with adults (parents, teachers), siblings, and peers. Further, it touches upon his
behavior, activities, education, work, anger, and cursing. Finally, the chapter
deals with family and everyday life: the life of Jesus’ family in the community,
the descriptions of housing, healing, and sorcery.
 Mary Dzon, “Jesus and the Birds in Medieval Abrahamic Traditions,” Traditio 66 (2011):
189 – 230; Mary Dzon, The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Dzon, “Wanton Boys,” 81– 145; Dzon, “Boys Will Be Boys,”
179 – 225; Mary Dzon, and Theresa M. Kenney, eds., The Christ Child in Medieval Culture: Alpha es
et O! (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 235 – 300.
 For this approach, see also Catherine Dimier-Paupert, Livre de l’Enfance du Sauveur. Une
version médiévale de l’Évangile de l’Enfance du Pseudo-Matthieu (xiiie siècle) (Paris: Le Cerf,
2006). She approaches the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in a particular thirteenth-century Latin
manuscript, Paris, BnF lat. 11867. She places it in the context of the monastery where the manu-
script was kept, Abbey of Marmoutier. She concludes that the manuscript served as a library
book that students consulted when studying trivium and quadrivium.
Chapter 2
Codex and Genre of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas
This chapter discusses, where possible, the provenance of the manuscripts con-
taining the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. It further examines the position of this text
in the manuscripts and its genre. I use the manuscripts from different medieval
Christian linguistic and cultural contexts: Latin, Byzantine, Slavonic, Georgian,
and Syriac. They are arranged chronologically according to their dating and ex-
amined regarding the places of origin or the places which kept and used them.¹⁶⁵
I also discuss the contents of the manuscripts that include this text. At times, I
comment on their physical characteristics.
The full scope of the manuscript evidence of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
has yet to be made clear.¹⁶⁶ The possibility of discovering new sources remains
a constant factor that will require modifications and adjustments to the present
study. I start with the manuscript information given by Tony Burke and Jan Gij-
sel.¹⁶⁷ Their complete lists of manuscripts could not be considered in this study. I
select the sources demonstrating distinct variants rather than examining the en-
tire corpus of the source material.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas first emerges in a fifth-to-seventh-century
Latin palimpsest. The following attestations are two fifth- and sixth-century Sy-
riac manuscripts. A wide gap occurs until the tenth and eleventh century when
we have preserved one Byzantine manuscript, one Latin, and one Georgian
manuscript. A more significant number of sources come from the thirteenth cen-
tury – one Greek and several Latin witnesses. Additionally, I select several manu-
scripts dated to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from Latin, Byzantine, and
Slavonic backgrounds to represent the variety. The manuscripts are placed in
 Medieval manuscripts were usually copied in monastic scriptoria, which further kept the
manuscripts for their use or distributed them elsewhere. The places of “production” and
“use” of medieval manuscripts at times could have been different. I propose that both the places
of production and the places of use complied with the general manuscripts’ agenda and con-
tents.
 Contemporary manuscript libraries in different world regions have reached different stages
of manuscript conservation, cataloging, and digitization. While most of the material is cataloged
and digitized in some libraries, others have yet to start. Some libraries that keep medieval manu-
scripts do not plan to digitize them even if cataloging progresses. Thus, there may exist sources
of this text out there that I do not know.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 127– 171; Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 108 – 217.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110752786-003
Chapter 2 Codex and Genre of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas 41
chronological order so that the inter-lingual connections and the “manuscript

geography” are easily detectable.
This chapter integrates the perspective of New Philology, which assesses me-
dieval books by their physical characteristics and views them in connection to
the environments where they were copied and used. When manuscripts re-en-
tered the focus of medievalists several decades ago, in addition to the preserva-
tion of texts, new features came to be appreciated.¹⁶⁸ Scholars focused on vari-
ous subjects: the ink and the script of a given manuscript, the quality and size of
the material of writing, the layout, colophons, binding, and the presence of other
works with which the given work was initially collected and preserved.¹⁶⁹ The
quality of the manuscript, investment, and illuminations betray the specific con-
texts of its use. The evidence in the material about the ways manuscripts were
treated reveals the attitudes toward them. The physical forms, designs, script,
and accompanying apparatus present the integral parts of the meaning of a sin-
gle text. These features yield information about the manuscripts’ audience, pur-
pose, and social, commercial, and intellectual backgrounds.¹⁷⁰ This perspective
enables us to understand the medieval book as a whole and its constituent parts
– texts. Andrew Taylor argues that the precise physical form of a particular
manuscript is a vital part of any given text’s meaning and social function.¹⁷¹
This chapter considers the miscellany manuscripts containing the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas, their contents, (non‐) autonomy of their texts, primary and
secondary miscellanies, as well as palimpsests and composite manuscripts.
Did the medieval manuscripts, miscellanies, and the like, containing the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas, align their contents in meaningful ways or seemingly random
ways?
My analysis of the contents presupposes that they share some common as-
pects, such as subject matter, genre, or how they were used.¹⁷² New Philology
argues that medieval manuscripts contextualize the texts they have within
their contents in specific ways.¹⁷³ It considers the possibility that a manuscript
presents its texts according to an agenda, worked out by a person who planned,
supervised, or commissioned the manuscript’s production.¹⁷⁴ The texts in the
manuscripts may perhaps be understood to comprise a unity created or intended
 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 1.

 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 1.
 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 1.
 Taylor, Textual Situations, 10.
 See Doležalová, “Multiple Copying,” 139.
 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 2.
 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 2.
42 Chapter 2 Codex and Genre of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
by their copyists. It further brings in the question of the genre of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas in the manuscripts.
Although scholars today view the medieval literary genre as a fluid category,
it could generally be delineated in terms of shared literary technique, standard
form, theme, or purpose of literary works. In this study, I understand “genre”
in a broader sense that not only comprises a form of texts (such as letter,
poem, prose narrative) but includes subject as well. The genre of texts betrays
the inner rules of the narrative regarding the information it presents. The mean-
ing of the text is commonly genre-bound.¹⁷⁵ The role of the audience, readers,
and listeners in shaping genre expectations should not be ignored. Sometimes
the contents say something about the contexts in which the manuscripts were
utilized.
Thus far, different scholars have allocated the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to
diverse genres: biography, hagiography, and encomium. Hock points out the sim-
ilarities of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to other ancient literature, romances,
and imperial biographies.¹⁷⁶ Hock understands this text to be a biography of
an outstanding man.¹⁷⁷ According to this view, the main character’s personality
usually did not develop in time but was determined from birth. Therefore, child-
hood deeds foretold the character of an adult. Burke and Betsworth also associ-
ate the Infancy Gospel of Thomas with the genre of ancient biography.¹⁷⁸ Aas-
gaard argues that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas “emerges as a mixture of
belief legend and gospel, together with some elements from ancient biogra-
phy.”¹⁷⁹ In my view, this text changed genres during the Middle Ages to serve dif-
ferent purposes.¹⁸⁰ It was appropriated in different settings rather than under-
stood to belong to a single genre in the environments throughout Late
Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
 William G. Doty, “The Concept of Genre in Literary Analysis,” In SBL Proceedings 1972. Book
of Seminar Papers for 108th Annual Meeting 2, ed. Lane C. McGaughy (Atlanta, 1972): 413 – 448,
430.
 Hock, The Infancy Gospels, 96 – 97; Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 8.
 Hock, The Infancy Gospels, 96 – 97; Sheingorn, “Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of
Jesus,” 284, n. 46.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 276, 281– 284; Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives,
148 – 150.
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 52.
 In connection with the genre of another text, the Protevangelium of James, Lily Vuong ar-
gues: “The contents of this work span multiple genre boundaries and serve various purposes,
and it is problematic to categorize it solely as an encomium, as Hock suggested.” Her observa-
tion could be applied to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. See Lily C. Vuong, Gender and Purity in
the Protevangelium of James (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 57.
At times the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was linked up with other texts that
describe either some aspect of Jesus’ life or his parents’ life. Such subject-related
texts had the focus on the topic, and their form may have been less relevant.
Sometimes the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was placed among hagiographical or
historiographical works, a feature which indicates that this text could have
been understood similarly. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was also compiled in
manuscripts for liturgical use and private monastic and secular use. The contents
of the manuscripts allow one to think that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was per-
ceived to belong to a variety of genres.
The discussion of the manuscripts in chronological order according to their
dating, as in this chapter, is novel. The overviews of the manuscripts containing
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas so far have been based on language, with the
manuscripts presented in their language groups. In my view, the chronological
aligning gives a better overview of the intersection and influences of the manu-
scripts, particularly in the earlier phases. I first describe the physical character-
istics of the manuscripts, such as material, dimensions, number of columns, re-
lying either on the information given in the catalogs or based on my
investigation. I additionally comment on the manuscripts’ provenance and
their further destiny and uses (where such information is available). I then com-
ment on the contents of the manuscripts, focusing mainly on the texts that sur-
round the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. At times, the concept of the “text” is chal-
lenged; the Infancy Gospel of Thomas had different beginning and end in various
manuscripts. The text sometimes did not have a title. At times, it was part of a
cycle of texts or part of another text. Was the text “hidden” under different titles
or an authoritative name? Did the compilers of the manuscripts pay any atten-
tion to the ascribed apocryphal status of this text? This chapter pursues these
and the other questions mentioned above. I inspected some manuscripts, but
not all. I emphasize where a manuscript was inspected personally and where I
relied on the information given by catalogs and other scholars.
The oldest witness
The earliest manuscript evidence of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is the palimps-
est in the Latin manuscript Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek lat. 563, a
parchment codex of 177 folios. As it exists now, the manuscript is a composite
put together presumably in the eleventh or the twelfth century.¹⁸¹ It was com-
 The contents: fol.1r-12r: Passion of Gorgonius (eleventh c.); fol. 12r-57v: Miracles of St. Gor-
piled from four different codices of diverse provenance.¹⁸² I rely on the informa-
tion given by Guy Philippart in his description of this manuscript.¹⁸³
The manuscript folios from 122r are reused. Beneath the excerpts from the
Church Fathers (Gregory, Augustine, Ambrose) in folios 122r–168v, another
layer existed, occupying folios 122r–177v, which contained the Gospel of Mat-
thew, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The previous
layer covered a larger space than the later layer, but everything from the initial
layer was erased.
Scholars date the palimpsest from the fifth to the seventh centuries.¹⁸⁴ Burke
suggests that the second layer in this libellus dates to the eighth century, while
the initial layer dates to the fifth century.¹⁸⁵ Therefore, from the fifth to the eighth
century, the libellus inscribed with apocryphal and canonical texts – the Gospel
of Matthew, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas – was
gonius (eleventh c.); fol. 58v-59r: Responsoria cum neumis (twelfth c.); fol. 59v-112r: Vita of St.
Brendan (eleventh c.); fol. 113r-121v: Werinharius, Vita of St. Adelphus (twelfth c.); fol. 122r-
168v: Excerpts from the Fathers (Gregory, Augustine, Ambrose) (seventh c.); fol. 122r-177v: pal-
impsest. The dating of the libelli (according to the catalog) ranges from the seventh to the twelfth
centuries. The first unit of the manuscript, folios 1– 121v, contains hagiographical texts dated
from the eleventh to the twelfth centuries. As for the saints chosen for this collection, Gorgonius
is an early Christian martyr who suffered during the persecutions of Diocletian. Brendan is one
of the early Irish monastic saints, while Adolph is one of the ninth-century martyrs of Cordoba,
who suffered under Muslim rule in Spain. Their feast days are not aligned according to a calen-
dar. See Academia Caesarea Vindobonensis, Tabulae codicum manu scriptorum praeter graecos
et orientales in Bibliotheca Palatina Vindobonensi asservatorum 1 (Vienna: Gerold, 1864– 1899),
96; see also Manuscripta medievalia, <http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/hs/katalogseit-
en/HSK0751a_b0096_jpg.htm> Last accessed: 08/06/2021.
 Philippart gives the following list of contents and differentiation among the different libelli:
Codex I, app. 200x150 mm, eleventh century, provenance Neuwiller-les-Saverne, in Alsace (the
abbey was found in the eighth c.), containing the Passion of Gorgonius (f. 1r-12r), and the Miracles
of Gorgonius (f. 12r-57v); Codex II, 200x150 mm, eleventh century, the same provenance, contain-
ing a liturgical piece (58v-59r) (the codices I and II were united in the time when this text was
added), the Vita of Brendan (59v-112r), other additions (112v); Codex III, 180x135 mm, twelfth cen-
tury, the same provenance, containing the Vita of Adelphus (113r-121v); Codex IV, 200x150 mm,
eighth century, provenance probably Northern Italy (Hermann proposes Bobbio), Excerpts from
the Fathers, palimpsest beneath. Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 391, 409 – 10.
 Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes.”
 Lowe, Dobschütz, Siegmund, Beer, and Hermann dated the palimpsest. Philippart, “Frag-
ments palimpsestes latins,” 391, n. 3. On the early dating of the palimpsest, see Elias Avery
Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores: A Paleographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the
Ninth Century 10 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 14.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 145.
erased and reused for writing the excerpts from the Church Fathers.¹⁸⁶ This libel-
lus was bound with various hagiographical works into a composite manuscript
sometime during the twelfth century. Since the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has in-
itially been part of the libellus, which was first erased, then reused and bound
with the rest of the present manuscript, I will focus only on the initial layer of
the libellus.
What are the structure and the nature of the texts in the palimpsest? Philip-
part argues that the Gospel of Matthew is the canonical text from Vetus Latina.¹⁸⁷
Vetus Latina continued to be copied after Jerome’s Vulgate translation (fourth
century), until the eighth or the ninth century, when the Vulgate became the
most widely used Latin Bible.¹⁸⁸ The reputation of Vetus Latina gradually de-
clined because of the state of the Latin text, which needed correction, to
which Church Fathers often pointed.¹⁸⁹ The Gospel of Matthew from Vetus Latina
in this palimpsest was fragmentary and contained only the passion of Christ.¹⁹⁰
The subject of the Gospel of Matthew thus supplemented the Gospel of Nicode-
mus, which depicts Christ’s trial and last days.¹⁹¹ The Gospel of Nicodemus was
 The Gospel of Nicodemus dates as far back as the fourth century. The earliest manuscript
evidence is from the fifth century, and in the ninth and the tenth centuries, the Gospel of Nico-
demus emerges in various forms, which develop into three interrelated versions. The narrative
comprises three major episodes: the trial of Jesus, the imprisonment and release of Joseph of
Arimathea, and the account by the two sons of Simeon of the harrowing of hell. The crucifixion
is treated briefly, and there is nothing about the suffering of Jesus. See William Marx, The Middle
English ‘Liber Aureus and Gospel of Nicodemus’ (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2013), xiv;
Zbigniew Izydorczyk, ed., The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts in
Western Europe (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997); Zbigniew
Izydorczyk, with W. Wydra, Evangelium Nicodemi in Polonia servatum: A Gospel of Nicodemus
Preserved in Poland (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007); Zbigniew Izydorczyk, Manuscripts of the Evangel-
ium Nicodemi: A Census (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1993); Zbigniew Izy-
dorczyk, “The Bohemian Redaction of the Evangelium Nicodemi in Medieval Slavic Vernacu-
lars,” Studia Ceranea 4 (2014): 49 – 64; Zbigniew Izydorczyk, “On the Evangelium Nicodemi
before Print: Towards a New Edition,” Apocrypha 23 (2012): 97– 114; Zbigniew Izydorczyk,
“The Earliest Printed Versions of the Evangelium Nicodemi and Their Manuscript Sources,”
Apocrypha 21 (2010): 121– 132.
 Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 392, 397, 403. According to Philippart, this text was
largely unnoticed in the initial study of the palimpsest.
 Frans van Liere, An Introduction to the Medieval Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014), 82; see also H. A. G. Houghton, The Latin New Testament: A Guide to its Early His-
tory, Texts, and Manuscripts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 43 – 95.
 van Liere, An Introduction to the Medieval Bible, 82– 83.
 Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 402.
 The Evangelium Nicodemi was a Latin translation of the Greek Acts of Pilate (Acta/Gesta
Pilati). The Latin Gospel of Nicodemus is attested in over 450 medieval manuscripts. In the
also fragmentary, containing two prologues and parts of chapters 1– 16, but not
the Descent into Hell (otherwise part of the Gospel of Nicodemus).¹⁹²
Philippart identified the fragments of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the
palimpsest as corresponding to episodes 2.2– 4 (Sparrows), 4.2– 5.1 (Careless
Boy, Joseph’s Rebuke), 7.1– 2 (First Teacher: Lament), 8.1– 9.1 (Exclamation,
Zeno), 14.1– 3 (Second Teacher), and 19.1– 2 (Jerusalem).¹⁹³ The episodes occur
in scattered folios (176r, 176v, 171r, 171v, 135r, 135v, 132r, 132v, 142r, 142v, 141r,
141v).¹⁹⁴ Thus, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is here a set of scattered episodes
and not a full “text.” It does not mean that the full “text” did not exist at the
time; even if it existed, its separate episodes could have been copied separately.
The episodes were most likely chosen based on what a copyist wished to empha-
size in Jesus’ childhood.
It is difficult to comment on the structure and the order of the three erased
texts because they were initially written down as fragments, but also because
some folios are missing, and it is possible that the original binding of the libellus
was unfastened once the contents were erased. The excerpts from the three texts
were mixed in the structure of the palimpsest. It may be that the three texts were
not perceived as separate items, but were fused, making a narrative cycle about
Jesus, his trial, the last days, his childhood, and his passion. The most critical
organizational principle in this cycle is the overarching subject, Jesus. It is like-
wise challenging to talk about genre since we have three synthesized texts. Al-
though the Gospel of Matthew from the Vetus Latina was a canonical text, this
early Latin translation of the Bible and the two other apocryphal texts were
erased, and space was given to the excerpts from the prominent Latin Church
fathers.
This cycle of texts is unusual in the light of the later evidence of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas because it does not reappear in any extant Greek or Syriac
manuscripts.¹⁹⁵ Scholars generally consider the Latin text of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas in this manuscript to be a translation from Greek, although some
text, the crucifixion is generally treated briefly, and there is nothing about the suffering of Jesus.
See Rémi Gounelle, “Editing a Fluid and Unstable Text. The Example of the Acts of Pilate (or
Gospel of Nicodemus),” Apocrypha 23 (2012): 81– 98, 82; Izydorczyk, “On the Evangelium Nico-
demi before Print,” 99.
 See Izydorczyk, The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus, 29 – 30. On the Gospel of Nicodemus/
Acta Pilati, see the entire fascicle of Apocrypha 21 (2010).
 Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 406 – 409 ; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 145 – 146.
 Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 407– 408.
 I say Greek or Syriac because these are the two possible original languages of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas.
scholars argue that the Latin text was transmitted from Syriac.¹⁹⁶ However, the
earliest Syriac manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas indicate a
different combination of texts bound together. As for the two other texts, al-
though scholars occasionally hold that the Gospel of Matthew may originally
have been a Hebrew/Aramaic text, the Gospel of Nicodemus is undoubtedly con-
sidered to be a translation from the Greek Acta Pilati. The earliest Greek manu-
scripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas do not have this cycle of texts.
There is no way of knowing whether this combination is a remnant of an early
Greek manuscript or a genuinely Latin combination in this palimpsest. This
cycle will not have appeared again in manuscripts until the late medieval
Latin manuscripts.
The provenance of the palimpsest is uncertain.¹⁹⁷ It was probably copied in
Northern Italy; Hermann proposes Bobbio.¹⁹⁸ Bobbio was a prominent bastion of
orthodoxy at the time.¹⁹⁹ In Bobbio or some other northern Italian monastery, the
erasure of the initial textual layer occurred from the fifth to the eighth century,
and space was given to the excerpts from the Fathers. The libellus ended up in
the French lands where it was bound to the other libelli of the composite manu-
script, probably sometime in the twelfth century.
Late antique Syriac tradition
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas appeared in manuscripts contemporary to the

Latin palimpsest in an area quite distant from Bobbio. These are Syriac manu-
scripts written in the fifth and the sixth centuries. The information about them
is based on the catalogs and secondary literature.
The first manuscript containing this text, London, British Library,
Add. 14484, is dated from the fifth to the sixth century. The manuscript was cop-
ied in Syria, but eventually it was transferred to Egypt (Western desert), in Scetis
(Wadi Al-Natrun – the Nitrian Desert), in the monastery of Deir Al-Surian (Mon-
astery of the Syrians). It is a Coptic Orthodox Monastery in Egypt established in
the sixth century, known as the Monastery of Mary, the Mother of God (Maria De-
ipara).
 Peeters, Évangiles apocryphes II, xxi; Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 397.
 Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 391, n. 3.
 Hermann Julius Hermann, Die frühmittelalterlichen Handschriften des Abendlandes (Leipzig:
Karl W. Hiersemann Verlag, 1923); Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 411.
 See Michael Richter, Bobbio in the Early Middle Ages: The Abiding Legacy of Columbanus
(Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009).
A large proportion of all surviving Syriac manuscripts from the fifth to the
tenth century belong to Deir Al-Surian.²⁰⁰ The majority of the monastery’s
early manuscripts were part of the 250 manuscripts that Abbot Mushe of Nisibis
brought from Baghdad in 931/2; a few other donors existed too.²⁰¹ Many of the
manuscripts from this collection were transferred to the British Library in the
nineteenth century.
Manuscript Add. 14484 is a composite, according to Wright’s catalog.²⁰² I
focus on the libellus containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which includes
a total of three texts.²⁰³ The Protevangelium of James is fragmentary in folios
12r-14v (starting with Ch. 17).²⁰⁴ The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is in folios 14v-
18v.²⁰⁵ Finally, the Transitus Mariae (“Departure of Our Lady from this world”
 Sebastian Brock, and Lucas Van Rompay, Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts and Frag-
ments in the Library of Deir Al-Surian, Wadi Al-Natrun (Egypt) (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), XIII.
 Brock and Van Rompay, Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts and Fragments, XIII; see also
Sebastian Brock, “Without Mushe of Nisibis, Where Would We Be? Some Reflections on the
Transmission of Syriac Literature,” The Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 56, No. 1/4 (2004):
15 – 24.
 The contents of the manuscript: fol. 1r-8r: Transitus beatae Virginis (Obsequies of my Lady
Mary); fol. 9r-11r: palimpsest, the History of the Holy Mother of God, the Virgin above; fol.12r-47r:
Apocryphal Gospels, Transitus beatae Virginis; fol. 48r-133r: Acts of Symeon Stylites; fol. 134r-152r:
fragment of the same text. The section in folios 1r-8r presents a separate unit, according to
Wright. It consists of eight leaves written in vellum of 10 ¾ to 8 ¼ inches, much stained and
mutilated. The script is of the fifth or sixth century. The online catalog dates folios 1r-5r to the
period from 400 – 549 CE. The folios 9r-11r are three leaves written in vellum of 9¾ to 7 inches,
containing palimpsest beneath. The script above is of the tenth or eleventh century. The leaves
contain part of an Apocryphon, the History of the Holy Mother of God, the Virgin. The palimpsest
is from the ninth century and illegible. The folio 11v has a diagram for understanding the com-
mencement of Lent. The folios from 48r-133r and 134r-152r are dated from 500 – 599 and contain
the Vita of Symeon the Stylite by Cosmas. See Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts I, 98 – 100;
Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts III, 1224; Tony Burke, Syriac Tradition of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas: A Critical Edition and English Translation (New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2017), 26.
 The folios 12r-47r are written in vellum, dimensions 10 ½ to 8 3/8 inches, consisting of 36
leaves.
 This text is dated to the sixth century. W. Wright published the translation of the Protevan-
gelium of James in Syriac in 1865, containing portions of the second half of the Protevangelium of
James (chapters 17 to the end) and E. A. Wallis Budge re-edited it in 1899. Horn and Phenix,
“Apocryphal Gospels in Syriac,” 533, 538; Wright, Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of
the New Testament, 4– 5; E. A. Wallis Budge, The History of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the His-
tory of the Likeness of Christ Which the Jews of Tiberias Made to Mock at (London: Luzac and co.,
1899); Vuong, Gender and Purity, 9.
 See Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts I, 99.
in six books) is in folios 18v-47r.²⁰⁶ The folios are dated to 550 – 599 CE, and some
of them are stained and soiled. The script is of the sixth century, and the manu-
script has a Syriac colophon on folio 47r.
In this libellus, at least two texts have the Virgin Mary as the subject. The Pro-
tevangelium of James describes Mary’s childhood, and the Transitus Mariae has
Mary’s death as its theme. This “Book of Mary” – a collection of apocryphal
books about Mary – encompassing the Protevangelium of James and the Transi-
tus Mariae, existed in the Syriac manuscripts by the turn of the sixth century. The
Infancy Gospel of Thomas was added to them also by the sixth century.²⁰⁷
Some other texts of the composite manuscript also deal with Virgin Mary.
The figure of Mary inspired a significant part of the manuscript. The three
texts present a cycle of Mary’s life – her birth and childhood, her son’s child-
hood, her adult years, and finally, her death. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas ac-
companies the two other texts because of its close connection with the figure of
Mary.²⁰⁸ It was placed in this manuscript because of Mary.
Another Syriac manuscript containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is Göt-
tingen, Universitätsbibliothek, syr. 10, dated to the sixth century.²⁰⁹ The manu-
script was found in Egypt, Sinai, in St. Catherine’s monastery, but it was written
in Syria.²¹⁰ The texts attested in this manuscript are the Protevangelium of James,
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and an anonymous Transitus Mariae – or more
 Stephen Shoemaker argues that this “Six Books Apocryphon” derives from a Greek original
which was most likely in circulation already by the later fourth century, or even earlier. Stephen
Shoemaker, “The Cult of the Virgin in the Fourth Century: A Fresh Look at Some Old and New
Sources,” in Origins of the Cult of the Virgin Mary, ed. Chris Maunder (London: Burns and Oates,
2008): 71– 88, 79.
 The name “Book of Mary” is taken from Cornelia B. Horn, “Syriac and Arabic Perspectives
on Structural and Motif Parallels Regarding Jesus’ Childhood in Christian Apocrypha and Early
Islamic Literature: The ‘Book of Mary,’ the Arabic Apocryphal Gospel of John, and the Qu’rān,”
Apocrypha 19 (2008): 267– 291.
 See Horn, “Syriac and Arabic Perspectives,” 267– 291.
 See Meyer, “Kindheitserzählung des Thomas”; Baars and Heldermann, “Neue Materialen;”
Stephen Shoemaker, “New Syriac Dormition Fragments from Palimpsests in the Schøyen Collec-
tion and the British Library,” Le Muséon 124, No. 3 (2011): 259 – 278; Agnes Smith Lewis, Apoc-
rypha Syriaca: The Protevangelium Jacobi and Transitus Mariae (London: C. J. Clay and Sons,
and Cambridge University Press Warehouse, 1902); William Wright, “The Departure of My
Lady Mary from This World,” The Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record 6 – 7 (1865):
108 – 160, 417– 448.
 See Charles Naffah, “Les ‘histoires’ syriaques de la Vierge: Traditions apocryphes anciennes
et récentes,” Apocrypha 20 (2009): 137– 188; Desreumaux, “Deux anciens manuscrits syriaques,”
115 – 136; Sebastian Brock, Catalogue of Syriac Fragments (New Finds) in the Library of the Mon-
astery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai (Athens: Mount Sinai Foundation, 1995), 73 – 74.
precisely, a fragment of the Protevangelium of James, the complete text of the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas, and a large portion of the Transitus Mariae in the six-
book form.²¹¹ The contents are the same as in Add. 14484. Horn argues based
on the same evidence that the inclusion of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in
the composite work consisting of the Protevangelium of James and the Transitus
Mariae was a more widespread phenomenon in the sixth-century Syriac apocry-
phal literature.²¹²
It appears that the text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Syriac tradi-
tion evolved around the figure of Mary in connection with other texts about
her.²¹³ Horn and Phenix argue that this manuscript witnesses a collection of
texts shaping the canon of the Life of Mary.²¹⁴ In their view, “the Syriac tradition
does not seem to have continued to actively transmit the Infancy Gospel of Pseu-
do-Thomas as a separate work. Instead, the Syriac tradition incorporated it into
larger accounts like the various versions of the Life of Mary or recensions of the
Arabic Infancy Gospel.”²¹⁵
Desreumaux argues that “all known ancient Syriac manuscripts (fifth-sixth
centuries) of this work demonstrate the existence of the History of the Virgin
from her birth to her funeral.”²¹⁶ Naffah also argues that “the Syriac author want-
ed to constitute, as early on as in the most ancient witnesses to have reached us,
the History of the Virgin in chronological order, from the time of her birth to her
last days.”²¹⁷ The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in these manuscripts supported the
prominence of Mary’s figure. Jesus’ childhood constituted a part of this story.
In Late Antiquity, as the West and the East slowly parted ways, the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas seems to have been appropriated in the two realms in various ways.
In the West (Vienna 563), it was part of the cycle about Jesus (Jesus’ trial, child-
hood, and death). In the East, it served as part of the cycle about Mary. Unfortu-
nately, these few manuscripts are all the evidence we have for reconstructing the
context of the transmission of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in Late Antiquity.
 S. Mimouni recognized the section of the Transitus Mariae in the six-book form in this
manuscript as a copy of the contemporary Add. 14484. Horn, “Syriac and Arabic Perspectives,”
279 – 280; Horn and Phenix, “Apocryphal Gospels in Syriac and Related Texts,” 534– 535; Simon
Claude Mimouni, Dormition et Assomption de Marie: Histoire des traditions anciennes (Paris:
Beauchesne, 1995), 92, n. 64. For the six-book form, see also Stephen Shoemaker, Mary in
Early Christian Faith and Devotion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
 Horn, “Syriac and Arabic Perspectives,” 280.
 Horn, “Syriac and Arabic Perspectives.”
 Horn and Phenix, “Apocryphal Gospels in Syriac,” 534.
 Horn and Phenix, “Apocryphal Gospels in Syriac,” 544.
 Desreumaux, “Deux anciens manuscrits syriaques,” 115 – 136.
 Naffah, “Les ‘histoires’ syriaques de la Vierge,” 137– 188.
Georgian evidence
The sole Georgian manuscript which contains the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is
Tbilisi, Codex A 95.²¹⁸ The dating of the manuscript spans from the tenth to
the twelfth century.²¹⁹ Codex A 95 is an extensive collection of hagiographical
and homiletic texts.²²⁰ Because of the number of texts, this manuscript has
 See Bregadze, Qavtaria, and Qutateladze, Kartul Xelnatserta agtseriloba I.1, 361– 393; Zhor-
dania, Opisanie rukopisei, 96 – 114.
 Khakhanov dated it to the twelfth century, and Zhordania and Melikset-Bek dated it to the
tenth century. Garitte argued that this manuscript came from the end of the tenth century. The
editors T. Bregadze, M. Qavtaria, and L. Qutateladze date it to the beginning of the eleventh cen-
tury. See Garitte, “Le fragment géorgien,” 514, n. 5, 516; Levon Melikset-Bek, “Фрагментъ гру-
зинской версіи ‘Дѣтства Христа,’” (The Fragment of the Georgian Version of the Childhood of
Jesus) Христіанскій Восток 6.3 (1917– 1920): 315 – 320, 316, n. 2; Alexander Khakhanov, Очерки
по исторіи грузинской словесности (Studies on History of Georgian Literature) (Москва: Уни-
верситетская типографія, 1897), 319 – 321; Bregadze, Qavtaria, and Qutateladze, Kartul Xelnat-
serta agtseriloba I.1, 361.
 The contents of the manuscript: fol. 1r-3v: Gregory Thaumaturgus, Homily on Annunciation;
fol. 4r-v: Proclus of Constantinople, Homily on Theotokos; fol. 5r-7v: Epiphanius of Cyprus, Homi-
ly on Theotokos; fol. 7v-11v: John Chrysostom, Homily on Annunciation; fol. 11v-15r: Meletius of
Antioch, Homily on Annunciation; fol. 15r-21r: John Chrysostom, Homily on Nativity of Christ;
fol. 21r-24v: John Chrysostom, Homily on Nativity; fol. 24v-31r: Athanasius of Alexandria, Homily
on Nativity; fol. 31rv: Clement of Rome, On the celebrations of Nativity and Epiphany; fol. 31v:
Gregory of Nazianzus, Homily on Nativity; fol. 31v-32r: Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on Nativity;
fol. 32r-34r: John Chrysostom, On Nativity (25 Dec); fol. 34r-37v: Justinian, Letter on the celebra-
tion of Nativity; fol. 37v-39r: Eusebius of Alexandria, On Nativity; fol. 39r-43r: Saint Nino, On Na-
tivity; fol. 43r-48v: John Chrysostom, On Nativity; fol. 48v-50r: Martyrdom of St. James the Apostle
(26 Dec); fol. 50r-52v: Discovery of relics of St. Zacharius, Symeon and Jacob; fol. 52v-55v: Passion
of St. Stephen (27 Dec); fol. 55v-59r: Gregory of Antioch, On St. Stephen; fol. 59r-61v: Gregory of
Antioch, On St. Stephen; fol. 61v-65v: Finding of relics of St. Stephen; fol. 65v-71v: Translation of
relics of St. Stephen from Constantinople; fol. 71v-75r: Martyrdom of St. Peter; fol. 75r-77r: Martyr-
dom of St. Paul (28 Dec); fol. 77v-79v: John Chrysostom, Homily on Peter and Paul; fol. 79v-82r:
Dorotheus of Tyre with 72 disciples; fol. 82r-83r: Dorotheus of Tyre, with 12 Apostles; fol. 83r-
94r: Acts of Saint John the Baptist (29 Dec); fol. 94r-107v: Miracles of St. Basil (1 Jan); fol. 107v-
113v: Dialogue between Basil and Gregory; fol. 113v-115r: John of Bolnisi, On Bishops; fol. 115r-
120v: John Chrysostom, On Epiphany (6 Jan); fol. 120v-124r: Julien of Tabia, On Epiphany;
fol. 124r-126r: Proclus of Constantinople, On Epiphany; fol. 126r-130v: Gregory of Nazianzus,
On Epiphany; fol. 130v-137v: John Chrysostom, On Epiphany; fol. 137v-142r: Eusebius of Alexan-
dria, On Epiphany; fol. 142r-145v: Saint Nino, On Epiphany; fol. 145v-159v: Martyrdom of St. Abo;
fol. 159v-163v: Vita of Paul the Hermit (17 Jan); fol. 163v-166v: Apophthegms of St. Antony (Didas-
caliae); fol. 166v-169r: Athanasius of Alexandria, Vita of Antony; fol. 169r-172v: Ephraim the Sy-
rian, On Fathers; fol. 172r-178v: John Chrysostom, On Martyrs (22 Jan); fol. 178v-181r: Eusebius of
Alexandria, On Martyrs; fol. 181r-193r: John Chrysostom, On Martyrs; fol. 193r-194v: John Chrys-
ostom, On Martyrs and St. Stephen; fol. 194v-195v: John Chrysostom, On Virginity; fol. 195v-197r:
John Chrysostom, On Virginity; fol. 197rv: Apparition of the Cross (29 Jan); fol. 197v-201r: Finding
of the Cross; fol. 201rv: Finding of the Nails; fol. 202r-204r: Hesychius of Jerusalem, On Hypapante
(2 Feb); fol. 204r-207r: Timothy of Jerusalem, On Hypapante; fol. 207r-209r: Eusebius of Alexan-
dria, On Presentation; fol. 209r-212r: Cyril of Jerusalem, On Hypapante; fol. 212rv: Apocrypha of
Joachim and Anna; fol. 212v-217v: Passion of the 40 martyrs of Sebaste (9 March); fol. 217v-223r:
Basil the Great, On 40 martyrs; fol. 223rv: John Chrysostom, On the Fast and Jonas; fol. 224r: Eu-
sebius of Alexandria, On the Fast; fol. 224r-225r: Eusebius of Alexandria, On Fast; fol. 225r-233v:
Cyril of Jerusalem, On Penitence; fol. 233v-240v: Meletius of Antioch, On Penitence; fol. 240v-247r:
Basil of Cesarea, On Lent; fol. 247r-251v: John of Bolnisi; 251v-254v: John of Bolnisi; fol. 254v-257v:
John of Bolnisi; fol. 257r-261v: John Chrysostom, On Youth; fol. 261v-264r: John of Bolnisi;
fol. 264v-267r: John of Bolnisi; fol. 267v-270r: John of Bolnisi; fol. 270v-271v: John of Bolnisi;
fol. 272r-277v: Life of Ereneus; Second part: fol. 277r-289r: Martyrdom of St. Catherine (25 Nov);
fol. 289r-300r: Martyrdom of St. Marina (17 July); fol. 300r-305v: Martyrdom of St. Anastasia
(22 Dec); fol. 305v-319v: Martyrdom of St. Febronia (25 July); fol. 319v-329v: Life and martyrdom
of St. Eugenia; fol. 329v-333v: Martyrdom of St. Eugenia; fol. 333v-343v: Life and martyrdom of
St. Gulanduht (Mary) (9 July); fol. 343v-353r: Martyrdom of St. Cristina (23 July); fol. 353r-359v:
Martyrdom of Shushanik (17 Oct); fol. 360r-363r: Life and martyrdom of St. Barbara; fol. 363v-
380v: Life and Deeds of Cyprian; fol. 380v-385v: Martyrdom of Sts. Cyprian and Justina;
fol. 385v-397r: Martyrdom of St. Christophorus (1 July); fol. 397v-403r: Martyrdom of Cyrus and
John (30 Jan); fol. 403r-408v: Martyrdom of Julian of Emessa (6 Feb); fol. 408v-440v: Martyrdom
of the Fathers of St. Sabas (19 Mar); fol. 440v-454r: Martyrdom of Romanus the New Martyr (1
Mar); fol. 454r-455r: Martyrdom of Leontius (18 July); fol. 455r-456r: Martyrdom of St. Procopius
(8 July); fol. 456r-461r: Martyrdom of Paul, Bilos, Theon, Eron, and followers (2 July); fol. 461r-
473v: Martyrdom of 45 martyrs of Nicopolis (10 July); fol. 473v-477r: Martyrdom of Atenagena;
fol. 477r-482v: Martyrdom of Athanasius (19 July); fol. 482v-491r: Martyrdom of the Maccabees,
fol. 491r-496r: Martyrdom of St. Elianus (10 Aug); fol. 496r-502v: Martyrdom of Lucian (22 Aug);
fol. 502v-513v: Martyrdom of Sergius and Bachus (7 Oct); fol. 513v-530v: Martyrdom of Sts. Gurios,
Samon, and Aviv from Edessa (15 Nov); fol. 530v-538r: Life of Merquirios (23 Nov); fol. 538r-558v:
Martyrdom of Eustratius, Axentius, Eugenius, and Arestius (13 Dec); fol. 558v-561v: Martyrdom of
Arcos, Promoisi, Elias, and others (14 Dec); fol. 561v-570v: Martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch (20
Dec); fol. 570v-576v: Martyrdom of St. James; fol. 576v-582r: Martyrdom of Speusippus and others;
fol. 582r-585v: Martyrdom of Xystus, Laurence and Hippolytus, fol. 585v-588r: Martyrdom of Timo-
thy; fol. 588r-590v: Eusebius of Cesarea, Commemoration of St. Sergius; fol. 591v-598v: Life of St.
Antigone and his wife; fol. 599r-602v: Life of Euphrosine and Paphnutius; fol. 602v-604v: Life and
martyrdom of Tasia of Egypt; fol. 604v-612v: Martyrdom of Pelagia; fol. 613r-621r: Life and martyr-
dom of Mary of Egypt; fol. 621r-628v: Deeds of Abraham and Mary; fol. 628v-631r: Life of a Female
Prostitute; fol. 631r-633r: Life of St. Mavrianes; fol. 633r-636v: Life of a Prostitute from Alexandria;
fol. 636v-637v: Life of St. Andronicus and Athanasia; fol. 638r-642r: Life of John; fol. 642r-646r: Life
of Ephemian and Alexius; fol. 646r-651v: Epistle of St. Dionisius, Bishop of Athens; fol. 651v-653v:
Childhood of Our Jesus Christ. See Bregadze, Qavtaria, and Qutateladze, Kartul Xelnatserta agtser-
iloba I.1, 361– 393; Zhordania describes the contents differently. See Zhordania, Opisanie, 96 –
114.
often been the subject of research.²²¹ Only in recent scholarship has it become
clear that this manuscript comprises two parts: homiletic and martyrological.²²²
Esbroeck argues that this is not a single manuscript but two codices linked to-
gether and artificially welded by continual numbering.²²³ Gippert suggests,
based on the texts’ arrangement, that the second part of the manuscript, a mar-
tyrology, was attached to the first part of the codex at a later stage.²²⁴ The first
part of the manuscript contains the homilies for the major feasts, Annunciation,
Nativity, Finding of the Cross, Hypapante, written by the prominent Greek
Church Fathers and translated in Georgian. However, it also contains a small
set of hagiographies and a section of the Protevangelium of James. This part fol-
lows a calendar. The second part contains martyrdom narratives starting with fe-
male martyrs and continuing with male martyrs. This section ends with the lives
and martyrdom of prostitutes. The texts are not arranged according to a calendar.
I here base my description of the manuscript on the catalogs and secondary lit-
erature.
Initially, the whole manuscript was defined in scholarship as mravaltavi. Es-
broeck interprets mravaltavi as the collection of homilies, sermons, and panegy-
rics, close to the Greek homiliaries, which were used as reading for the movable
feasts of the calendar year.²²⁵ In recent scholarship, it has been acknowledged
that mravaltavi contains a hagiographical section as well. Martin-Hisard defines
mravaltavi as a specifically Georgian liturgical book, which initially consisted of
patristic homilies designed to be read on the feast days of the Lord and the Moth-
er of God, but it was extended from the ninth century to include the lives of the
saints as well.²²⁶ Gippert characterizes mravaltavi as a collection containing texts
authored by Church Fathers for the feast days of the year and a fundamental,
 Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 54; see also Melikset-Bek, “Фрагментъ
грузинской версіи,” 316.
 See Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 55; Jost Gippert, “Mravaltavi – A Spe-
cial Type of Old Georgian Multiple-Text Manuscripts,” in One-Volume Libraries: Composite and
Multiple-Text Manuscripts, eds. Michael Friedrich, and Cosima Schwarke (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2016): 47– 91, 67.
 Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 55.
 Gippert, “Mravaltavi,” 67.
 Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 5.
 Bernadette Martin-Hisard, “Georgian Hagiography,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to
Byzantine Hagiography I: Periods and Places, ed. Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham: Ashgate,
2011): 285 – 298, 286, n. 7.
fixed corpus of hagiographic texts.²²⁷ It becomes clear that the term mravaltavi,
as the whole manuscript was initially entitled, pertains only to the first part of
the manuscript.²²⁸
The whole manuscript is considered to have been copied in the Parhali mon-
astery (Barhal monastery) in Tao-Klarjeti region (modern Turkey); hence its
name mravaltavi de Parhali (collection of religious writings from Parhali).²²⁹
The Parhali monastery was built from the mid-tenth to the end of the tenth cen-
tury (961– 973 CE). The ascription to this monastery depended on a note, albeit in
the second part of the manuscript.
The calligrapher Gabriel Patara left a note in folios 590r–591r, a testament of
a kind, describing his initial intention to “copy only the lives and martyrdoms of
the holy Mothers…” He initially planned this manuscript to be a collection of the
martyrdoms and lives of holy women.²³⁰ Having not found sufficient material in
Parhali, he added lives and martyrdoms of the Holy Fathers to the manuscript as
well. He borrowed the material to copy from the monastery of Išhani.²³¹ Išhani
and Parhali were neighboring Georgian monasteries.²³² Gabriel Patara was active
in Parhali from the end of the tenth century until the eleventh century.²³³
Gabriel’s note refers to the contents of the second part of the manuscript.
However, the dating and the provenance of the whole manuscript depend on
this note, which may connect only to the second, martyrological part. Similarly,
the colophon in folio 376r (second part) from the fifteenth century reveals that
this manuscript belonged at the time to the monastery of John the Baptist at Par-
hali.²³⁴ It, too, may refer only to the second part. Altogether, the manuscript was
referred to as mravaltavi de Parhali, although the term mravaltavi was related
only to the first part, and Parhali was linked to the second part of the manu-
script. Scholars have eventually concluded that the first part of the manuscript
was copied at the same place, Parhali.
The note in folio 52v (first part) reveals that this manuscript was acquired in
the sixteenth century from Asia Minor (Urumi) by Mariam, the daughter of Dadia-
 The other early mravaltavis assumingly also had a fixed set of essential saints’ lives; the
same set appears in the first part of this mravaltavi. Mravaltavi, as such, is not strictly a collec-
tion of homilies but extends to hagiography as well. Gippert, “Mravaltavi,” 67– 71.
 Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 57.
 Garitte, “Le fragment géorgien,” 514 – 5.
 Djobadze, Early Medieval Georgian Monasteries, 188.
 Djobadze, Early Medieval Georgian Monasteries, 188.
 Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 57.
 Djobadze, Early Medieval Georgian Monasteries, 188.
 Djobadze, Early Medieval Georgian Monasteries, 189; Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires
géorgiens, 56, 58.
ni (1634– 1682), the Duke of Mingrelia (Western Georgia).²³⁵ Esbroeck argues that
this might well be the time when the two codices were bound together.²³⁶ Mariam
obtained the manuscript for her personal development and the remission of
sins.²³⁷ This note, according to Esbroeck, implies that there was a convent of
nuns at Parhali at this time. The contents of the martyrology, containing many
lives and martyrdoms of female martyrs, could have been of interest to the con-
vent.²³⁸
Martin-Hisard argues that extensive hagiographic collections link “foreign
saints” with the so-called “national saints” from the tenth century in Georgia.
Most often, they are arranged according to the calendar order.²³⁹ The first section
of this manuscript could be viewed in the corresponding light since Georgian
saints and martyrs, such as St. Abo and St. Nino, appear there. This feature is
also visible in the second part, where the Martyrdom of Shushanik appears
among martyrdom narratives. Martin-Hisard notes that in Georgia, the collec-
tions of the lives of holy women make their appearance from the end of the
tenth century, characterized by the same process of merging Georgian with “for-
eign” saints. Only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the collections of
purely Georgian saints made their first appearance.
The place of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this manuscript remains un-
clear. Otherwise deposited in the Georgian National Center of Manuscripts in Tbi-
lisi, the manuscript has no easy access. According to the earlier catalog (Zhorda-
nia), the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is placed in the first section of the
manuscript, on pages 568 – 572, preceding the Martyrdom of St. Irene. ²⁴⁰ In his
article, Melikset-Bek used the same page numbers when discussing the mutila-
tion of this text after page 572. The codex had been mutilated, possibly intention-
ally, after page 572, and only the first half of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, cor-
responding to the initial seven chapters, has been preserved.²⁴¹ The mutilation
occurred in the middle of the text. On page 572, the text breaks and the Vita
and Martyrdom of St. Irene of Thessaloniki follows.²⁴² The rest of the pages in
 Zhordania, Opisanie rukopisei, 96; Djobadze, Early Medieval Georgian Monasteries, 189.
 Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 58.
 Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 58.
 Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 58.
 Martin-Hisard, “Georgian Hagiography,” 286.
 Zhordania does not use the standard terminology, including the terms folio, recto, and
verso, but instead uses page numbers. See Zhordania, Opisanie, 96 – 114.
 Melikset-Bek, “Фрагментъ грузинской версіи,” 316; Garitte, “Le fragment géorgien,” 515.
 Melikset-Bek, “Фрагментъ грузинской версіи,” 316.
which the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was to continue were ripped off.²⁴³ However,
the latest catalog of the Center of Manuscripts in Tbilisi (Bregadze, Qavtaria, and
Qutateladze) points to a different place of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas: folios
651v-653v.²⁴⁴ According to this catalog, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is placed
at the end of the manuscript’s second part, preceded by the lives and martyr-
doms of different male and female saints and prostitutes. Further research is nec-
essary to answer the questions of the place of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the
text’s mutilation, and its implied genre based on the position of the text in the
manuscript.
Eleventh-century Byzantine evidence
The earliest extant Byzantine manuscript containing the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas is Sabaiticus 259, nowadays kept in the Library of the Greek Patriarchate
in Jerusalem.²⁴⁵ The manuscript is dated to 1089/1090.²⁴⁶ I consulted the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas in this manuscript, but I have not seen the entire manuscript.
The information in what follows is based on the catalogs and secondary litera-
ture.
A monk and a scribe, Gerasimos, copied the manuscript with a clear plan
regarding its contents. A colophon of a sixteenth-century hand in folio 317v
(the last page) reveals the monk’s name and the dating. The manuscript was
commissioned by Basil kouboukleisios of the village of Vavla in Cyprus.²⁴⁷ Kou-
 Melikset-Bek, “Фрагментъ грузинской версіи,” 316.

 Bregadze, Qavtaria, and Qutateladze, Kartul Xelnatserta agtseriloba I.1, 361– 393.
 See Papadopoulos-Kerameus, ΙΕΡΟΣΟΛΥΜΙΤΙΚΗ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΗ II, 384– 388; Paul Canart,
“Les écritures livresques chypriotes du milieu du XIe siècle au milieu du XIIIe et le style pales-
tino-chypriote epsilon,” Scrittura e Civiltà 5 (1981): 17– 76; Constantinides and Browning, Dated
Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus; François Halkin, “La Passion ancienne de sainte Euphémie de
Chalcédoine,” Analecta Bollandiana 83 (1965): 95 – 121; Sever J. Voicu, “Il nome cancellato: la
trasmissione delle omelie di Severiano di Gabala,” Revue d’histoire des textes 1 (2006): 317–
333; Basile Atsalos, La Terminologie du livre-manuscrit a l’époque byzantine 1. Termes désignant
le livre-manuscrit et l’écriture (Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2001), 110; Burke, De infan-
tia Iesu, 127; Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus.
 This manuscript attracted the attention of scholars not only because it is the earliest pre-
served Byzantine manuscript but also because scholars think that it preserves the earliest Greek
textual version (Gs). R. Aasgaard based his work entirely on Sabaiticus 259. See Aasgaard, The
Childhood of Jesus; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 127.
 Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 66. See also Burke, De
infantia Iesu, 127; Halkin, “La passion ancienne de sainte Euphémie,” 96, n. 4; Papadopoulos-
Kerameus, ΙΕΡΟΣΟΛΥΜΙΤΙΚΗ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΗ II, 384– 388; Kirsopp Lake, and Silva Lake, Dated
Eleventh-century Byzantine evidence 57
boukleisios was a title given to ecclesiastical chamberlains, priests, deacons, and

sometimes monks until the eleventh century, after which it was abandoned. In
the eleventh century, Cyprus was under the control of the Byzantine Empire.
Manuscripts of Cyprus commonly originated from churches and monasteries
and belonged to wealthy individuals who collected luxury manuscripts during
peace and prosperity.²⁴⁸ Sometimes, individuals in civil or monastic communities
provided copies of books and dedicated them to churches and monasteries.²⁴⁹
This manuscript was originally dedicated to an unknown church or monastery,
but later it belonged to the monastery of St. Nikolaos in Akrotiri (established
in the fourth century). On folio 317r, the name of the original manuscript
owner was erased, and the monastery of St. Nikolaos at Akrotiri was written
above.²⁵⁰ The village of Vavla and the Monastery of St. Nikolaos are geographi-
cally close to each other, located in southern Cyprus.
Sabaiticus 259 was eventually transferred to the monastery of St. Gerasimos
in Palestine. Cypriot monasteries had established long-standing connections
with Palestinian monasteries.²⁵¹ Donations from Cyprus to the monasteries of
Palestine, like the Holy Sepulchre and St. Sabas, by high ecclesiastics from Cy-
prus or abbots of flourishing monasteries, were tokens of respect.²⁵² Many Cyp-
riot monasteries eventually became metochia, subordinate to the Holy Land.²⁵³
The monastery of St. Nikolaos at Akrotiri became a metochion of St. Gerasimos
in Palestine. It was the way the manuscript traveled from one monastery to
the other. In 1616, a priest Esaias donated the manuscript to the monastery of
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Afterward, it ended in the monastery of St.
Sabas in Palestine.
Sabaiticus 259 is, according to Constantinides and Browning, “an important
parchment volume of orations, lives, encomia of saints, and apocryphal
works.”²⁵⁴ The homilies of Chrysostom, Basil, Ephraim, and Epiphanius of Cy-
Greek Minuscule Manuscripts to the Year 1200 1 (Boston: The American Academy of Arts and Sci-
ences, 1934).
 Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 3.
 Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 3.
 It was a common practice: despite the curses for the appropriators of books that we find in
manuscripts, new owners would erase the references to the previous owners and write down
their names. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 4.
 Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 5.
 Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 5.
 Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 5.
 Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 5, 31, 63.
prus predominate in the opening section of the manuscript.²⁵⁵ The lives of the
bishops occupy the middle section, several of which tell the story of bishops
from Cyprus, Epiphanius, and Spyridon. The contents have a local hue, judging
by the texts about Epiphanius of Cyprus and those written by him.²⁵⁶ The manu-
script ends with the texts about female saints and martyrs. The contents of the
manuscript partially overlap with the previously discussed Georgian manuscript.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is copied together with the texts of prominent
Church Fathers and hagiographies. The text has a separate opening in folio 66r,
bearing the title Τὰ παιδικὰ μεγαλεῖα τοῦ δεσπότου ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ
Χριστοῦ, and ends in folio 72v. The Vita Deiparae, written by Epiphanius Mona-
chos, follows from folio 73r.²⁵⁷ Its position in the manuscript does not instantly
imply its preconceived genre because the text is placed amidst varia, where dif-
ferent texts appear between homilies and hagiographies.
 The contents: fol. 1r-20r – Combat of the three holy children Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, and
the prophet Daniel (BHG 0484z-0484*); fol. 21r-31r: Basil of Cesarea, Homilia exhortatoria ad
sanctum baptismum (BHG 1935)(6 Jan); fol. 31r-36v: John Chrysostom, Logos in evangelium in an-
nuntiationem Virginis (BHG 1128 f)(25 March); fol. 37r-45r: Epiphanius of Cyprus, Logos in festo
palmarum; fol. 45r-51r: John Chrysostom, Logos in parabolam de ficu; fol. 51r-55r: John Chrysos-
tom, Logos in Parthenos in decem virgines; fol. 55r-63v: Ephraim, Encomia in gloriosos martyres;
fol. 63v-66r: Pseudo-Eusebius Alexandrinus, Sermo 14: De proditione Judae (BHG 635v-635vd);
fol. 66r-72v: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas; fol. 73r-74r: fragment of Vita deiparae by Epiphanius
Monachus; fol. 74r-77v: Nicetas Chartoularius, The Miracle in Constantinople; fol. 77v-83v: From
the ancient history; fol. 84r-95v: Vita of Artemon taumaturgos; fol. 84– 93v: Life of the father Ar-
temon thaumatourgos; fol. 93v-96: Severianus bishop of Gabala, Logos; fol. 96 – 117v: John Pres-
byter of Constantias, Life of Epiphanius Bishop of Cyprus (BHG 596); fol. 117v-132v: Bishop Poly-
bius of Thebaida, Life of Epiphanius Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus (BHG 597– 597b); fol. 133r-
140r: James the Deacon, Saint Pelagia; fol. 140r-187v: Theodore Bishop of Paphos, Vita of St. Spyr-
idon, bishop of Tremithous in Cyprus; fol. 187v-206r: Vita and martyrdom of Eudocia Samaritana
(BHG 604); fol. 206r-216r: Vita of Eutropius, Cleonicus and Basiliskus (BHG 656b)(3 March);
fol. 216r-238r: Vita and martyrdom of Febronia (25 June); fol. 238r-246v: Martyrdom of Varo and
Cleopatra and her son; fol. 247r-256v: Martyrdom of Thecla (24 Sept); fol. 256v-271r: Martyrdom
of Eulampius and Eulampias (BHG 616)(10 Oct); fol. 271r-283v: Martyrdom of Nazarius, Gervasius,
Protasius and Kelsus (14 Oct); fol. 284r-292v: Martyrdom of Euphemia (16 Sept); fol. 292v-306r:
John Chrysostom, Homilies on St. Peter and Elias; fol. 306r-310v: Martyrdom of Nicephorus of An-
tioch (9 Feb); fol. 310v-317r: John Chrysostom, Laudatio St. Susannae. See Papadopoulos-Kera-
meus, ΙΕΡΟΣΟΛΥΜΙΤΙΚΗ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΗ II, 384– 388; Venance Grumel, “Van Den Ven (Paul),
La légende de S. Spyridon, évêque de Trimithonte,” Revue des études byzantines 14, No. 1
(1956): 240 – 244, 242; Voicu, “Il nome cancellato,” 317– 333.
 It is worth noting that Epiphanius of Cyprus commented on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in
the fourth century in a relatively mild tone. He did not dismiss this text outright. See Burke, De
infantia Iesu, 212.
 Epiphanius was an author in ninth-century Constantinople.
The position of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was planned within the con-
tents of this manuscript. The manuscript contains a marginal note from the six-
teenth century on folios 66v-68r, which identifies the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
as a heretical book written by Manicheans.²⁵⁸ A writer of the note discredits the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas because it reports the miracles that Jesus performed as
a child before he was baptized.²⁵⁹
Burke did not decide whether this manuscript is the sole evidence of the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas in the Gs variant. There is another fragment that could
testify to the same variant.²⁶⁰ Another Gs witness would attest whether the spe-
cific and unique features of the Gs text are linked only to Sabaiticus 259 or relate
to the variant.²⁶¹
Eleventh-century Latin evidence
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was preserved in the West simultaneously with Sa-
baiticus 259 in the Latin manuscript Paris, BnF, lat. 1772, dating from the elev-
enth to the twelfth century.²⁶² The manuscript comes from a German Benedictine
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 128.

 Cf. John Chrysostom. In his Homily 17 on John (PG 59, 110), he emphasizes: “It remains clear
that those miracles, which they say are Christ’s childhood deeds, are false. For if he had begun
from his early age to work wonders, neither would John have been ignorant of him, nor would
the multitude have needed a teacher to make him known.” See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 6; see
also Philip Schaff, ed., Saint Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of John and the Epistle to the
Hebrews. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church 14
(Grand Rapids: Eerdman, 1975), 60.
 It is the manuscript from the Austrian National Library, Philos. gr. 162, a paper manuscript,
217/220x140/145 mm, dated before 1455. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 129 – 131. See also Peter Lam-
beck, Commentariorum de Augustissima Bibliotheca Caesarea Vindobonensi liber septimus (Vien-
na: Typis M. Cosmerovii, 1675), 270 – 273; Hunger, Katalog, 265.
 Burke was unsure which group to place the Vienna manuscript, Austrian National Library,
Philos. gr. 162, and eventually, he placed it together with the other Ga manuscripts. The lack of
evidence (since it is a fragment) probably made him hesitant about where to place the manu-
script. Nevertheless, he found several features of this text that correspond with the Gs variant.
See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 129 – 131.
 Gijsel argues that this manuscript is dated to the end of the eleventh century. The online
manuscript catalogue and Rita Beyers argue that it is dated to the beginning of the twelfth cen-
tury. The manuscript is written on parchment, of 265x160 mm, 97 folios, and one column. See
Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146; Lauer, Bibliothèque nationale. Catalogue général 2, 167– 168; Rita Be-
yers, “Histoire de la recherche, de la composition et de l’origine du libellus De nativitate Sanctae
Mariae,” In Libri de nativitate Mariae. Libellus de nativitate Sanctae Mariae, eds. Jan Gijsel, and
Rita Beyers (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997): 7– 33; Rita Beyers, “Dans l’atelier des compilateurs. Re-
abbey, probably Reichenau.²⁶³ This abbey was established in 724 in southern

Germany by a bishop Pirminius, presumably of Irish origin.²⁶⁴ The further com-
ments on the manuscript come from my research.
The note on folio 1r refers to the works of John Chrysostom in the contents of
the manuscript.²⁶⁵ The manuscript opens with a work by Chrysostom.²⁶⁶ The
cataloguer gives the manuscript a title: John Chrysostom and Pseudo-Matthew.²⁶⁷
marques à propos de la Compilation latine de l’enfance,” Apocrypha 16 (2005): 97– 136; Beyers,
“The transmission of Marian Apocrypha,” 120, n. 16; Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 129;
BnF, “Archives et manuscrits,” <http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ead.html?id=FRBN-
FEAD000059739> Last accessed: 08/06/2021.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 129.
 See Scott Wells, “Reichenau,” in Encyclopedia of Monasticism II, ed. William M. Johnston
(Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000), 1070 – 1071; Reichenau became one of the central
monastic centers in the Alemannic area and flourished during Charlemagne and Louis the
Pious. It is among the critical Carolingian monasteries with close connections to rulers and in-
tellectuals. The ninth century was one of the more prosperous periods of the monastery regard-
ing book production. The Abbey of Reichenau was the most important and artistically most in-
fluential center for producing lavishly illuminated manuscripts in Europe during the late tenth
and early eleventh centuries. It had the reputation of being the leading center of learning and
spirituality by the eleventh century. It also has the first lengthy and detailed medieval library
catalog, from the year 821/822. See Bernhard Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of
Charlemagne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 18, 96, n. 20; see also Annika Rulk-
ens, “‘Domus dei’ and ‘opus dei’: The Reichenau Monastery in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries,”
MA Thesis (Utrecht: University of Utrecht, 2007), 14– 16. The catalogue is published by Paul Joa-
chim Georg Lehmann, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz 1 (Mu-
nich: C. H. Beck, 1918), 251.
 In hoc codice continentur libri sancti Johanis Constantinopolitani episcopis qui vocat aureus.
See Paris, BnF lat. 1772, fol. 1r. The manuscript is entitled Johannis Chrysostomi opera in the cat-
alog.
 The contents are as follows: fol. 1r-16r: John Chrysostom, De eo quod nemo laeditur nisi a se
ipso; fol. 16r-41r: De compunctione cordis I-II; fol. 41r-72r: De reparatione lapsi; fol. 72r-79r: Liber
de lapsis ad Theodorum monachum (Homilium ad Theodorum monachum); fol. 79v-90r: Pseudo-
Matthew: fol. 79v-88v: Jerome, Epistola Chromatii et Heliodori, Pseudo-Matthew; fol. 88v-90r: The
Childhood of Our Lord Jesus Christ (De infantia domini Jesu Christi postquam reversus est in Gal-
ilea de Egipto); fol. 90r-95v: Augustine, Sermons of St. Vincent (de festivitate); fol. 95v-96v: De-
scendance of St. Anne and De genealogia beatae Mariae; fol. 96v-97v: Poetry of a monk of Luxeuil
on the death of Constantius, a schoolmaster (Anonymi planctus in obitum Constantii, Monachi
Luxoviensis); f. Iv: Fragment of Acts of 1 July 1280, on St. Catherine’s monastery in Avignon. See
Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum bibliothecae regiae III (Paris: Typographia Regia, 1744), 190.
See Lauer, Catalogue général, 167– 168.
 Lauer, Catalogue général, 167. The presence of Chrysostom’s writings in the Latin manu-
script points to the interest in his work and the translation activities carried on in the West. In-
terestingly, Chrysostom was one of the theologians who warned against the apocryphal features
of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
It is the earliest known manuscript where the Pseudo-Matthew and the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas appear together.²⁶⁸
The folios 79v-90r are taken up by the Epistola Chromatii et Heliodori written
by Pseudo-Jerome, Pseudo-Matthew, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ²⁶⁹ In the
prefatory letters of the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus to Jerome (the Epis-
tola Chromatii et Heliodori), which start on folio 79v, the two bishops ask Jerome
to translate into Latin a Hebrew gospel on the infancy of the Savior and the birth
of the Virgin supposedly written by the Apostle Matthew, which was available
only in a Manichean version.²⁷⁰ According to these letters, the goal of translating
Matthew’s text into Latin is “to make known the extraordinary things of Christ”
and to counteract an apocryphal text on the same topic written by “heretics.”²⁷¹
The text that follows the letters is presented as an authoritative account of Mary’s
birth and Christ’s infancy, earlier corrupted by heretics.²⁷² Because of these let-
ters about the text’s origins and its connection to the supposed Hebrew text writ-
ten by the Apostle Matthew, modern scholars call the corpus the Gospel of Pseu-
do-Matthew. ²⁷³
Scholars agree that these letters aimed to provide authority to the Gospel of
Pseudo-Matthew. Elliott argues that the “spurious letters, also found in other
manuscripts containing the apocryphal texts, were added to provide this gospel
with appropriate credentials.”²⁷⁴ In the view of Jenkins, the Gospel of Pseudo-
Matthew dispelled doubts about its authority by forging a correspondence of
St. Jerome.²⁷⁵ The letters provided a warrant for the Pseudo-Matthew by attribut-
ing it to a prominent author, the Apostle Matthew. Second, the letters themselves
were ascribed to another distinguished author, Jerome, thus giving additional
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 94; see also Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146.
 Describing the general structure of the Pseudo-Matthew, Burke notes that chapters 1– 17 are
an adaptation of the Protevangelium of James. Then the miracle stories performed by the infant
Jesus on his journey in Egypt follow in this corpus (chapters 18 – 24). The Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas occupies chapters 26 – 42, and it is called pars altera; however, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
was not part of the original composition of the Pseudo-Matthew. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146 –
148.
 Beyers argues that Jerome’s letters were added to a branch of the Pseudo-Matthew around
the year 800. Dzon mentions that a set of letters attached to the beginning of the Pseudo-Mat-
thew appears in many manuscripts. See Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 262; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 215,
n. 2; Beyers, “Introduction,” 15; Sheingorn, “Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of Jesus,”
257; Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,” 60.
 Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 262.
 Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 263.
 Dzon, “Wanton Boys,” 104.
 Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,” 60.
 Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 105.
credentials to this group of texts. It seems that a necessity emerged at this time in
the West to provide a distance vis-à-vis apocryphal Manichean contents in such a
form of writing.
The letters of Pseudo-Jerome were followed by the core Pseudo-Matthew. The
Pseudo-Matthew is defined somewhat differently by individual scholars. While
the cataloguer Lauer calls the whole group of texts the Pseudo-Matthew, includ-
ing the letters of Jerome, the main body of the Pseudo-Matthew, and the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas, Gijsel considers that the Pseudo-Matthew is only the main
body of text between the letters and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Gijsel consid-
ers the Infancy Gospel of Thomas as pars altera – an addition to the Pseudo-Mat-
thew. ²⁷⁶ In his description of the Pseudo-Matthew, Burke refers to chapters 1– 17
as an adapted Protevangelium of James. ²⁷⁷ At the same time, Lauer calls this sec-
tion Nativitas sanctae Mariae (BHL 5334, 5335), which could be wrongly under-
stood as De nativitate Mariae. ²⁷⁸ In the manuscript, the ending sentence of
this text is Explicit nativitas sancte marie. ²⁷⁹
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears after the core Pseudo-Matthew, on fo-
lios 88v-90r, with a distinct title: De infantia domini Jesu Christi postquam rever-
sus est in Galilea de Egipto. This text in the Lm variant is unfinished, consisting of
merely several episodes (26 – 29). The text ends abruptly at folio 90r in the mid-
dle of a sentence. The subsequent text by Augustine, Sermons on St. Vincent, con-
tinues immediately with a different color of ink. Gijsel presents both the forged
correspondence between Chromatius and Heliodorus with Jerome and the pres-
ence of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in Latin manuscripts as later additions to
the Pseudo-Matthew, although he classifies this manuscript to belong to the ear-
lier, A family.²⁸⁰
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas here appears with a distinct title; its further
presence in manuscripts was characterized by reduced independence and re-
duced title use. Beyers argues that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas occasionally fol-
lows the Pseudo-Matthew as an independent text, as in this manuscript; gradu-
ally, the distinctions between the two texts disappeared and came to constitute
one single narrative.²⁸¹ They were merged into one text from the twelfth centu-
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 129; Lauer, Catalogue général, 167– 168.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146 – 148.
 According to Gijsel and Beyers, De nativitate Mariae is a different text, which does not ap-
pear in this manuscript. See Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 129; Gijsel and Beyers, Libellus
de nativitate Sanctae Mariae; Lauer, Catalogue général, 167.
 MS Paris 1772, fol. 88v.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 95.
 Beyers, “The Transmission of Marian Apocrypha,” 135.
ry.²⁸² Voicu argues, particularly concerning the Lm variant, which is transmitted

in approximately 80 manuscripts (the correct number according to Gijsel and
Burke is 76), that it no longer existed as an independent writing, but only as
an appendix to the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, with which it shares the authority
derived from its covering letter.²⁸³ Voicu links the Latin tradition to the Syriac tra-
dition concerning the place and position of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. As we
saw earlier, in the Syriac tradition, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas commonly sur-
vived within the Life of the Virgin Mary. ²⁸⁴
Even if the Infancy Gospel of Thomas contains a distinct title in this manu-
script, it topically relates to the preceding texts. It follows the Pseudo-Matthew,
which describes Mary’s childhood, and probably the Prologue in Egypt in the
ending section of the Pseudo-Matthew, describing the experiences of the holy
family in Egypt. Chronologically, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is correctly set
in its place, describing Jesus’ childhood and Mary’s adult years.²⁸⁵
The motive for the compilation of the Pseudo-Matthew seems to have been to
further the veneration of Mary.²⁸⁶ According to Lauer, further ahead in this
manuscript, we encounter a text about Mary’s mother Anne, the Descendance
of St. Annae, and a text about Mary, De genealogia beatae Mariae. Gijsel reports
that we here encounter three versions of the Trinubium Annae (BHL 505zn), a
short Apocryphon narrating Anne’s three successive marriages to Joachim, Cleo-
phas, and Salomas, and identifies her as the mother of three New Testament
Marys (all but Mary Magdalene).²⁸⁷ Further investigation of this section is need-
ed; it currently suffices to say that it was also in some way related to Mary. The
links between late antique Syriac tradition and medieval Latin tradition become
visible because both traditions tended to use grouped texts to venerate Mary.
The central question is why the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this manuscript
ended in the middle of a sentence. A few possible answers may be offered here.
First, the space for this text was perhaps not planned well; the scribe was left
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 148.

 Voicu, “Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha,” 412.
 Voicu, “Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha,” 412.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 129.
 Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,” 60.
 See Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 129; Baudouin de Gaiffier, “Le Trinubium Annae:
Haymon d’Halberstadt ou Haymon d’Auxerre?” Analecta Bollandiana 90 (1972): 289 – 298; Virgin-
ia Nixon, Mary’s Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe (University Park, Pennsylvania:
Penn State University Press, 2004); Thomas N. Hall, “The Earliest Anglo-Latin Text of the Tri-
nubium Annae (BHL 505z1),” in Via Crucis: Essays on Early Medieval Sources and Ideas in Mem-
ory of J. E. Cross, eds. Thomas N. Hall, with Thomas D. Hill, and Charles D. Wright (Morgantown:
West Virginia University Press, 2002): 104– 137.
with too little space to copy the text. Alternatively, when a scribe realized what
kind of text he was copying, he stopped and gave up on this text in the middle of
a sentence.
Altogether, it seems that the contexts in which the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
was placed significantly changed from Late Antiquity to the eleventh century.
During Late Antiquity, the Latin Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the palimpsest
was combined with other texts about Jesus, while in the Syriac tradition, it
was written with the texts about Mary. In the eleventh-century Latin tradition,
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is copied with the texts about Mary, in this way re-
sembling the late antique Syriac tradition more than its own late antique Latin
tradition. By the eleventh century in the Latin West, originally Greek Apocrypha
were translated and further reworked, appropriated, and provided with guaran-
tees to be copied in manuscripts and bolster the veneration of Mary. In this way,
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas changed its function from the fifth to the eleventh
century in the West, from glorifying Jesus to glorifying Mary.
We do not know whether the combination of texts written down in the fifth-
century Latin palimpsest was initially Greek or Latin. However, the Byzantine
tradition of the eleventh century dissociated from it since the Byzantine manu-
scripts place the Infancy Gospel of Thomas as a text with a distinct title
among other monastic readings, hagiographies, and homilies.
The Latin, Byzantine, and Georgian manuscripts of this time all utilize the
texts of Chrysostom, a feature that indicates the interest in this author and active
translation activities. Mostly, the manuscripts appear to belong to a common
type of monastic reading intended for religious instruction. The manuscripts fol-
low a calendar order in the Georgian tradition mainly, and to an extent in the
Byzantine. The Latin manuscript Paris 1772 does not use a calendar order; its
contents reveal that it could have been a general reader for monastic religious
instruction.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the thirteenth-century

Byzantium
The sole witness of the Byzantine tradition in the thirteenth century is the manu-
script Codex Theologicus gr. 123 from the Austrian National Library. I have in-
spected this manuscript only regarding the folios that cover the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas. This “Panegyricon” is written on paper.²⁸⁸ The title “Panegyricon”
 This information brings in a different understanding of its cost and value and possibly its
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the thirteenth-century Byzantium 65
given by the cataloguer indicates that this is a collection of sermons or panegy-

rics, the genre which predominates in the manuscript.²⁸⁹ The manuscript is in
poor condition, possibly due to the choice of material. Burke and Hunger report
severe damage to the codex, with pages missing, mixed up, and water-dam-
aged.²⁹⁰ Its folios are resolved throughout to the most part. The upper corners
of the folios are water-stained and often destroyed by moisture. Some outer
edges are slightly worn and with more extensive text loss, such as folios 171
and 177. The restoration of the manuscript was conducted, but it is at times in-
effectual and too obvious. There are no signs of the original dedication. Later
hands appear, such as the marginal notes in Latin, written by Sebastian Tengna-
gel.²⁹¹ Because of the notes by Tengnagel, who worked in the library in Vienna in
the seventeenth century and obtained many Byzantine manuscripts from Con-
stantinople, I assume that this manuscript originates from Constantinople. The
Constantinopolitan manuscripts mostly come from the monasteries of Constan-
tinople, some of which were imperial foundations.²⁹²
use. Parchment codices were a much higher investment than high and late medieval paper
manuscripts. Paper manuscripts survive in Byzantium from the eleventh century. The Stoudios
monastery, which had a large scriptorium, is likely to have had its paper producers from the
ninth century. Paper was always cheaper than parchment, perhaps half the price or less. The
imperial secretariat and private individuals seem to have used paper almost exclusively in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. From 1204, parchment was the rule everywhere for three-quar-
ters of the century. It is an exciting detail since this manuscript was dated to the late thirteenth
century. From the mid-fourteenth century, the paper once again became dominant. See Nikolaos
Oikonomides, “Writing Materials, Documents, and Books,” in The Economic History of Byzanti-
um: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century 2, ed. Angeliki Laiou (Washington, DC:
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, 2002): 589 – 592, 590.
 Hunger, Katalog der griechischen Handschriften, 74.
 Burke, De Infantia Iesu, 144; Hunger, Katalog der griechischen Handschriften, 79.
 S. Tengnagel lived in the sixteenth-seventeenth century (1563 – 1636) and was a prominent
historian and librarian of his time. He was employed at the Vienna Court Library from 1608 to
1636, where he conducted the cataloging and acquisition of manuscripts. He was the most influ-
ential man in Vienna concerning oriental studies. He collected oriental manuscripts for the li-
brary from Constantinople. See G. J. Toomer, Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Ara-
bic in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 39.
 See, e. g., Peter Hatlie, The Monks and Monasteries of Constantinople, ca. 350 – 850 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Sofia Kotzabassi, ed., The Pantokrator Monastery in
Constantinople (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013); Vlada Stanković, “Comnenian Monastic Foundations
in Constantinople: Questions of Method and Context,” Belgrade Historical Review 2 (2011):
47– 73.
This manuscript is a collection of panegyrics, hagiographies, and homi-

²⁹³
lies. It contains critical Christian authors, such as Chrysostom, Basil, Anasta-
sius Sinaite, Ephraim, Athanasius of Alexandria, Epiphanius of Cyprus, Severia-
nus of Gabala, and Gregory of Nazianzus. We saw some of the same authors and
texts in the previously analyzed Sabaiticus 259 and the Georgian manuscript Tbi-
lisi, A 95; they essentiate a similar monastic reader. The saints about whom the
 Hunger, Katalog der griechischen Handschriften, 74. The contents: fol.1v-6v: John Chrysos-
tom, In parabolam de filio prodigo; fol. 6v-9v: Ephraim the Syrian, Sermo in pretiosam et vivificam
crucem et in secundum adventum et de caritate et eleemosyna (In secundum adventum Domini
Nostri Iesu Christi); fol. 9v-13r: Ephraim the Syrian, Sermo de communi ressurectione (BHG
2102y); fol. 13r-23r: John Chrysostom, In Genesim sermo 3 (BHG 0025p-pc); fol. 23r-27v and 29r-
31r: Anastasius the Sinaite, In sextum psalmum; fol. 28r-v and 31r-33v: Basil the Great, In ieiunio
2; fol. 33v-37r: Anonymous, Passion of St. Theodore Stratelates (BHG 1750); fol. 37v-43v: Anony-
mous (or Pancratius hagiographus), Passion of St. George (altera, BHG 675); fol. 44r-v: Anony-
mous, Miracle of St. George about the son of the ruler Leo (BHG 687z); fol. 44v-52r: Anonymous,
Narratio de Theophili imperatoris absolutione et imaginum restitutione (BHG 1734); fol. 52r-56r:
John Chrysostom, De adoratione pretiosae Crucis (BHG 419b); fol. 56r-61r: John Chrysostom, Sim-
ile est regnum caelorum; fol. 61r-63r: Chrysostom, In annuntiationem beatae Mariae (BHG 1128 f);
fol. 63r-65v: Chrysostom, In annuntiationem B. Mariae (BHG 1085c); fol. 65v-78r: Sophronius of
Jerusalem, Vita of St. Mary of Egypt (BHG 1042c); fol. 78r-80r: John Chrysostom, De Lazaro et div-
ite homilies 6; fol. 80r-82r: In quatriduanum Lazarum homilies 2 (BHG 2231); fol. 82r-85r: Chrys-
ostom, In ramos palmarum; fol. 85r-100v: Ephraim the Syrian, Sermo in pulcherrimum Joseph
(BHG 2200b); fol.100v-104r: Chrysostom, In parabolam decem virginum; fol. 104r-108r: Chrysos-
tom, In meretricem et pharisaeum; fol.108r-113v: Severianus of Gabala, In proditionem servatoris;
fol.113v-116r: Athanasius of Alexandria, In passionem domini et in parasceve (or Basil of Seleucia,
BHG 0422p); fol.116r-124r: Epiphanius of Cyprus, Homilia in divini corporis sepulturam (BHG
0808e); fol.124r-125v: Gregory of Nazianzus, In sanctum pasha et in tarditatem 1– 2; fol.125v-
128v: John Chrysostom, In triduanam ressurectionem Domini; fol.128v-133r: Archippus, Narration
of St. Michael’s Miracle in Chonis (BHG 1282); fol.133r-136r: Germanus I, Patriarch of Constanti-
nople, In praesentationem Beatae Mariae (BHG 1104); fol. 136r-143v: Prochorus, Vita of St.
John the Evangelist (BHG 916); fol.143v-148v and 150r-154r: Anonymous, Passion of St. Eustathius,
Placida and companions (BHG 0641); fol.154r-159r: Protevangelium of James; fol.160r-167r: Greg-
ory of Nazianzus, In theophania (BHG 1921); fol.167r-170v: Gregory of Nazianzus, In sancta lumina
(BHG 1938); fol.171r-176v: John, Liber de dormitione Mariae (BHG 1055); fol.176v-182v: Andrew of
Crete, Homilies on Dormition of Mary 1– 3; fol.183r-187r: Anonymous, Passion of St. Demetrius
(BHG 0497); fol.187r-188v: Anonymous, Vita and Miracles of Cosmas and Damian (BHG 0373);
fol.189r-v and 190r-191v: Anonymous, Vita of St. Zosimus (BHG 1889); fol.191v: Cyril of Jerusalem,
In occursum Domini (BHG 1973); fol.192r-193v: Thomas, Evangelium de infantia Salvatoris (Infancy
Gospel of Thomas); fol.193v-195r: John Chrysostom, In transfigurationem Domini (= Leontius of
Constantinople) (BHG 1975; BHG 1986); fol.195r-198v: Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople, 33
Homilies on Apostle Thomas (BHG 1839 – 1841); fol.199r-202v: Gregory of Antioch, Homilia in mu-
lieres unguentiferas; fol.202v-206v: John Chrysostom, In Samaritanam (or Leontius of Constanti-
nople); fol.207r-209r: In ascensionem Domini sermo 4; fol.209r-v: John Chrysostom, De sancta
pentecoste homily I.
texts were written in this collection were among the most renowned in Byzanti-
um: George, Archangel Michael, Zosimus, Theodor Stratelates, Mary of Egypt,
Demetrius, Cosmas, and Damian. The texts in the manuscript are not aligned ac-
cording to a calendar.
The manuscript Vienna 123 preserves the earliest Gd variant of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas. The text in the manuscript is incomplete and reduced to a
few pages (192r-193v).²⁹⁴ It covers episodes 10.2 and 11– 19. The Infancy Gospel
of Thomas begins without any title on folio 192r from the phrase μνημόνευέ
μου (“remember me”), which appears in the middle of a sentence in episode
10.2 (Water in Cloak). It is not easy to understand the use of this text in excerpts
as indicated. The question also remains whether the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is
related to the preceding text, In occursum Domini by Cyril of Jerusalem, and to
the following text, In transfigurationem Domini by John Chrysostom.
The manuscript’s contents indicate that it was a reader used for religious in-
struction and spiritual growth since it contains panegyrics, hagiographies, and
homilies of prominent Christian authors. The manuscript compiles writings ben-
eficial for monastic souls, texts that could have been used for communal or pri-
vate monastic reading. As the Byzantine tradition of the thirteenth century aligns
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas among the prominent monastic readings, it may
have also been perceived as a panegyric, homiletic or hagiographical text in
this context.
Thirteenth-century Latin manuscripts
Around the thirteenth century, the so-called “later” Latin Lt variant of the Infan-
cy Gospel of Thomas also started appearing in manuscripts. In this period, the
Pseudo-Matthew could contain both Latin variants of the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas. The Lm variant was linked with the Pseudo-Matthew from the eleventh cen-
tury. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas seems to have been mainly a text merged with
the Pseudo-Matthew and without a title. At times, it could have its title and in-
dependence from the Pseudo-Matthew.
The Pseudo-Matthew is an unstable group of texts, as always. It abandons
some of the earlier texts and acquires new texts. The core, which describes
Mary’s childhood, gives rise to various new versions with different titles, at
least according to catalogers. The texts that come after the Pseudo-Matthew
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 144. See also Pinakes, Textes et manuscrits grecs, < http://pinake-
s.irht.cnrs.fr/notices/cote/71790/ > Last accessed: 09/06/2021.
mainly focus either on the miracles of Mary or her death. Sometimes, the texts do
not follow a chronological order. As I will demonstrate in what follows, the
manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas acquire some novel uses
in this century.
The second earliest Latin manuscript that contains the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas is Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 288, dated to the twelfth to the thir-
teenth century. It is a composite parchment compilation (251x185 mm, 124 folia),
consisting of five libelli, which had separate lives before coming together as a
codex, and were written by different scribes at different times.²⁹⁵ The cataloguer
was aware of the boundaries of the separate libelli. ²⁹⁶ The composite manuscript
was bound together in the thirteenth century. The libellus where the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas is placed dates to the thirteenth century. This manuscript contains
the Lt Latin variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The manuscript is from
 The manuscript does not have a particular title in the catalog; it is called Alani Cantuariae
Epistolae, Gesta Salvatoris, Infantia Salvatoris, and similar. See James, A Descriptive Catalogue,
58 – 63; Vaughan and Fines, A Handlist of Manuscripts; Wilkins, Catalogue des manuscrits fra-
nçais.
 The contents: Libellus 1, thirteenth century: fol. 1r-9r: Alanus, Letters (Alani prioris eccle-
siae Christi Cantuariae Epistolae ad Henricum III, ad regem Franciae Philippum, praesertim
de translatione corporis Thomae Becket, ad Baldwinum episcopum de iure et potestate sedis
metropolitanae in episcopum et sedem Roffensem, nempe quod episcopus Roffensis in capitulo
ecclesiae Cantuariae eligi debet, ibique spiritualia et temporalia a manu archiepiscopi accipere;
et quod monachi Roffenses mortuo episcopo suo baculum eius pastoralem apud Cantuariam
portare tenentur, et ad Benedicto abb. De Burgo); Libellus 2, thirteenth century: fol. 10r-33r: Jer-
ome, Sermons (Tractatus de officiis ecclesiasticis); Libellus 3, thirteenth century: fol. 34r-38r: Re-
migius of Auxerre, Exposition of the Mass (In virtute sancte crucis); Libellus 4, thirteenth century:
fol. 38 – 54v: Gregory of Tours, Gesta francorum (De passione et resurrectione domini Iesu: Gesta
salvatoris Domini nostri Iesu Christi) (Gijsel: The Gospel of Nicodemus); fol. 54v-60r: Vindicta sal-
vatoris (Vengeance of Christ), fol. 60v-65v: Diatribe against Jews (Gijsel); fol. 65v-78v: Liber de
infantia salvatoris: the Letter of Cromatius and Eliodorus to Jerome, De cognatis Ioachimo et
Anna, Prologue in Egypt, fol. 78v-82r: Infancy Gospel of Thomas; fol. 82r-84v: Story of the
Cross/Post peccatum Adae; fol. 84v-88r: Collection of moral histories (Historiae quaedam fabulo-
sae: de S. Bernardo, de Baldewino, de Mag. Roberto, de Gillebochat, and similar); fol. 88r-97r:
Liber de Asenech et quomodo Joseph duxit eam in uxorem (also Poem to the Virgin, Poem on the
Church’s corruption); fol. 98v-101v: Book of Methodius, bishop of the Church of Patara and mar-
tyr of Christ (Recension of Pseudo-Methodius, Apocalypse, Revelations) (Liber Methodii martyris
de initio seculi et fine); fol. 101v-109v: Prophetia Hildegardis, Jordanus Minorita, De Tartaris,
Fredericus imperator, Letters against Pope (Epistolae duae ad Anglos contra papam), Gravamina
Anglorum adversum potestatem papae; Libellus 5, twelfth century: fol. 111r-124r: Commentary on
the Books of Kings, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Daniel, Maccabees (Visiones et narrationes de captivi-
tatibus Israelis et alia historica). See James, A Descriptive Catalogue II, 58 – 63; Gijsel, Pseudo-
Matthaei Evangelium, 168 – 169.
Christ Church in Canterbury, England, where the binding may have taken place;
it is not necessarily the provenance of all the separate libelli. ²⁹⁷ I have examined
the folios where the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is copied.
The first libellus contains the ecclesiastical correspondence of Alan, a leader
of Christ Church in Canterbury, to other ecclesiastics and rulers. The second libel-
lus contains the Sermons of Jerome. The third consists of the Exposition of the
Mass by Remigius of Auxerre. The fourth includes the highest number of texts
(including the Infancy Gospel of Thomas), written by several hands. Finally,
the fifth libellus contains a commentary on the part of the Old Testament. The
overall compositional theme of this composite manuscript kept in the Christ
Church in Canterbury is not immediately apparent.
The fourth libellus may give us a clearer idea of its theme. According to
James’ catalog, it opens with the Gesta francorum, a large-scale historical narra-
tive by Gregory of Tours, which in this manuscript describes only the passion and
resurrection of Christ.²⁹⁸ Gijsel and Burke report this text as the Gospel of Nico-
demus. ²⁹⁹ It may be the case; through a vibrant transmission history, the Gospel
of Nicodemus may have transformed in such a way. The Vindicta salvatoris
(Vengeance of Christ)³⁰⁰ follows, describing the fate of the Jewish people who
are condemned for their role in the death of Jesus and inflicted with horrible
punishments, including the violent destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman rulers
Titus and Vespasian.³⁰¹ Then the Diatribe against Jews (disputation against the
Jews) comes in. This text is commonly found in manuscripts as an appendix
to the passion of Christ.³⁰² This part of the manuscript focuses on anti-Jewish
writings, possibly from a historical perspective.
Then the Pseudo-Matthew follows, entitled Liber de infantia salvatoris. ³⁰³ It
consists of the Letter of Chromatius and Heliodorus to Jerome. The following
text De cognatis Ioachimo et Anna could have been the Trinubium Annae, as Gij-
 James, A Descriptive Catalogue II, 58.

 James, A Descriptive Catalogue II, 58.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 168; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 151: Burke may have
thought that this text was the Gospel of Nicodemus when he argued that this manuscript con-
tained it.
 In the view of Ehrman and Pleše, the Vengeance of the Savior belongs to the Pilate cycle.
Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 537.
 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 537.
 James, A Descriptive Catalogue II, 60.
 The title Liber de infantia salvatoris in the Gelasian Decree probably refers to the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas, but scholars are not in agreement on this point. See Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei
Evangelium, 168; Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 268, n. 107; Beyers, “The transmission of Marian Apoc-
rypha,” 119.
sel notes.³⁰⁴ It is followed by the Prologue in Egypt and the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. ³⁰⁵ The Infancy Gospel of Thomas begins without any title. The texts
within the Pseudo-Matthew form a cycle beginning with Mary’s parents and con-
tinuing with Mary’s and Jesus’ childhood. The following Post peccatum Adae
(Story of the Cross) continues without a title after some blank space. The Infancy
Gospel of Thomas is not a separate unit but part of the continuous narrative.
Therefore, after the treatises about Jews and the life cycles of Mary and Jesus,
the remaining texts in this libellus consist of moral histories, poems, apocalyp-
ses, historical and polemical letters. Altogether, the manuscript is a miscellany,
which within its composite contents contains another miscellany with several
dominating themes, such as Jews, Mary and Jesus, and other historical and po-
lemical writings.
Another thirteenth-century manuscript analyzed in this book, Dijon, Bibl.
Mun. 38 (20), which employs the Lm variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, fo-
cused in its opening on the writings about Mary and Jesus, followed by Mary’s
miracles. The manuscript appeared, taken as a whole, as a monastic educational
reading.³⁰⁶ The manuscript has colored initial letters and a fifteenth-century
binding.³⁰⁷ It belonged to the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Cîteaux, the founding
abbey of the Cistercian order, located in Saint-Nicolas-lès-Cîteaux, south of
Dijon, France. A marginal note in folio 193r from the fifteenth century reveals
that the manuscript was used in monastic education (Liber ad usus scolarium
de Cistercio).³⁰⁸ I have personally examined its first twenty folios.
On folio 2r, this manuscript opens with the Prologue of Pseudo-Jerome.³⁰⁹
Gijsel argues that the Pseudo-Matthew is incomplete in this manuscript; it con-
 The Trinubium Annae is a short Apocryphon that narrates Anne’s three successive mar-
riages to Joachim, Cleophas, and Salomas and identifies her as the mother of three New Testa-
ment Marys (all but Mary Magdalene). Gijsel reports that the insertion of the Trinubium Annae
within the Pseudo-Matthew was a characteristic of the family Q, to which this manuscript be-
longs. Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 95, 168.
 James, A Descriptive Catalogue II, 60; see also MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi 288, fol. 79r.
 Dijon is a parchment codex of 194 folios (178x130 mm). Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium,
118.
 This manuscript is entitled in the online catalog as Infancy Gospel, Miracles of the Virgin,
sermons, and similar. See Auguste Molinier, and Henri Omont, Catalogue général des manuscrits
des bibliothèques publiques de France. Départements, Tome V, Dijon (Paris: Plon, 1889), 9 – 10.
 Molinier and Omont, Catalogue general, 10.
 The contents of the manuscript: fol. 2r-20r: Prologue of Pseudo-Jerome, Infancy Gospel of
Thomas (De infantia Salvatoris); fol. 20r-69r: De miraculis beatae Mariae; fol. 69r-74r: Exempla
de vitis patrum; fol. 74r-194r: Collection of sermons.
tains only the response of Jerome to Chromatius and Heliodorus.³¹⁰ Further, we

probably have a version of Mary’s childhood, followed by the Prologue in Egypt.
On folio 9v, a capital letter indicates the beginning of a new text – the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas – with the opening sentence: Et factum est post regressionem
ihesu de egypto. There are no marginal notes around the text of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas, which is written in one column. The Pseudo-Matthew contains the
continuous text without titles; the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is not separate from
the rest of the texts.³¹¹ After this, the Miracles of Mary (De miraculis beatae Ma-
riae) starts from folio 20r, again, without a title and only with the opening sen-
tence and the capital letter. The whole cycle could have meant to describe the
events of Mary’s life. However, this manuscript contains the Examples from the
Lives of the Fathers and sermons in its central part.
Two other thirteenth-fourteenth century manuscripts containing the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas, namely, Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, 3014 and
Berne, Burgerbibliothek, 271, display novel features in the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas. They both contain the Lt variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. These are
just two manuscripts out of an increasing number appearing at this time and
containing either Lt or Lm variants of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (or a
mixed variant). Ten manuscripts described by Gijsel from the thirteenth century
already contain the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Among them, Gijsel reports four
that contain the Lm variant. Their number certainly increases towards the four-
teenth century.
I have examined the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève,
3014.³¹² Entitled Vita beatae virginis Mariae, this manuscript belonged to a Car-
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 118.

 Burke argues that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears in this manuscript separately from
the Pseudo-Matthew and with the new title. Burke, De Infantia Iesu, 148.
 See Calames, <http://www.calames.abes.fr/pub/bsg.aspx#details?id=BSGC10992> Last ac-
cessed: 09/06/2021. The contents: fol. 2r-23r: De nativitate Marie; fol. 23r-33r: Infancy Gospel of
Thomas (De pueritia Domini, quando Joseph et Maria fugerunt cum Jhesu Christo in Egypto);
fol. 33r-35v: De Adam (quomodo misit filium suum Seth pro oleo Mariae); fol. 35v-40r: Pseu-
do-Joseph of Arimathea, Transitus of Mary; fol. 40r-53r: Excerpts (from the different texts;
from folio 41r, red capital letters appear frequently. In these excerpts, Mary is mentioned);
fol. 53r-74v: Passio Domini nostri Jhesu (quomodo passus sub Pontio Pilato); fol. 74v-87r: The His-
tory of Titus and Vespasian in Jerusalem; fol. 87r-93v: Pseudo-Melito, Transitus (de transitu sanc-
tae mariae virginis matris domini nostri ihesu christi); fol.93v-97r: John Chrysostom, Sermon. See
also Charles Kohler, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève II (Paris: E.
Plon, Nourrit et cie, 1896), 572.
melite monastery in the seventeenth century.³¹³ Gijsel reports that it was a con-
vent of the Carmelites in Dijon.³¹⁴ The manuscript is relatively tiny (145x100 mm)
compared to the common lectionary manuscripts.³¹⁵ On folio 1r, a fourteenth-fif-
teenth-century hand wrote down a piece of rhythmic prose, honoring Saints An-
dochius, Thyrsus, Consacius, Hospes, and Felix. Its size and the devotional note
may have been indicators of its private use, at least when the note was written.
The manuscript contains the Pseudo-Matthew, but without the correspond-
ence of Jerome.³¹⁶ The Pseudo-Matthew is entitled De nativitate Marie. ³¹⁷ The In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas (including the Prologue in Egypt on fol. 23r-24v) comes in
the Lt variant (24v-33r), without any title. Accordingly, the group of texts by this
point covers the childhood of Mary and Jesus. The text about Adam comes in af-
terward.
Although the online catalog places on folios 35v-53r the Transitus Mariae by
Pseudo-Joseph of Arimathea, followed by various Excerpts, Gijsel argues that
these folios store the dialogue between the Saviour and his mother, entitled: His-
toria qualiter beata Maria migravit ex hoc saeculo. ³¹⁸ Whether these are the same
texts needs further investigation.
 There is a note in the upper margin of folio 2r: Ex bibliotheca P. P. Carmelitarum divionen-
sium. Folio 1r may have the contents, probably contemporary to the script of the original manu-
script. It also contains a note. The texts start from folio 2r and are written continually in one col-
umn. There are almost no marginal notes or decorations. The titles of the texts where present are
written in red letters; the rest of the text is black.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 128.
 Kim Haines-Eitzen argues that the size of a codex occasionally suggests something about
producers and users of the texts. For example, large deluxe copies indeed suggest a more public,
well-funded, and possibly liturgical setting. On the other hand, the copies of medium-size and
less literary hands may hint at private copies for individuals or small congregations with limited
means. Baun talks about tiny manuscripts (e. g., 10x8 cm), which were, in her words, “perfect for
slipping into a pocket and carrying around.” Bartlett argues that grand manuscripts were de-
signed for public reading in a church or monastery. Bischoff identified a substantial number
of manuscripts that show clear evidence of having been folded in half, presumably to be stuffed
into a pocket or bag. The folded size would be convenient for a journey or carrying around. See
Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Mar-
tyrs to the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 507– 8; Kim Haines-Eitzen,
“The Social History of Early Christian Scribes,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contempo-
rary Research, eds. Bart D. Ehrman, and Michael W. Holmes (Leiden: Brill, 2013): 479 – 496,
491– 2; Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium, 62.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 128.
 According to Gijsel and Beyers, De nativitate Mariae is another text, which does not appear
in this manuscript. What we have here is the Pseudo-Matthew. See Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evan-
gelium, 129; Gijsel and Beyers, Libellus de nativitate Sanctae Mariae.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 128; see also Calames.
At the end of the manuscript, we encounter another Transitus Mariae, writ-

ten by Pseudo-Melito.³¹⁹ This text describes the death of Mary. Jenkins holds that
it places Mary starkly in Christ’s role, which was (as he puts it) daring and blas-
phemous.³²⁰ Without going further into the analysis of his last point, it seems in-
teresting that this text ascribes such a role to Mary (described as Christ), mainly
because we have the text about Jesus’ suffering, the Passio Domini nostri Jhesu
(possibly the Gospel of Nicodemus) somewhat earlier in the manuscript. Amy-
Jill Levine argues that in the Transitus Mariae, Mary’s passing is partially mod-
eled on Jesus’ passion.³²¹ Jesus and Mary are given equal attention since the
manuscript describes both their childhood and their death. In the view of Miri
Rubin, the narratives of Mary’s end shared two goals: the praise of Mary, her mi-
raculous end, and the disparagement of the Jews as Mary’s enemies.³²² It needs
to be investigated further whether the latter feature exists in this manuscript.
In this manuscript, the texts mainly describe Mary and Jesus’ lives, while
some are, according to the titles, historicized and turned into historical tales.
The historical narrative about Vespasianus and Titus (The History of Titus and
Vespasian in Jerusalem) could have been placed in folios 74v-87r to provide a
contextual historical background of the first-century siege of Jerusalem. This
manuscript could have also been devotional since the texts are dedicated to
Mary and Jesus, and the manuscript contains a note to saints. Its size and the
note indicate that it may have been used privately.
The manuscript unites late antique Latin and Syriac traditions. What was
testified in the Latin palimpsest and the Syriac manuscripts content-wise now
comes together in a single manuscript: the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Prote-
vangelium of James, the Evangelium of Nicodemus, and the Transitus Mariae.
Another manuscript containing the Lt variant is Berne, Burgerbibliothek,
271, dated to the fourteenth century.³²³ It is a parchment codex containing 90 fo-
 Elliot presumes that Transitus Sanctae Mariae was the text Assumption of the Virgin written
by Pseudo-Melito, which the Gelasian Decree denounces as an apocryphal book in the sixth cen-
tury. The cataloguer confirms that this was the case in this manuscript. Jenkins argues that the
Transitus Marie is a fifth-century text, falsely presented as the work of the renowned second-cen-
tury Church Father Melito of Sardis. Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,” 66; Jen-
kins, The Many Faces of Christ, 110.
 Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 112.
 Amy-Jill Levine, “Introduction,” in A Feminist Companion to Mariology, ed. Amy-Jill Levine,
with Maria Mayo Robbins (London: T&T Clark International, 2005): 1– 14, 8.
 Miri Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (London: Penguin Books, 2010), 55.
 Hagen Hermann, Catalogus codicum Bernensium (Bibliotheca Bongarsiana) (Bern: Typis B.
F. Haller, 1875), 301– 303; Sinner, Catalogus Codicum Mss. Bibliothecae Bernensis, 245 – 258. Sin-
lios.³²⁴ On folios 1, 25, and 90, we find the signature of Arnoul Thierry, an eccle-
siastical dignitary (canon) of Metz in the fifteenth century.³²⁵ This manuscript
contains mainly fragments and short extracts from different works. Gijsel argues
that the Pseudo-Matthew is its only complete text.³²⁶ I have investigated the folios
where the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is copied.
In the manuscript, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (fol. 41r-42v) appears as a
text entitled Tractatus Thomae hysmaelite de operibus ihesu post regressionem
eius de egypto. It is distinguished from the previous text, Tractatus de passione
domini nostri of Pseudo-Bernard, and it does not have the Prologue in Egypt at-
tached to its opening. Immediately after the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has the
last “amen,” the text continues without a new title. The text of the Infancy Gospel
does not end on folio 44r, as scholars maintain, but on 42v.³²⁷ The contents of
folio 43r are of unidentified origin. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas comes earlier
in the manuscript than the Pseudo-Matthew.
ner’s catalog mentions the apocryphal nature of the text. It says that this could be either a “Man-
ichean Gospel,” published under Thomas’ name, or a “Gnostic Gospel.”
 The contents: fol.1r-13r: Isidori synonyma, with prologue; fol.13r-21r: Distinctiones Roberti
Grossi capitis Linthoniensis episcopi, quae vocatur templum dei; fol.21r: Excerptum Bernardi;
fol.21v: Versus varii argumenti: Casus pape, Casus episcopi, Abluo firmo cibo dolet urgitur ordi-
no iungo, Quinque modis peccat maritus, Festa sacerque locus, De pollutione; fol. 21v: Excerpta
ex Gregorio et Bernardo; fol.22r: Figurae duae virtutes et vitia demonstrantes; fol.22v-23v: Sen-
tentiae variae ex scriptoribus ecclesiasticis collectae, Augustine and Jerome; fol.25r-25v: Tracta-
tus de calamitate seu miseria luminis; fol.25v-26v: Tractatus de dilectione; fol.26v-27r: Versus de
superbia LXXVII; fol.27r-36v: Tractatus de superbia; fol.36v-37r: De hora exitus et separationis
corporis et animae; fol.37r: Quid sit bene ieiunare; fol.37v: De eo quod multi ab oriente et occi-
dente venient et recumbent; fol.37r-37v: De eo quod omnis electus atque perfectus et homo et
vitulus et leo et aquila figuraliter sit; fol.37v-38r: De eo quod scriptum est; fol.38r: De duobus
altariis in homines, uno in corpore et alio in corde; fol.38r-38v: De tertia et septima et tricesima
die defunctorum; fol.38v-41r: Beati Bernardi tractatus de passione domini nostri; fol.41r-42v:
Thomae Ismaelitae tractatus de operibus Jesu post regressionem eius de Aegypto; fol. 43r-44r:
an unknown text; fol.44r-45r: Anonymi tractatus de gestis Salvatoris (de assumptione Mariae);
fol.45r-45v: Chromatii et Heliodori epistula ad Hieronymum de ortu beatae Mariae virginis;
fol.45v: Hieronymi epistula ad Chromatium et Heliodorum; fol.45v-53v: De vita Joachim et de el-
eemosyna eius; fol.53v-55v (hand from fourteenth-fifteenth century): Tractatus de periurio;
fol.56r-90r: Speculum ecclesiae; fol.90r (hand from fourteenth-fifteenth century): Tractatus de
poenitentia; fol.90r-90v: Excerpta nonnula ex Ambrosio, Isidoro, Augustino. Hermann, Catalo-
gus codicum Bernensium, 301– 303.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 167.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 167.
 See Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 167; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 150.
Burke argues that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is followed by a complete

Transitus Mariae attributed to Joseph of Arimathea.³²⁸ Hermann argues that
the following text is the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (De assumptione Ma-
riae).³²⁹ Elliott presumes that the Assumption of the Virgin may have been the
text Transitus Sanctae Mariae written by Pseudo-Melito.³³⁰ Gijsel notes that on
folios 44r-45r, we find the beginning of the Transitus Mariae. ³³¹ It is not clear
whether this text was attributed to Joseph of Arimathea or Pseudo-Melito, but
in any case, it has Mary’s death as a subject.
The Letter of Chromatius and Heliodorus to Jerome and the reply come in as
late as in folio 45r. These letters probably served the earlier purposes within the
Pseudo-Matthew, to justify and provide an air of authority. After the letters, we
find the De vita Joachim et de eleemosyna eius, which could be a version of
the Protevangelium of James, describing Mary’s birth and childhood. In this
manuscript, the Pseudo-Matthew concerns only the letters to Jerome and
Mary’s birth and childhood. Jesus’ childhood comes earlier in the manuscript;
it is unrelated to the Pseudo-Matthew. The order of texts is not chronological.
Burke (relying on Gijsel) argues that the ending of De vita Joachim contains
the Lm variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ³³² It is questionable because a
new text appears in folio 53v, Tractatus de periurio, written by a fourteenth-fif-
teenth century hand. The copying of the manuscript was abandoned in the thir-
teenth century, only to be continued again one to two centuries later, but with a
different text. The contents show that the manuscript was intended to provide
religious instruction.
To sum up, in the thirteenth century, the Pseudo-Matthew evolved and trans-
formed through the abandonment of some texts and the addition of new texts. Its
focus is on Mary and Jesus, their childhood, Jesus’ early life, Mary’s adult years,
and sometimes Mary’s parents. The Latin Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears, for
the most part, as a text merged with the Pseudo-Matthew. After the Pseudo-Mat-
thew, we usually find in the manuscripts either the Miracles of Mary or the de-
scription of her death (Transitus Mariae). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is located
within the Pseudo-Matthew in the manuscripts where the Transitus Mariae and
the Gospel of Nicodemus often appear. In this way, the late antique Latin tradi-
tion (from the palimpsest) and the late antique Syriac tradition are combined
in these manuscripts, emphasizing Mary’s and Jesus’ life and death.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 155.

 Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,” 66.
 Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,” 66.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 167.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 155.
In the Byzantine tradition, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears as a text

among the texts of other prominent Christian authors, panegyrics, hagiogra-
phies, and homilies. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas could have been viewed as
a hagiographic or homiletic text in Byzantium. Some of the Latin manuscripts
gradually align the Pseudo-Matthew with historiographical works. Possibly, the
lives of Mary and Jesus were also perceived as historicized texts at this time.
Most of the manuscripts appear as tools in monastic religious instruction.
The manuscripts in the West are written on parchment, which implies more con-
siderable investment, while concurrently, paper is used for the Byzantine manu-
scripts containing this text, which may link them to a more typical everyday use.
Slavonic evidence
The earliest preserved Slavonic manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of

Thomas appear as late as the fourteenth century.³³³ Two fourteenth-century
manuscripts are analyzed in what follows: St Petersburg 13.3.17 and Hludov
162. They are among the medieval manuscripts, which have their contents
known.³³⁴ I have personally examined both manuscripts.
The manuscript St Petersburg 13.3.17 (“Sbornik of Loveč”) is traditionally
dated to 1337– 1355 and written in Middle Bulgarian (formerly Codex no.15).
Some scholars argue that it originates from the late fourteenth century, while
 Thomas Rosén, The Slavonic Translation of the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Acta Univer-
sitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Slavica Upsaliensia 39 (Uppsala: Coronet Books Inc., 1997), 25. This
text appears in six medieval manuscripts (from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century) and
ten early modern manuscripts. The early modern, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manu-
scripts will be excluded from this study. I also exclude two sixteenth-century manuscripts (in-
cluded by Rosén within the medieval corpus) from the study.
 Two other of the earliest four manuscripts are destroyed and fragmentarily preserved. One
of them, dating to the mid-fourteenth century, written in Serbian, from the National Library, Bel-
grade (Serbia), Codex 637 from the collection of P. S. Srećković, was destroyed in the World War
II bombing of Belgrade in 1941. Novaković had previously edited the IGT from this manuscript. It
was a parchment codex. The contents of the manuscript are partly recorded. The main contents
were church encomia and the lives of the saints. He testifies to the five titles in the manuscript,
namely, Encomion of the prophet Jeremiah about the siege of Jerusalem, The Youth of the Lord
Jesus Christ, The Deeds of the Holy Apostles Andrew and Matthew, The Deeds of the Holy Apostle
Thomas, The Martyrdom of St. George. In his view, all the texts mentioned above are Apocrypha.
The second manuscript is the fifteenth-century Croatian Glagolitic fragment from the Archives of
the Croatian Academy of Sciences in Zagreb, Fragment 99, which was preserved only in part, as
“one page of a small format.” See Novaković, “Apokrifi jednoga srpskog ćirilovskog zbornika,”
36; Grabar, “Glagoljski odlomak,” 213.
others date it earlier than 1331.³³⁵ The manuscript contains a marginal note attest-
ing a scribe, Pachomios, and the commissioners, the Bulgarian ruler Ivan
Alexander (r. 1331– 1371) and his son Mihail. The copying took place during
the archiepiscopate of Symeon in Loveč.³³⁶ Ivan Alexander commissioned this
“Sbornik of Loveč” (Loveč Collection) while he was a despot there (before
1331).³³⁷ Thus, the manuscript could be dated before 1331.
The entire manuscript contents were copied at once; the texts were inten-
tionally compiled together.³³⁸ David Birnbaum describes the manuscript as a
“mixed-content miscellany,” arranged without any visible organizational princi-
ple, without a uniform genre and function.³³⁹ The manuscript contains Sayings of
the Fathers (from Paterikon), various encomia, hagiographical texts, lives of
saints, expositions of the faith, some works by known authors (including Sever-
ianus of Gabala), the Nomokanon (Guide to Ecclesiastical Law), Decisions of the
Seven Ecumenical Councils, Rules, but also Apocrypha, apocalypses, a Kalenda-
rium, and the Thunder-book (“Gromnik”).³⁴⁰
 Jacimirskij dates the manuscript to the period from 1337– 1355. See Jacimirskij, Из славян-
ских рукописей, 144.
 Jacimirskij, Из славянских рукописей, 144. Loveč was the Metropolitan seat in the Second
Bulgarian Empire (1186 – 1393).
 Ivan Alexander was a despot of Loveč by 1330. Some scholars see his patronage and sup-
port as crucial for this compilation. Kuio Мarkov Kuev, “Съдбата на Ловчанския сборник,
писан преди 1331. г” (The Destiny of the Sbornik of Loveč, Written before 1331), in Търновска
книжовна школа 1371 – 1971, Международен симпозиум Велико Търново, 11– 14 октомври
1971 (София: Българската Акаемия на науките, 1974): 79 – 88.
 This manuscript, kept in the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, is
called “The Collection of Apocrypha” by catalogers. Several scholars have worked on describing
the contents. Jacimirskij acknowledged some, while David Birnbaum added more titles to this
list. Alexei Sergeev has also been working on describing the manuscript contents in the Library
in St Petersburg. I am grateful to him for sharing his findings of the contents of this manuscript
with me.
 David Birnbaum, “Computer-Assisted Analysis and Study of the Structure of Mixed Content
Miscellanies,” Scripta & e-Scripta 1 (2003): 15 – 64.
 The table of contents is as follows: fol. 1– 41v: Sayings of the Fathers, an excerpt of the Life
of Paisios from the “Skitski” Paterikon (Paterikon is a collection of stories about monks; this one
was a seventh-century collection of stories about Egyptian monastic figures (Birnbaum));
fol. 41v-46r: Encomion of Macarius the Great (within this text, in f. 44: Sayings of the Elders (Poi-
men, Amon, Macarius, Longinus, Silvanus, Bessarion, Paul of Galatia, etc.); fol. 46 – 71v: Sayings
of the Fathers (f. 58: Slovo; f.59: Slovo; f. 60: St. Isaias; f. 60: many sayings without titles of many
fathers); fol. 71v-72v: The Vita of St. Benedict (According to D. Birnbaum, an excerpt); fol. 72v-78:
Narrative from the Books (Birnbaum); fol. 78r-79v: Encomion; fol. 80r-87v: John the Philosopher,
Exposition of the Orthodox Faith; fol. 88v-89v: St. Epiphanius; fol. 89v-95r: Severianus of Gabala,
Šestodnev; fol. 96r-102v: Reading of St. Nicetas (Birnbaum – Vita of St. Nikita); fol.102v-113v: Vita
The Bulgarian scholar Kuev argues that the “Sbornik of Loveč” did not relate
directly to worship or liturgy and could not have been used in ritual services.³⁴¹
The idea of a scribe was to bring writings of different sorts to readers to satisfy
broader interests common to the higher strata of society.³⁴² It is why the manu-
script contains not only liturgical and religious texts but also historical texts.
Kuev argues that the manuscript might have had an encyclopedic character.³⁴³
It could have been intended as a home reading with various contents, historical
and liturgical-religious readings. The collection contains some dogmatically es-
sential texts, such as the Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by John Philosopher
and the Decisions of the Seven Church Councils. Kuev explains the presence of
these texts by the religious turmoil and unrest of the time.
Several scholars see the Infancy Gospel of Thomas as a Bogomil reading.³⁴⁴
The Bogomils have often been connected to apocryphal readings, and Bogomil
groups in the Balkans were known to have sponsored and circulated translations
of apocryphal texts.³⁴⁵ Krstev argues that the Slavonic version of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas appealed to the anti-Semitic Bogomils in the Slavonic milieu.³⁴⁶
However, Ivan Alexander, whose rule in the Second Bulgarian Empire was
characterized by the cultural renaissance, made efforts to strengthen the Bulgar-
ian Orthodox Church by pursuing heretics and Jews. Ivan Alexander openly con-
and Deeds of Mark of Athens; fol. 114r-132r: Encomion of the holy Father Methodius, Bishop of
Patras (Birnbaum – Revelation of St. Methodius of Patara); fol. 132v: The Rules of the Holy Fa-
thers; fol. 130: Nomokanon, excerpt (Birnbaum), Guide to ecclesiastical law and procedure;
fol. 152v: Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: fol. 168 – 176v: Paterikon (untitled, generally con-
tains the sayings of the fathers); fol. 177r-183v: Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Birnbaum: “Acts of
our Lord Jesus Christ”); fol. 183v: Kalendarium/Kalendologion; fol. 184r-185v: Gromnik (Birnbaum
– Thunder-Book) (without title, Sermon about the seven heavenly planets). Birnbaum mentions
several other titles that belong to the contents of this manuscript: Sermon for the Assumption,
Interpretations on the Holy Trinity and the Christian Faith, excerpts. See Birnbaum, “Computer-
Assisted Analysis,” 16.
 Kuev, “Съдбата на Ловчанския сборник,” 83.
 Kuev, “Съдбата на Ловчанския сборник,” 83.
 kuev, “Съдбата на Ловчанския сборник,” 83.
 E. g., Jordan Ivanov, Богомилски книги и легенди (Bogomil Books and Legends) (София:
Наука и изкуство, 1970).
 Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium, 68. On Bogomils and Apocrypha, see Steven Runci-
man, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1947).
 Georgi Krstev, “Мястото на детство Исусово в раннохристиянската традиция и апок-
рифната книжнина на средновековна България” (The Place of Jesus’ Childhood in Early
Christian Tradition and the Apocryphal Literature of Medieval Bulgaria), Palaeobulgarica 15,
No. 3 (1991): 91– 101.
demned Bogomils, Adamites, and Judaizers and convened two councils against
the heretics in Bulgaria (1350 and 1359 – 1360). From this perspective, it is pecu-
liar why the manuscript commissioned by a Bulgarian tsar and a prominent Or-
thodoxy champion contained Thomas’ Infancy Gospel.
Krstev argues that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this manuscript was in-
tended to serve as an anti-Jewish propagandistic text. The commissioner, Ivan
Alexander, consequently came to be associated with anti-Jewish sentiments.³⁴⁷
However, Jews lived in eleventh- and twelfth-century Bulgaria. The Asen family
(who founded and ruled the Second Bulgarian Empire) encouraged Jewish mer-
chant families to settle there.³⁴⁸ John Fine is hesitant to claim the anti-Jewish
sentiments of the time. Thus, these sentiments in the text would need to be in-
vestigated further.
The Kalendarium (Kalendologion) and Thunder-book in manuscript St Pe-
tersburg appear as new and specifically Slavic addition to the contents. The Ka-
lendologion is an omen book about “the day of the week on which Christmas
falls.” The “Thunder-book” or Gromnik (a manual of divination by thunder,
Brontologion) is a sermon about the seven heavenly planets, describing thunder
in terms of the zodiac and the age of the moon.³⁴⁹ Such divination books as the
Gromnik and the Kalendologion were regarded in the medieval Slavonic tradi-
tion as “rejected by God.” They were included in the lists of prohibited books,
but they continued to be copied.³⁵⁰ The prognostic books were widespread
and appeared in collections associated with astrological and medical manu-
scripts in Late Antiquity.³⁵¹ In the Slavonic tradition, they appear in various
 Krstev, “Мястото на детство Исусово.”

 John Fine is cautious about concluding whether there existed anti-Jewish public opinion as
a state policy in Bulgaria. His caution is due to the large numbers of Jewish refugees who arrived
in Bulgaria from Bavaria and Hungary. The contacts between Christians and Jewish communities
resulted in conversions and a certain degree of syncretism, which was rejected as heretical by
the Orthodox establishment. John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey
from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan
Press, 1987), 449.
 See Robert Mathiesen, “Magic in Slavia Orthodoxa: The Written Tradition,” in Byzantine
Magic, ed. Henry Maguire (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection,
1995): 155 – 178, 167.
 See Anissava Miltenova, “Marginality, Intertextuality, Paratextuality in Medieval Bulgarian
Literature,” in Marginality in/of Literature, ed. Raya Kuncheva (Sofia: Boyan Penev Publishing
Centre, 2011): 108 – 133, 112.
 They also contained Lunaries, predictions of lucky and unlucky days. Such texts appeared
in the broader context of medical texts because they contained guidance for healing procedures,
helping the doctors choose the date for healing interventions and similar issues. See Adelina
Angusheva, “The Application of Computer Tools to an Investigation of the Place of Prognostic
manuscripts containing monastic and liturgical texts.³⁵² Their presence in mis-

cellanies of mixed contents can be explained by the need to include texts in
the “medical section” of the manuscripts. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, aligned
next to these texts, may have been perceived to have a focus on the healing mira-
cles of Jesus, constituting in this way the “medical section.” The manuscript al-
together could have been devised as a tool for a program of “healing body and
soul.” The texts focusing on the “soul” were the introductory Sayings of the Fa-
thers, while the “body” section contained the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the
two other prognostic books.
Eventually, the “Sbornik of Loveč” was transferred to the royal library of Ve-
liko Tarnovo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire.³⁵³ Nina Gagova argues
that Ivan Alexander did not possess this manuscript personally.³⁵⁴ Only six
manuscripts are known to have belonged to him, but the Loveč miscellany is
not among them.³⁵⁵ Even if not his personal property, the manuscript was possi-
bly used by both rulers and courtiers at the Bulgarian court.
Books in Medieval Slavic Tradition,” in Medieval Slavic Manuscripts and SGML: Problems and
Perspectives, eds. Anissava Miltenova, and David Birnbaum (Sofia: Professor Marin Drinov Aca-
demic Publishing House, 2000): 222– 230, 225.
 From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, they appear in the manuscripts of mixed con-
tents in the Orthodox Slavic milieu. The Old Slavic tradition diverges from the Latin and Byzan-
tine because it did not include all the varieties of manuscript types in which Prognostic books
may appear. Angusheva, “The Application of Computer Tools,” 225.
 Kuev, “Съдбата на Ловчанския сборник,” 80.
 It is generally known that Ivan Alexander was a generous patron of monasteries, art, and
literature. Certain monasteries acquired the reputation of being educational and literary centers,
and many of them were under the tzar’s patronage. Cultural activities were strongly supported at
his court. Ivan knew Greek and had a large library. Under his patronage, many works were cop-
ied, and many new translations from Greek were done. The translations included religious, lit-
urgical works, early Church fathers, contemporary Byzantine theologians, saints’ lives, accounts
of the Ecumenical councils, Byzantine chronicles, popular tales (Fall of Troy, Alexander), legal
works, and works on medicine and natural science. Ivan Alexander, at this time, also commis-
sioned an encyclopedia with a heavy theological emphasis. Many Bulgarian manuscripts from
this period were illuminated by outstanding illuminations, such as the London Gospel. See
Fine Jr, The Late Medieval Balkans, 436.
 Nina Gagova, “A Study of Groups of Manuscripts Chosen by Socio-Cultural Criteria (Manu-
scripts Belonging to Rulers’ Libraries from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries),” in Medieval
Slavic Manuscripts and SGML: Problems and Perspectives, eds. Anissava Miltenova, and David
Birnbaum (Sofia: Professor Marin Drinov Academic Publishing House, 2000): 131– 169, 131.
See also Vasil Gjuzelev, Učilišta, skriptorii, biblioteki i znanija v Bălgarija: XIII–XIV vek (Schools,
Scriptoria, Libraries and Knowledge in Bulgaria: Thirteenth–Fourteenth Century) (Sofia: Narod-
na prosveta, 1985).
Rulers needed to read Christian ecclesiastical authors of high authority in

Byzantine and Slavic traditions.³⁵⁶ Rulers also had to read historical works.
The choice of rulers’ readings was based on a straightforward concept: the me-
dieval Orthodox Christian ruler should be a true believer and defender of Ortho-
doxy, a victor in battles, honest, and wise. They needed books “for spiritual
health and salvation of the soul, their own and of their families and for strength-
ening their kingdom.”³⁵⁷ This argument partly accords with the “body and soul
program,” which I have suggested earlier.
Another Slavonic manuscript containing the Infancy Gospel is Moscow, Rus-
sian State Historical Museum, Collection of A. I. Hludov, Cod. 162, dated to the
fourteenth century. It is written on parchment in semi-uncial letters by Serbian
redaction of the Old Slavonic language. It is a Festal Menaion with synaxarion
entries and a collection of encomia and sayings.³⁵⁸ One single hand wrote the
manuscript, which means that the contents were planned for the collection. A
note on folio 247r from the fifteenth century reveals that the manuscript was
kept in the monastery St. Nicholas (Vuneš), near the village Ljubanci and
close to Skopje in North Macedonia. I have personally inspected this manuscript.
This manuscript is a “trefologium,” i. e., a selection of services for the saints.
The manuscript has three parts. The first part contains the services for the saints
for the immovable feasts of the summer part of a calendar year, from February
until August.³⁵⁹ The second part contains selected entries from the “Prologue,”
 Gagova, “A Study of Groups of Manuscripts,” 155.

 Gagova, “A Study of Groups of Manuscripts,” 154.
 See Svetlina Nikolova, Maria Yovcheva, Tanya Popova, and Lora Taseva, Българското
средновековно културно наследство в сбирката на Алексей Хлудов в Държавния истори-
чески музей в Москва. Каталог (Bulgarian Medieval Cultural Heritage in the Collection of Alex-
ey Hludov in the State Historical Museum of Moscow. Catalog) (София: Кирило-Методиевски
научен център, 1999), 44– 45. The manuscript contains 254 folios (26,5x20,5 cm). Folios 1 and
254 were added later, and folio 109v is empty. On the first folio of the manuscript, which was left
blank, there are notes, two of which are in Greek. The texts begin in red letters. The titles are
visible and marked. Dates are written too, which implies the arrangement according to a calen-
dar. Every text starts with “In the month of…” See Popov, Описание рукописей, 316.
 The contents are the following: fol. 2r-6r: St. Tryphon (14 Feb); fol. 6r-11r: The presentation
of Jesus in the Temple (15 Feb); fol. 11r-12v: Saint Symeon the God-Receiver (16 Feb); fol. 12v-13v:
Memory of St. Symeon who received God (16 Feb); fol. 13v-17r: Burying the head of St. John the
Baptist (24 Feb); fol. 17r-20v: 40 holy martyrs of Sebaste (9 Mar); fol. 20v-31v: Annunciation of the
Theotokos (25 Mar); fol. 31v-34v: Archangel Gabriel (26 Mar); fol. 34v-42r: St. George (23 Apr);
fol. 42r-45v: St. Mark the Apostle (25 Apr); fol. 45v-48r: St. Jeremiah the Prophet (1 May);
fol. 48r-58r: The Apostle John (8 May); fol. 52r: a marginal note in red letters, Cyrillic; fol. 58r-
62v: St. Constantine and Helena (21 May); fol. 62v-66v: St. Theodore Stratelates (8 June);
fol. 66v-72r: St. Bartholomew and Barnabas (11 June); fol. 72r-78v: St. Onuphrius and Peter the
i. e., the synaxarion. It is not visible where the first part ends and the second part
begins since the text is continuous. The only indicator is the entries, which are
shorter in the following section. The second part follows the entries for the win-
ter part of the calendar year, from September until January.³⁶⁰
The section with the encomia starts from folio 197 as a continuous text. It
contains the texts for the most important feasts of the calendar year, including
the encomia on the Birth, Epiphany, and Resurrection of Christ, and encomia
of prominent authors, such as John Chrysostom, Ephrem the Syrian, John the Ex-
arch, and Theodosius the Athonite.³⁶¹ This part also contains the Miracles of St.
Athonite (12 June); fol. 78v-82v: St. Elisha the Prophet and St. Methodius Patriarch of Constan-
tinople (14 June); fol. 82v-92r: Birth of St. John the Baptist (24 June); fol. 92r-102r: Apostles Peter
and Paul (29 June); fol. 102r-109r: Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles (30 June); Half of folio 109r is
empty; the text continues in 110r. Folio 109v has a note, which seems like a later addition, an
interpretation of the title from 110r, saying: in the month of June, saint and miraculous Cosmas
and Damian; fol. 110r-113v: St. Cosmas and Damian of Rome (1 July); further in the continuation
of the same folios, 110r-113v: The placing of the Robe of the Theotokos (2 July); fol. 113v-118v: St.
Andrew of Crete and St. Martha the mother of Symeon (4 July); fol. 118v-124r: St. Procopius (8
July); fol. 124r-125r: The placing of the Robe of the Theotokos; fol. 125r-129r: Sts. Cyricus and Ju-
litta (15 July); fol. 129r-132r: St. Marina (17 July); fol. 132r-139r: St. Eliah the Prophet (20 July);
fol. 139r-144v: St. Petka/Paraskeva (26 July); fol. 144v-151r: St. Panteleimon (27 July); fol. 151r-
153r: Holy Maccabees (1 Aug); fol. 153r-156v: Translation of relics of St. Stephen (2 Aug);
fol. 156v-164r: Transfiguration of Christ (6 Aug); fol. 164r-167r: St. Matthew the Apostle (9
Aug), St. Micah the Prophet (14 Aug) and Assumption of the Theotokos (15 Aug); fol. 167r-175r:
Assumption of the Theotokos (15 Aug); fol. 175r-185v: Beheading of St. John the Baptist (29
Aug); fol. 185v-186r: Placing the robe of the Theotokos.
 The contents are the following: fol. 186r: Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 Sept); fol. 186v: St.
Thecla (24 Sept); fol. 187r: Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian (26 Sept); fol. 187r:
St. Thomas the Apostle (6 Oct); fol. 187v: St. Sergius and Bacchus (7 Oct); fol. 187v: St. Luke the
Evangelist and Apostle (18 Oct); fol. 188r: St. James the Apostle (23 Oct); fol. 188v: St. Demetrius
(26 Oct); fol. 188v: Sts. Cosmas and Damian (1 Nov); fol. 189r: Holy Archangels Michael and Ga-
briel (8 Nov); fol. 189v: Sts. Minas, Victor, Vicentius, and Stephen (11 Nov); fol. 189v: St. John
Chrysostom (13 Nov); fol. 190r: Holy Apostle and Evangelist Philip (16 Nov); fol. 190v: Entrance
of the Theotokos (21 Nov); fol. 191r: St. George (23 Nov) and St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle
(30 Nov); fol. 191v: St. Barbara (4 Dec); fol. 191v: St. Nicholas the Archbishop (6 Dec); fol. 192r:
St. Daniel the Prophet (17 Dec); fol. 193r: St. Ignatius of Antioch (20 Dec); fol. 193v: The Birth of
Christ, Christmas (25 Dec); fol. 194r: St. Stephen the Protomartyr (27 Dec); fol. 194v: Circumcision
of Christ (1 Jan); fol. 195v: Synaxis of St. John the Baptist (7 Jan); fol. 196r: The Apostle Peter’s
Miraculous Chains (16 Jan); fol. 196v: St. Athanasius of Alexandria (18 Jan); fol. 196v: St. Gregory
of Nazianzus (25 Jan).
 John the Exarch was an important champion of the Orthodox faith against the dualistic,
Manichean and Bogomil heresies. This fact is striking since the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has
been considered a text close to the Bogomil heresy. See Ivanov, Богомилски книги и легенди,
20.
Nicholas, the Encomium on the Birth of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica, the Mar-
tyrdom of St. George, the apocryphal Apocalypse of the Apostle John (Jovan Bo-
goslov), as well as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ³⁶²
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is placed in this section together with the
other prominent texts between the encomia on the Birth of Christ and the Epiph-
any of Christ. Anissava Miltenova notes that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was
copied in Slavonic liturgical manuscripts, e. g., in a manuscript from the end
of the fourteenth century (she probably means this manuscript), where it was
a reading for Christmas.³⁶³ The appearance of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is
here explained by the felt need to bridge the gap between the birth of Christ
and the other significant events of his life. This argument was heard in earlier
scholarship, and it may apply here.³⁶⁴
Bridging the gap in the description of Jesus’ life in this manuscript, as well
as the healing miracles in manuscript St Petersburg, may have been the essential
features of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the eyes of the contemporary Slavic
scribes and commissioners who placed this text in these collections. In this way,
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was found in new contexts in the Slavonic sphere,
where it was used in liturgy and the royal settings.
Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Byzantine manuscripts
Only one Byzantine manuscript containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is ex-
tant from the fourteenth century. The fourteenth-century Codex Vatopedi 37
comes from Mount Athos (Vatopediou monastery). A part of this manuscript,
 The contents are the following: fol. 197r-200v: John Chrysostom, Encomion on the Birth of
Christ; fol. 200v-206r: The Childhood of Jesus (Placed between 25 Dec and 6 Jan); fol. 206r-
208v: John the Exarch, Encomion on the Epiphany of Christ; fol. 208v-212r: John Chrysostom, En-
comion (Slovo) on the Resurrection of Christ; fol. 212r-215v: Theodosius the Athonite, Encomion on
repentance; fol. 215v-219r: Ephrem the Syrian, On repentance; fol. 219r-222r: Ephrem the Syrian,
Encomion; fol. 222r-223v: The Miracles of St. Nicholas; fol. 223v-224v: Encomion on Annunciation of
Birth of St. Demetrius; fol. 224v-228v: Encomion on the Birth of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica;
fol. 228v-237v: Martyrdom of St. George; fol. 237v-247r: John of Damascus, Encomion on Annunci-
ation of the Theotokos; fol. 247r: the text is finished by half of the page; the rest of the page is
empty. There is a note, not very visible; fol. 247v: a note in Greek; fol. 248r-252v: Encomion of the
Apostle John; fol. 252v-253v: Laudation of the Mother of God of Constantinople; fol. 254r-v: a note.
 Miltenova, “Marginality, Intertextuality, Paratextuality,” 118.
 Scholars think that the texts about the childhood of Jesus, such as the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas, appeared to fill the gaps in our knowledge about this period of Jesus’ life. See footnote
5. See also Sheingorn, “Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of Jesus,” 254.
namely, folios 9 – 12 and 267– 272, are written by a second hand and added in the
sixteenth century.³⁶⁵ Folios 22– 24, which contain the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,
have suffered damage. The manuscript is written on paper, hence the damage.
The manuscript’s cost was probably not high. The destiny and use of this manu-
script were linked to the monastery at Mount Athos. It may have been a monastic
reader used in everyday life. I have not had a chance to inspect this manuscript
personally; accordingly, the information drawn here is from secondary literature.
In Burke’s view, the manuscript contents open with an unpublished witness
to a section of Pilate’s Letter to Tiberius (BHG 779xI).³⁶⁶ However, the cataloguer
Eustratiades reports that the opening text is the Anaphora Pilati (BHG 779z).³⁶⁷
Elliott reports that these are two different texts, but they belong to the same
cycle, the Pilate Cycle.³⁶⁸ Ehrman and Pleše call the Anaphora Pilati the Report
of Pontius Pilate and explain that this is the “Report” of Pontius Pilate to Emper-
or Tiberius describing the events of Jesus’ trial, death, and resurrection from the
perspective of the Roman governor.³⁶⁹ The motives behind the account are to cel-
ebrate Jesus’ miraculous character, to exonerate Pilate for his death, and in so
doing to inculpate the Jews.³⁷⁰ This text needs further investigation since differ-
ent scholars have different things to say about it.
Be that as it may, the Pilate Cycle relates to the Acts of Pilate, which is the
Greek version of the Latin Gospel of Nicodemus. The Gospel of Nicodemus ap-
peared in some Latin manuscripts together with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
Another text in this manuscript may have had its parallel in Latin (but also in
Slavonic), namely, the Narratio de capta Ierusalem (BHG 778) on folios 44r-55r;
it may have had links to the History of Titus and Vespasian in Jerusalem that ap-
peared in manuscript Paris 3014. This text is also mentioned among the contents
of the Serbian manuscript destroyed in World War II, Srećković, Codex 637, from
which Novaković edited the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Such parallels indicate an
interaction between Latin and Byzantine and between Byzantine and Slavonic
manuscripts in the period.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 132; François Joseph Leroy, L’Homilétique de Proclus de Constanti-
nople. Tradition manuscrite, inédits, études connexes (Vatican City: Biblioteca Vaticana, 1967).
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 132; Eustratiades, Catalogue of the Greek manuscripts. In this text,
Pilate writes to the emperor concerning the deeds and death of Christ and mentions the miracles
that attended his Crucifixion and Resurrection. This text was composed in Greek probably in the
fifth century, and it survives in two Greek versions. See Izydorczyk, The Medieval Gospel of Nic-
odemus, 6 – 9.
 Eustratiades, Catalogue of the Greek manuscripts, 13.
 Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 206 – 211.
 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 491.
 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 491.
This Byzantine manuscript contains homilies and logoi of John Chrysostom,

Cyril of Jerusalem, Ephrem, Anastasius the Sinaite, Basil, Sophronius of Jerusa-
lem, and Gregory of Antioch.³⁷¹ Some texts were encountered in the earlier By-
zantine manuscripts (Vienna 123) and the Georgian manuscript that contains
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Their subjects are Jesus, Mary, saints, their mira-
cles, and feasts. This section includes texts on female saints, virgins, and pros-
titutes. Most of the texts are homilies by prominent authors.
According to the catalog, manuscript Vatopedi has the earliest attribution of
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to Thomas as the author. The Infancy Gospel of
Thomas in this manuscript contains episodes 2– 5, 6, and 7– 16, and this is the
earliest manuscript containing the Ga variant. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas ap-
pears unrelated to the other texts.
 The contents are as follows: fol. 1r-8v: Anaphora Pilati (Report by Pilate to Emperor Tiber-
ius) (BHG 779z); fol.9r-21r: Archippus the hermit, Narration of St. Michael’s miracle in Chonae
(Narration and Apocalypse of Archangel Michael) (BHG 1282); fol.21v-28r: History and partial
narration of miracles of Thoma Israelite and philosopher of the childhood and deeds of our
Lord Jesus Christ; fol.28r-33r: De sacerdotio Christi (Narration of Philip the silver-seller and The-
odosius the Hebrew about the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ) (BHG 810); fol. 33r-36v: John
Chrysostom, On the vision of God (BHG 1932); fol.37r-44r: Vision of the monk Cosmas (or De in-
ventione crucis); fol.44r-55r: Narratio de capta Ierusalem (Narration on the Lamentation of the
prophet Jeremiah about the siege of Jerusalem and the astonishment of Abimelech) (BHG
778); fol.55r-72r: Anastasius the Sinaite, In sextum psalmum; fol.72r-77v: Cyril of Jerusalem,
Logos in Hypapantes (In occursum Domini) (BHG 1973); fol.77v-86r: Basil of Cesarea, Logos on
fast on the Fourth day of Tyrophagy (De ieiunio 2); fol.86r-89v: John Chrysostom, In ieiunio ser-
mones 1– 7; fol.89v-109r: John Chrysostom, In genesim (BHG 25pa); fol.109v-113v: John Chrysos-
tom, Logos in Mid-pentecosten (De non iudicando proximo); fol.114r-119v: John Chrysostom (or
Germanus patriarch of Constantinople), Logos on dormition of the Theotokos (BHG 1135);
fol.119v-124v: John Chrysostom, In ascensionem Deiparae; fol.124v-146r: Sophronius of Jerusalem,
Vita of Mary of Egypt (BHG 1042); fol.146r-169r: Narration of Akathistos (BHG 1060); fol.168v-173r:
John Chrysostom, Homily on the prostitute who anointed Jesus with sweet oil (De meretrice);
fol.173r-177r: John Chrysostom, Second Logos on the council that Jews convened; fol.177r-185v:
John Chrysostom, In decem virgines; fol. 185v-189v: Proclus of Constantinople, In feriam quintam;
fol.190r-201v: The letter of the holy fathers Christopher Patriarch of Alexandria, John of Antioch,
Michael of Jerusalem, Ad Theophilum imperatorem de imaginibus; fol. 201v-211r: John Chrysos-
tom, In pentecosten; fol.211r-216v: John Chrysostom, Homily on martyrs (BHG 1187); fol.217r-
223r: John Chrysostom, In resurrectionem Domini; fol.223r-234r: Basil of Cesarea, In sanctam
Christi genesin (BHG 1922); fol.234r-243r: Gregory of Antioch, Homilia in Theophania (BHG
1926); fol.243r-255v: John Chrysostom, De beato Philogono (BHG 1532); fol.255v-268: Ephrem
the Syrian, Sermo compunctorius (Logos on the second appearing of Christ); fol.268v-272:
Logos on Holy Ephrem the Syrian (or John Chrysostom, De oratione). See Eustratiades, Catalogue
of the Greek manuscripts, 13 – 14.
In the fifteenth century, the manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of

Thomas written in paper continue appearing in connection with monasteries,
but their contents become diversified. The fifteenth-century manuscript Athens,
Ethnike bibliotheke, Cod. Atheniensis gr. 355 originates from a monastery in Mal-
esina in Locris in today’s Greece, which was at that time occupied by Ottoman
Turks.³⁷² The manuscript introduces content innovations unusual for the Greek
tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ³⁷³ It contains apocalypses, Apocrypha,
and texts about the Antichrist. Among the authors is John of Damascus. The
manuscript places a more significant focus on eschatological literature, which
is not surprising in the historical context of the Ottoman occupation of Greece.
Also, the manuscript contains some parallels to the Latin and Slavonic tradi-
tions. It contains the Apocalypsis Methodii, previously seen in the Latin manu-
script Cambridge and Slavonic manuscript St Petersburg. It also contains the
Abgar Legend, which we will see appearing in manuscripts Vienna hist.91 and
Paris 6041 A.³⁷⁴ Towards the end of the manuscript, several texts are written
about Mary, such as Nativitas Mariae and Presentatio Mariae, written by John
of Damascus and Germanus.
Manuscript Athens 355 contains a text about the Birth of Christ, written by
John of Damascus. The joint Prologue in Egypt and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
follow after it. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas begins without any title from folio
61v. The texts seem to have had a specific chronology, starting with Jesus’ birth,
his adventures in Egypt when he was two years old, and continuing with the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas until he was twelve. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas ap-
 Halkin, Catalogue des manuscrits, 45.

 The contents: fol. 1– 5v: Basilius iun., Excerptum aceph. Auctar.; fol. 6r-9v: Annuntiatio
(BHG 1128 f); fol. 10r-15v: Baptistae decollatio (BHG 859); fol. 16r-21r: Defuncti (BHG 2103n);
fol. 21r-30r: Zosimos (BHG 1890d); fol. 30r-37v: John the Apostle, Apocalypsis (BHG 921);
fol. 38 – 47v: De antichristo; fol. 48r-60v: John of Damascus, Birth of Christ (BHG 1912);
fol. 61r-68v: Brother Jacob, Iesu infantis miracula (BHG 779n); fol. 68v-75v: Apocalypsis Methodii
(BHG 2036); fol. 75v-77v: Gregory; fol. 79r-85v: Andreas; fol. 85v-87r: De Abgaro rege; fol. 101v-
119v: Ephrem, Andronicus and Athanasia (BHG 123g); fol. 129v: Narratio de Zenone imperatore
(BHG 1322z); fol. 130 – 147v: Basilius (BHG 253 – 256, 258 – 259); fol. 148 – 152: Chrysostom, Theo-
phania (BHG 1932); fol. 152v-164: John of Damascus, Nativitas Mariae (BHG 1112); fol. 164v-166v:
Germanus, Praesentatio Mariae (BHG 1104); fol. 167– 168v: Germanus, Dormitio (BHG 1155);
fol. 169 – 180: Crux, Visio Constantini (BHG 396 – 409). See Halkin, Catalogue des manuscrits, 45.
 The exchange of letters between Jesus and King Abgar of Edessa describes how the king
hears of the miraculous healings of Jesus and invites him to Edessa to cure the king and protect
him from the hostility of the Jews. See Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha I, 492– 499.
pears in the Gd variant.³⁷⁵ The lack of independence of the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas and its merging with the Prologue in Egypt can be ascribed to Latin influ-
ences (see, e. g., BnF lat. 6041 A).
Another Byzantine manuscript of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Vienna, Aus-
trian National Library, Cod. hist. gr. 91, dated from the fourteenth to the fifteenth
century and written on paper, has contents different from what we have seen
thus far in the Byzantine tradition.³⁷⁶ This manuscript has a surprisingly diverse
assortment of texts, which possibly indicates its encyclopedic character. The In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas is found among New Testament excerpts, homilies, ser-
mons, and other texts.³⁷⁷ The manuscript contains medieval historical writings
(chronicles), church history, late antique Greek rhetoric, homilies, texts of
John Chrysostom, of Gregory of Nazianzus, canonical Gospels, epistles, sections
of the liturgy, texts of Michael Psellos, passions, lives of saints, Apocrypha, en-
cyclopedic entries of the Suda Lexicon, Civil Laws, the Nomokanon, medical
writings, polemical literature, Byzantine imperial poetry, texts related to Jesus
(his funeral, his childhood), texts about the Theotokos, and Erotapokriseis.³⁷⁸
 The Gd variant is complete in this manuscript. It contains the Prologue in Egypt, Introduc-
tion by James, and episodes 2– 5, 6, 7– 19. It is the only complete Greek manuscript of the Gd
variant. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 143.
 See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 131– 2. See also Hunger, Katalog I, 94– 102; Paul Gehin, and Stig
Frøyshov, “Nouvelles découvertes sinaïtiques: À propos de la parution de l’inventaire des man-
uscrits grecs,” Revue des études byzantines 58 (2000): 167– 184; Dorotei Getov, and Andreas
Schminck, Repertorium der Handschriften des byzantinischen Rechts II (Nr. 328 – 427) (Frankfurt
am Main: Lowenklau Gessellschaft, 2010).
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 131.
 The contents: fol. 1r-8v: Constantine Manasses, Chronicle (Compendium chronicum); fol. 10r-
v: Synaxarion (1 Jan); fol. 11r: Libanius, Fragment; fol. 11v: Sophronius of Jerusalem (Hunger:
Cyril of Alexandria), Homilia in festum palmarum; fol. 12r-15v: Anonymous, Chronicle; fol. 16r-
v: Narration of King Abgar; fol. 17r-v: Anonymous, Homilies; fol. 17v: John Chrysostom, In nativi-
tatem Christi; fol. 18r-v: Anonymous, Fragment of the Funeral of Jesus; fol. 19r-v: an unknown
text; fol. 19v: On the meaning of the letter; fol. 20r-21v: Anonymous, Fragment of Homily;
fol. 22r-v: Gospel of Luke 7, 2– 16; fol. 23r-v: Anonymous, De dormitione Deiparae; fol. 24r-25v:
Homily; fol. 26r-26v: Fragment of Liturgy on Holy Saturday; fol. 27r: Michael Psellos, De opera-
tione demonum; fol. 27v-30v: Anonymous, Homily on Sunday of Lent; fol. 31r-v: Gospel of
Mark 10, 32– 45; fol. 32r: Gregory of Nazianzus, Opera; fol. 32v-33r: Anonymous, Homily on Sun-
day of Lent; fol. 33v-36r: Gospel of Mark 10, 32; fol. 36v-44v: Gospel of John 12, 1– 16, 11, 1– 45;
fol. 45r-v: Varia (Samsadin of Isfahan, Erotapokriseis); fol. 46r: Anonymous, Fragment of Sermon
for Lent; fol. 47r: Erotapokriseis; fol. 48r-v: Gospel of John, 10, 24– 40; fol. 49v-51v: Philagatus of
Cerami, Homilies (Hunger: Theophanus Kerameus, In festum palmarum); fol. 51: Homilies;
fol. 52r-v, 59r-v: John Chrysostom, Ad populum Antiochenum homilies 1– 21 (De statuis);
fol. 53r: Epistulae hebraicae, 6, 13 – 20; fol. 53v: Gospel of Mark 9, 17– 31; fol. 54r-57r: George
of Nicomedia, In deiparae ingressum in templum 1– 2 (De praesentatione Deiparae); fol. 58r: Epis-
The textual genres are very diverse, but the texts are almost entirely written as
excerpts. Very often, the texts appear in the form of fragments on single folios.
These contents possibly reveal an encyclopedic character of the manuscript,
which may have been used in education as part of a curriculum or private read-
ing.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears towards the end of the manuscript in
the Ga variant, containing episodes 2– 5, 6, 7– 19 (folios 199v-204r).³⁷⁹ It is the
complete Ga variant that appears in this manuscript. It has a distinct title,
Λόγος ἰσραηλίτου φιλοσόφου εἰς τὰ παιδικὰ κεφὰλεια τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ
Χρίστου.³⁸⁰ However, the text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is crossed over
at an unknown date, which indicates that it should not be read. The provenance
of this manuscript is unknown, but its contents imply a secular context. Since it
is deposited in Vienna, it may have originated from Constantinople.
To sum up, the contexts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas changed by the turn
of the fifteenth century. The text appeared in various miscellanies, some of which
were of apocalyptic and encyclopedic character. The encyclopedic character may
have linked this manuscript to secular and educational contexts. On the other
hand, the trend to gather Apocrypha, apocalypses, Antichrist treatises, and writ-
tulae hebraicae, 9, 11– 14; fol. 61r-66r: Anonymous, Sermon for Lent; fol. 63v: Excerpt, Passion of
Nikephoros; fol. 67r-68r: Gospel of Luke 15, 11– 32; fol. 69r-70r: Glossary, Fragment; fol. 70v, 73r-
74v: Fragment; fol. 71r: From Church History; fol. 71v-72r: Anonymous, On Armenian Lent; fol. 72r-
v: Anonymous, Peri typographou; fol. 75r: Gospel of Matthew, 17, 24– 27; fol. 76r-78r: Liturgy of
Chrysostom; fol. 78r-81v: Fragment, Lexicon, Suda; fol. 82r: Ius civile (On divorce); fol. 83r-98r:
Aristenus Alexius, Commentaries on Canons or Nomokanon; fol. 104r-v: Eusebius of Alexandria,
Sermo 13: De adventu Iohannis in infernum; fol. 105r-v, 99r-100r: Excerpts about matrimonial
questions; fol. 100v: Anonymous, De gradibus cognationis; fol. 101r-v: an unknown text;
fol. 102r-103r: Fragment, Dioscorides, De materia medica; fol. 103v: Fragment of Pharmakopoeia;
fol. 104r-v: Apocryphon; fol. 106r-v: ?; fol. 107r-v: Joseph Hieromonachus, Nea Mone, Chios;
fol. 108r-v: Anonymous, Homily; fol. 109 – 109v: Nilus Diasorenus, Ep Ioanicium Monachum Intro-
ducens; fol. 110r: Medical Fragment; fol. 110v: Constantine of Rhodes, Works; fol. 111r-v: Cleobu-
lus of Lindos; fol. 112r-162r: Bertus Nilus, Uersus; fol. 162r-v: Chronological notes; fol. 163r-164r:
an unknown text; fol. 165r-v: Anonymous, Hygromanteia; fol. 166r-v: Prayers; fol. 167r-173r:
Anonymous, Incantation; fol. 173r-174v: Anonymous, Geographica; fol. 175r-176v: Passion of Bar-
bara and Iuliana from Heliopolis (metaphrastic text); fol. 176v-179r: Theodorus Paphius bishop,
Vita of St. Spyridon; fol. 180r-v: George, Fragment, Canons; fol. 181r-v: Basil’s Liturgy;
fol. 181v: an unknown text; fol. 183 – 190v: Triodion; fol. 191r-v: an unknown text; fol. 191v: an
unknown text; fol. 193r, 194v-197v: Anonymous; fol. 193r-194v: Anonymous, Contra Latinos;
fol. 198: Leo VI the Wise, Oracula; fol. 199v-204r: Infancy Gospel of Thomas; fol. 205r-v: John
Chrysostom, In Mattheum homilies; fol. 206 – 208v: Leo VI the Wise, Oracula.
 In Burke’s view, this manuscript version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas accords well with
the tenth-century Vorlage of the Slavonic text. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 129.
 See manuscript Vienna, Austrian National Library, Cod. hist. gr. 91, fol. 199v.
ings of John of Damascus in Athens 355 could indicate that the ideas about the
end of the world were frequently circulating in the territory of modern Greece
that Ottomans occupied at that period. One can also spot the connections of By-
zantine manuscript contents with those of Latin and Slavonic manuscripts,
which indicate rich cultural exchange.
Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Latin manuscripts
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears
in the Latin manuscripts in both Lm and Lt variants, which were sometimes com-
bined or enriched by additional episodes. Such hybridization of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas could have started even before the fourteenth century, judging by
the evidence. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas still appears bound to the Pseudo-
Matthew in this period, but we also find examples unrelated to this group.
The manuscript London, British Library, Harley 3199 is a composite of two
parts.³⁸¹ The manuscript is digitized; I consulted it online. The first part is a mis-
cellany collection of computistic and musical treatises, dated to the first half of
the twelfth century.³⁸² It covers folios 2r-94v.³⁸³ The second part is a late-four-
 London, British Library, Harley 3199 is a parchment codex, 132x92 mm, 109 fol. See Gijsel,
Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 164– 165; A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Mu-
seum 3 (London: British Museum, 1808), 8 – 9.
 George Frederic Warner, and Julius Parnell Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the
Old Royal and King’s Collections II (London: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1921), 323;
Alfred Cordeliani, “Les traités de comput du haut Moyen Age (526 – 1003),” Bulletin Du Cange
17 (1943): 51– 72, 62– 63; C. E. Wright, and Ruth C. Wright, eds., The Diary of Humfrey Wanley
1715 – 1726 I–II (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I, 51, n. 5; 68, n. 1; C. E. Wright, Fontes
Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum
(London: British Museum, 1972), 74, 183, 300, 424; Hans Schmid, ed., Musica et Scolica enchiria-
dis una cum aliquibus tractatulis adiunctis (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie de Wissen-
schaften, 1981), viii, xii; Christian Meyer, Michael Huglo, and Nancy C. Phillips, eds., The Theory
of Music IV: Manuscripts from the Carolingian Era up to c. 1500 in Great Britain and the United
States of America. Descriptive Catalogue (Munich: Henle, 1992), 81– 83; British Library, “Detailed
record for Harley 3199,” <http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?
MSID=7347&CollID=8&NStart=3199> Last accessed: 08/06/2021.
 The first part is a miscellany of treatises relating to computation and music: fol. 2r-55v:
Helperic of Auxerre, Computus; fol. 55v-56r: Guido of Arezzo, De constitutionibus in musica (Reg-
ulae rhythmicae); fol. 56v-58r: Guido of Arezzo, Praefatio in Antiphonarium; fol. 58v-65r: Guido of
Arezzo, Epistula de cantu ignoto (ad Michaelem); fol. 65r-69v: Hoger of Laon (?), Musica enchir-
iadis; fol. 71r-74r: Computus; fol. 74r-79r; Guido of Arezzo, De tonis; fol. 79r-88v; Guido of Arezzo,
teenth-early-fifteenth-century libellus on folios 95r-126v, containing the Liber de

infantia Christi, of smaller dimensions (120x92 mm).³⁸⁴ The provenance of the
first part is probably France and of the second part England or France. The
manuscript had an eventful afterlife in the early modern period. It is a parch-
ment codex, written in Latin Protogothic, with rubrics and highlighted initials
in red. Binding took place only when the two libelli arrived at the British Muse-
um. My primary focus is on the manuscript’s second part.
After a blank half-page, the second libellus commences on folio 95r with the
Pseudo-Matthew, ending on folio 109v.³⁸⁵ Blank spaces possibly left for illumina-
tions frequently appear in this section. Gijsel argues that the Pseudo-Matthew is
incomplete here.³⁸⁶ Gijsel and Burke report that a story of a robber and Mary
Magdalene’s perfumes is inserted into the Pseudo-Matthew between episodes
17 and 18.³⁸⁷ The titles of the new sections/episodes are marked by red letters.
Between the Pseudo-Matthew and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, there is the Pro-
logue in Egypt. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas starts on folio 110r with the sen-
tence: De operibus iesu postquam regressus est de egypto in nazareth. It is the
Lm variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which ends with episode 42 on
folio 122r. The rest of the pages contain some additional episodes seemingly re-
lated to Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this manu-
script presents a continuation of the Pseudo-Matthew, where each section and
episode has its title. The newly added episodes enrich the Pseudo-Matthew.
The Latin manuscript Madrid, Bibliotheca nacional, 9783 (F 152, Ee 103),
dated between 1201 and 1500, is a collection of historiographical texts and hag-
iographies written by different hands.³⁸⁸ The manuscript is dated within several
Micrologus; fol. 89r-91r: Office of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary; fol. 91v-94v: Guido of Arezzo,
Micrologus. See British Library, “Detailed record for Harley 3199.”
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 165.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 152.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 165.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 165; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 152.
 It is a parchment codex, dimensions 230x155 mm, 184 fol., two columns. The contents:
fol. 1r-20r: Turpin, Chronicle; fol. 20r-64r: Deeds of Alexander the Great; fol. 64r-67v: The Concise
History of Alexander; fol. 67v-79r: History of Apollonius; fol. 79r-81v: Epistola presbiteri Iohanis ad
romanum imperatorem; fol. 82r: Letter of Chromatius and Heliodorus to Jerome; fol. 82r-87r: Vita
amici et amelii karicimorum; fol. 87v-98r: Gesta salvatoris domini nostri Ihesu Christi (Gijsel: Gos-
pel of Nicodemus); f. 98 – 109v: Variae visiones; f. 109v-119v: Liber de infantia Salvatoris: Jerome’s
reply to Chromatius and Heliodorus, Pseudo-Matthew, Prologue in Egypt, Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas; fol. 119v-122v: Tractatus de confessione; fol. 122v-127v: Purgatory of St. Patrick; fol. 127v-139:
John of Damascus, Vita of Barlaam and Josaphat; fol. 139r-144r: Acts and passion of blessed Ama-
sius bishop; fol. 144r-146r: History (Ystoria) of the seven holy sleepers; fol. 146r-148v: Acts and pas-
sion of Blessed Matthew the Apostle; fol. 149r-176v: Petrus Tudebodi, Gesta francorum et aliorum
centuries; some of its features probably could be ascribed to earlier periods,

mainly as Gijsel dates it reasonably to the thirteenth century. I have not studied
this manuscript in-depth. I leave the dating open while considering the manu-
script features to belong tentatively to the period of the fifteenth century.
This manuscript is digitized; I consulted it online. In the manuscript, histor-
iographical works, chronicles, and deeds of great men, such as the panegyric bi-
ographies of Alexander the Great and Apollonius, precede the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. This feature indicates that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may have been
viewed in a corresponding light. Alternatively, it may have been used as a suit-
able transition from the panegyric biographies to the lives and passions of the
saints.³⁸⁹ As arranged, the texts have a specific chronology, starting from
Alexander the Great and ending with the Gesta francorum. As a miscellany,
this manuscript contains different texts, even medical prescriptions at the end.
We encountered the medical excerpts earlier in the Byzantine manuscript Cod.
hist. gr. 91 and the Slavonic manuscript St Petersburg.
The Letter of Chromatius and Heliodorus to Jerome appears in folio 82r. Sev-
eral texts appear in between until we encounter Jerome’s reply on folio 109v,
where Jerome opens the Pseudo-Matthew: Incipit prefatio sancti hieronimi presbi-
teri in libro de infancia salvatoris. ³⁹⁰ A text on folios 110r-115v has the incipit:
Liber de infantia salvatoris, which is probably the introductory part of the Pseu-
do-Matthew, referring to Mary.³⁹¹ Gijsel argues that this section contains the
opening of the De nativitate Mariae, rather than the Pseudo-Matthew. ³⁹²
ierosolimitanorum; fol. 177r-184v: Medical prescriptions (Medicamentorum praescriptiones). See

Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 131; Catalogue raisonné des principaux manuscrits du Cabi-
net de Monsieur Joseph-Louis-Dominique de Cambis, Marquis de Velleron (Avignon: Louis Cham-
beau, 1770), 400 – 435.
 It is interesting to note here that Maureen B. McC. Boulton, in her book Sacred Fictions of
Medieval France, discusses the story of the life of Christ and his mother Mary appearing in many
texts in various French vernaculars in a large number of manuscripts (the twelfth to the fifteenth
century), where the story was told in different genres: epic, romance, allegory, and chronicle.
See Boulton, Sacred Fictions, 8; see also Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity, and Devotion in Four-
teenth-Century England: Three Women and Their Books of Hours (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2003), 269 – 277; Annette Yoshiko Reed, “The Afterlives of New Testament Apocrypha,”
Journal of Biblical Literature 134, No. 2 (2015): 401– 425, 423.
 The title Liber de infantia salvatoris in the Gelasian Decree probably refers to the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas, but scholars are not in agreement about it. See Dzon, “Cecily Neville,”
268, n. 107; Beyers, “The transmission of Marian Apocrypha,” 119.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 131.
 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 131.
The Prologue in Egypt is on folios 115v-116r, entitled once again Liber de in-
fantia salvatoris. ³⁹³ On folio 116r, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Lm variant
continues without any title after the Prologue in Egypt. The insistence on the title
Liber de infantia salvatoris misguides the reader that the focus of this group of
texts is on Jesus. On folio 116v, after episodes 26 (Pools) and 27 (Sparrows) of
the Lm end, several episodes of the Lt are inserted before the text of the Lm con-
tinues. The trend of hybridization of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this and the
previous manuscript was attested in other manuscripts, starting from the four-
teenth century (or even earlier).³⁹⁴
The fourteenth-century Latin manuscript Paris, BnF, lat. 6041 A contains the
continuous text of the Prologue in Egypt and the complete Lt variant of the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas on folios 127r–128r without any titles.³⁹⁵ The text appears
as added due to extra space, but there is no way of knowing. The letters of this
text are significantly smaller than in the preceding text. We have seen this com-
bination of two texts in Byzantine manuscript Athens 355 previously. This feature
makes an excellent link to the parallels of Lt and Gd variants in the scholar-
ship.³⁹⁶
I have personally examined the manuscript. It is a compilation of historio-
graphical works, chronicles, letters, saints’ lives, panegyric biographies, and
Apocrypha: the history of Britons, the chronicle from the beginning of the
world until King Richard I of England, the history of Jerusalem, the Life of Char-
lemagne, an Armenian history, a fragment of the Life of Alexander the Great,
and other works.³⁹⁷ The Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Nicodemus
(folios 178v–179v) have Jesus as their subject.
 In 115v, there is a title: Incipit liber de infancia salvatoris, and the text follows: Erat autem
ihesus annorum duorum quando ingressus in egyptum. It is where the Prologue in Egypt starts.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 156 – 159.
 The manuscript contains a note from 1931 in French on the very first folio. In the verso of
the first folio, there is a note and the year 1480. The second folio contains the text, preceded by a
table of contents. The text is written in two columns. The catalog reports that the manuscript is a
parchment codex.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 150.
 Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum bibliothecae regiae, 195. The contents are: fol. 1r-56r:
Gaufridus Monemuthensis, Historia Britorum a Bruto ad mortem Cadualladri; fol. 56v-104v:
Anonymous, Chronicle ab urbe condito ad obitum Richardi I regis Anglorum; fol. 105r-124v: Pon-
tii de Baladuno et Raimondi, History of Jerusalem; fol. 124v-127r: Sibyllae Tiburtinae vaticinium
(Liber sibille); 127r-128r: Infancy Gospel of Thomas (with the Prologue in Egypt); fol. 129r-131v:
(one folio is blank) Athanasius, Passio imaginis domini salvatoris; fol. 131v-132v: Epistola Abgari
ad Christum; fol. 132v-143v: Vita of St. Brendan; fol. 144r-159v: Life of Charlemagne (Turpin), Ro-
tolandus, Narration of Gratianopolis; fol. 159v-160r: Letter of Pope Calixtus; fol.160v-178r: Testa-
Apocryphal manuscript geography 93
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the West brought innovations re-
garding the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The text is commonly aligned in manu-
scripts as a continuation of the Pseudo-Matthew, but it can also appear inde-
pendently. The Gospel of Nicodemus also appeared in the contents of the
manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ³⁹⁸ Little was settled in
terms of textual stability and fixity, defined beginning and end, connection to
the other texts, and merging this text with other texts. The Pseudo-Matthew dis-
solves as a compact group of texts in some manuscripts. Simultaneously, the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas evolves into its hybrid form where the Lm and Lt variants
are mixed, with the insertion of various new episodes (this feature may originate
already from the thirteenth century). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears in
manuscripts with various other historical writings and panegyric biographies.
Apocryphal manuscript geography and the changing genre of

the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
Uncovering the entire manuscript transmission of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
is beyond the bounds of possibility because we have only bits and pieces of what
once constituted the complete material. In this chapter, I tried to draw the most
accurate possible map based on sporadic witnesses, a feature previously not at-
tempted in the scholarship on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Although it consists
only of scattered information, the manuscript geography of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas nevertheless points to some transmission directions. A fragmentary In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas is attested in the fifth-century Latin palimpsest from
Bobbio (Vienna lat. 563), one of the several monastic foundations in late antique
Italy that cultivated the manuscript exchange and conducted translations, main-
ly from Greek to Latin.
The two surviving Syriac manuscripts from the sixth century contain the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas. The libellus Add. 14484 was copied in Syria in the sixth
century. It was brought in Baghdad by the tenth century and was transferred to
the Deir-Al-Surian monastery in Egypt later. The other manuscript, Göttingen
menta 12 Patriarcharum; fol. 178v-179v: Evangelium of Nicodemus; fol. 180r-204r: Haytoni Armeni
Historia (Flos historiarum terrae Orientis); fol. 204r-213r: Fragment of the Life of Alexander the
Great; fol.214r-v: an unknown text.
 Seventy-one manuscripts contain the Gospel of Nicodemus and some version of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas: either within the Pseudo-Matthew, the Lt Infancy Gospel of Thomas, or some
other unidentified text. Burke and Landau, New Testament Apocrypha, xxx, n. 29; Izydorczyk,
Manuscripts of the Evangelium Nicodemi.
syr. 10, was copied in Syria and transferred to the monastery of St. Catherine in
Sinai. By the tenth century, the Georgian manuscript (Cod. A 95) containing the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears in the Parhali monastery from the transitional
region of Tao-Klarjeti, which stretched from southwestern Georgia to Byzantium.
In the eleventh century, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears in the Byzan-
tine manuscript from Cyprus (Sabaiticus 259), at the time included in the Byzan-
tine empire. From the monastery of St. Nikolaos in Akrotiri, this manuscript was
eventually transferred to Palestine and Jerusalem. Simultaneously, the Latin
manuscript with part of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas turns up in the German
Benedictine Abbey, Reichenau (Paris 1772). Another thirteenth-century Latin li-
bellus which became part of a composite manuscript (Cambridge), testifies this
text’s appearance in Canterbury, England, in the prominent Christ Church Cathe-
dral. In the thirteenth century, this text occurred in Latin parchment manuscripts
originating from France, among which the manuscript from the Abbey Notre-
Dame de Cîteaux in Saint-Nicolas-lès-Cîteaux, south of Dijon, to name some ex-
amples, and in at least eight other manuscripts. In the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, the text was copied in larger numbers in the West, such as in the
manuscripts Paris 3014 and Berne (from a Carmelite monastery of Dijon and
Metz). The thirteenth-century Byzantine manuscripts written on paper may
have originated in Constantinople and some of its city monasteries and scripto-
ria (Vienna 123).
By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was
found in parchment manuscripts from a few Serbian monasteries, such as the
monastery St. Nicholas (Vuneš) in North Macedonia (Hludov), and the Bulgarian
urban setting of Loveč, a Metropolitan seat of the Second Bulgarian Empire (St
Petersburg). The latter manuscript was brought to the royal library of Veliko Tar-
novo, where it may have been available to the Bulgarian royal family. The Infancy
Gospel of Thomas was disseminated on Byzantine paper manuscripts of the mon-
asteries of Mount Athos (Vatopedi), Malesina in Locris, Greece (Athens 355), and
possibly in a Constantinopolitan secular context (Vienna hist. 91). In the Western
Latin parchment libelli and manuscripts, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appeared
in England, France, Spain (Harley, Madrid, Paris 6041 A), and other areas. The
mapping of the manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas by geographical
areas is by no means complete since I did not include all the manuscripts
from the Byzantine and particularly Latin realms. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
was also widely disseminated in western vernacular languages, and it is pre-
served in many manuscripts to date.³⁹⁹
 See Dzon, The Quest for the Christ Child, 110 – 111; Boulton, Sacred Fictions.
According to the evidence, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas occurred exclusive-

ly in monastic settings until the late Middle Ages. In the thirteenth-century West,
some manuscripts with this text were used for educational purposes, such as the
manuscript Dijon. Some codices were of small dimensions and were probably de-
votional private readers, such as Paris 3014. The thirteenth-century Byzantine
paper manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may have been ev-
eryday readers in monasteries.
Only in the fifteenth-century Byzantine manuscripts, the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas moved from monastic settings to secular educational contexts. Gero
has shown that Greek and Slavonic versions of apocryphal gospels were gener-
ally used in Orthodox monasteries as devotional reading, but they were not uti-
lized in the liturgy.⁴⁰⁰ In my view, his statement generally applies to the consid-
ered material, with one exception: the Slavonic manuscript Hludov, which was
used in the liturgy. In the Slavonic settings, some specific uses of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas were introduced; the text was read in the liturgy and at the
Bulgarian royal court.
Most of the manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas were mis-
cellanies. As Dinkova-Bruun argues, “primary miscellanies” had the overarching
idea and a vision of their purpose from the beginning, and their contextualiza-
tion was unproblematic.⁴⁰¹ All the Byzantine and Slavonic manuscripts analyzed
here are primary miscellanies; the same applies to many Latin manuscripts
(Paris 1772, Paris 3014, Dijon, Berne, Madrid, Paris 6041 A). The Infancy Gospel
of Thomas was envisaged as part of their contents.
Nevertheless, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is sometimes found in “second-
ary miscellanies,” where its separate libelli could have contained texts ordered
with clear aims and purposes; the binding which occurred later was sometimes
conducted based on unknown criteria whose inner logic is hard to grasp, as in
the case of the manuscripts Cambridge and Harley. The other “secondary miscel-
lanies,” such as the Syriac and Georgian manuscripts, had a meaningful and
comprehensible system.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas has been erased only from one known manu-
script, the fifth-century palimpsest in Vienna lat. 563. In the tenth-century Geor-
gian manuscript A 95, the text is physically damaged, and several folios are per-
haps ripped off. In the eleventh-century Latin manuscript Paris 1772, the copying
 Gero, “Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 75; see also Hurtado, “Who Read Early Christian Apoc-
rypha?” 158. In Gero’s view, the Slavonic translations could undoubtedly be accounted for such
monastic use, which was only one manifestation of the continued widespread interest in the
apocryphal narratives.
 Dinkova-Bruun, “Medieval Miscellanies,” 15.
of the text was abandoned in the middle of a sentence after several episodes. The
Byzantine thirteenth-century paper manuscript Vienna 123 suffered significant
damage due to the material. Several manuscripts contain notes warning about
the apocryphal nature of the text, as in Sabaiticus 259; these notes usually ap-
pear from the sixteenth century.
When it first appeared in the manuscripts, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was
combined with different other texts. The combination of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas with the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Gospel of Matthew in the Latin
palimpsest Vienna 563 is an isolated occurrence. We may think of the text in
this palimpsest as a translation from Greek, but we do not know the origin of
the combination of three texts, all dedicated to Jesus. The manuscripts of the ear-
liest Greek tradition are not preserved. However, we have extant the late antique
Syriac tradition, i. e., the Syriac texts – the Protevangelium of James, the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas, and the Transitus Mariae – combined in Add. 14484 and Göt-
tingen syr. 10. It has led scholars to conclude that the Syriac tradition promoted
the figure of Mary by copying the three texts together. The Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas was copied in this context because of Mary.
In the Byzantine, Slavonic, and Georgian manuscripts, the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas mostly appears with a distinct title. In the case of two Byzantine manu-
scripts, Vienna 123 and Athens 355, we witnessed the absence of a title of the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas. The text is connected to the other texts around it, mainly
as a continuation of Jesus’ story. The Georgian manuscript A 95 displays the pat-
terns and influences of Byzantine manuscripts in the alignment of texts; it is a
similar type of collection. Scholars traditionally link the Georgian text of the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas to the Syriac version of the text.⁴⁰² Possibly, the manu-
script was organized according to the Byzantine manuscript patterns, while some
texts were previously translated from Syriac. The scribe who worked on this
manuscript copied both newly translated texts and the texts translated earlier,
including the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
In the West, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was often combined with the
group of texts that constituted the Pseudo-Matthew. The Letter to Chromatius
and Heliodorus, allegedly written by Jerome, commonly served to justify the ap-
pearance of this group of texts in the opening of the Pseudo-Matthew. The texts
in the Pseudo-Matthew needed validation for their presence in manuscripts.
Scholars argue that the Protevangelium of James, part of the Pseudo-Matthew,
 Akaki Shanidze, “The Fragment of the Georgian Version of the Apocryphal ‘Gospel of Tho-
mas’ and its Incomprehensible Passages” (in Russian), Stalinis Saxelobis T’ibilisis saxelmwipo
Universitetis Sromebi 18 (1941): 29 – 40; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 85.
was translated from Greek and appropriated to fit the new contexts, after which
it was widely copied. The original text of the Protevangelium of James achieved
minor fame in the West, while in the East, it was often copied and present in
many manuscripts.⁴⁰³ The evidence of the manuscripts analyzed here shows
that the core Pseudo-Matthew, describing Mary’s childhood, often had different
titles and was combined with other texts related to her parents. The Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas often appeared within the Pseudo-Matthew without a title as a
continuous text because it was not perceived separately or due to a necessity
to keep it disguised within the Pseudo-Matthew.
The Pseudo-Matthew changed its contents over time; various new and old
texts were added and omitted. In the thirteenth century, it was followed by
the Miracles of Mary or the Transitus Mariae, describing her death. The Pseu-
do-Matthew often appeared in the manuscripts with the Gospel of Nicodemus,
which described Jesus’ trial and last days (sometimes also his passion). In the
thirteenth-century Latin manuscripts, one can see not only the survival of the
late antique Syriac tradition, where the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was attached
to the Protevangelium and the Transitus Mariae but the revival of the Latin tra-
dition as we know it from the Latin fifth-century palimpsest, which binds the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas with the Gospel of Nicodemus.
In two examples, Berne and Paris 6041, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is ei-
ther a text unrelated to the texts around it or attached only to the Prologue in
Egypt. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (or even earlier), the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas was hybridized by the addition of new episodes and mixing the
extant variants (Lm with Lt). As Burke argued, the ascription of this text to a
named author is only a secondary feature found in Byzantine, Lt, and Slavonic
manuscripts.⁴⁰⁴
It seems that the apocryphal status of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas did not
present an obstacle to placing this text in the contents of the Byzantine manu-
scripts with other texts prominent for faith and religious instruction. We here dis-
regard the later note in Sabaiticus and the crossing out of the text in Vienna hist.
91, the features that occurred after the fifteenth century. In the Slavonic tradition,
Apocrypha and canonical literature were bound together in manuscripts, al-
though some scholars argued for a parasitic position of Apocrypha in manu-
 Elliott argues that it was due to Jerome’s disapproval of the teaching about Joseph’s first
marriage that the Protevangelium was condemned in the West. It is somewhat ironic that the
Pseudo-Matthew, which also preserves this teaching, was published with prefaces associated
with Jerome’s name. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 85.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 205.
scripts.⁴⁰⁵ There is no evidence for such a status of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
in the Slavonic tradition because this text was an integral part of the manu-
scripts. Scribes planned the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to be part of these collec-
tions within an executed copying program and a designated position.
The Bulgarian scholar Naumov has distinguished Old Bulgarian Apocrypha
according to their reception and function into quasi-canonical, non-canonical,
and anti-canonical.⁴⁰⁶ Quasi-canonical Apocrypha were included in church
rites and read as homilies and vitae during the services on feast days. They
were present in liturgical Menologia from the earliest period. The non-canonical
texts were not used in the liturgy, but they did not dogmatically contradict the
official Church. These texts benefited from being adjusted by the spirit of the of-
ficial dogma.⁴⁰⁷ Naumov places the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this group. Non-
canonical writings were often appropriated and adjusted by the Church, and
they often supported the official literature in the combat against heresies.
Most of the apocryphal writings of this kind were accepted and read within
the Church.
As to the reading of Apocrypha in the medieval West, Mary Dzon argued
that although medieval clerics were wary of apocryphal texts, they did not for-
bid others to read them.⁴⁰⁸ She argues concerning the social strata that read
Apocrypha in the West: “It is sometimes assumed that the church hierarchy
was opposed to folklore dealing with religious matters, that it condemned
apocryphal literature, and tried to prevent people from reading or knowing
it.”⁴⁰⁹ She holds that this is not an accurate representation of the reception
 While discussing the status and preservation of the Apocrypha in the Slavonic context,
Rosén noted that within the system of the Church Slavonic literature, the NT Apocrypha had
no identifiable corpus of texts separate from the canonical literature and that Apocrypha and
canonical literature were usually bound together in manuscripts, despite the attempts of the
Church to eradicate the apocryphal writings by imposing various prohibitions. Also, following
the argument of de Santos, Rosén states that the NT Apocrypha owe their survival to the form
in which they were transmitted. They were commonly bound within the collections of Menaia,
Prologs, homiletic compilations, hagiographic and theological collections. For this reason, the
NT Apocrypha were called parasitic; in his view, they owe their survival to the other texts
with which they were bound. Their parasitic form presented a constant threat to the stability
of the textual versions since various titles frequently disguised these texts. See Rosén, The Sla-
vonic Translation, 14.
 See Miltenova, “Marginality, Intertextuality, Paratextuality,” 71– 74.
 Aleksander Naumov, “Apokrifite v sistemata na starata slavjanska literatura,” (Apocrypha
in the System of the Old Slavic Literature) Palaeobulgarica 4, No. 2 (1980): 71– 74.
 Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 267.
 Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 266.
of the Infantia salvatoris in the medieval West.⁴¹⁰ I agree with her view that the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas had an audience in the medieval West. Moreover, the
text appears in a large number of manuscripts. However, the fact that it ap-
peared within the Pseudo-Matthew and was occasionally merged with other
texts, sometimes as a continuation of another text or without a title, implies
that ambiguous attitudes may have existed, even if only as scribal presupposi-
tions. Alternatively, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may have been understood as
part of a larger narrative. The average readers and listeners may not have
known that the text had an apocryphal status.⁴¹¹
As for its changing genre: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas appeared in Late
Antiquity with the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Gospel of Matthew, bound
under the same umbrella by the same subject matter – Jesus. We can draw
next to nothing from the title of “Gospel” here because we do not know if
these texts were referred to as “Gospels” in the manuscript and because they
were only mixed excerpts. It is better to refer to them as “Jesus-related” texts.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas also emerged within the “Book of Mary” in a Sy-
riac context. In this way, this text was aligned subject-wise with other literature
related to Jesus and Mary. In the Byzantine tradition, it was mainly bound with
panegyric, homiletic, and hagiographical works; these genres could have been
applied to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas too. In this tradition, the text bore
the title Paidika, or Logos, or it appeared without a title.
In the Latin tradition, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was predominantly
aligned within the Pseudo-Matthew, accompanying other texts about Mary.
This group of texts was subsequently expanded to include other texts about
both Mary and Jesus. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas started appearing in Latin
manuscripts with historiographical contents from the thirteenth century. It was
perceived as a historicized account of the childhood of Jesus and entitled Trac-
tatus or De operibus Iesu. In the fourteenth century, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
appeared aligned with panegyric biographies and other deeds of great men
(such as Alexander the Great and Apollonius). In this way, it switched various
genres and was placed in different contexts from its emergence until the dawn
of the early modern period.
In what follows, my focus moves further from the contexts to the text itself.
The variations in the different textual forms of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (the
 Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 266.

 Similarly, Mary Dzon concluded that Cecily Neville, a fifteenth-century widowed duchess of
York and the mother of Edward IV and Richard III, must have found the book edifying, but might
not have known that it was apocryphal, or (if it was the case), that it was still acceptable reading
material in a private setting. Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 290.
subject of Chapter 3) are juxtaposed to the contexts presented in this chapter. The
aim is to assess whether the reasons prompting various scribes and binders to
place the text in the manuscripts corresponded to what was written in the text.
Chapter 3
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as Text:
Transformations of Structure
When one wishes to read anything from an ancient or a medieval text, one first
needs to define the text’s beginning and end. It means its transcription from the
primary transmission medium (such as manuscript) from the beginning, which is
sometimes marked by a title or a first word, until the end, enclosed by a conclud-
ing sentence or an end title. What if there is no title or a concluding sentence?
What if the first sentence is not the same in all the manuscripts in which a
given text appears? Such inconsistency is not rare in medieval manuscripts.
As a transmission medium, manuscripts allowed for such discrepancy. The In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas is no exception. It both begins and ends in different
ways in the different manuscripts.⁴¹²
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was transmitted in many medieval manu-
scripts in various languages, albeit not in a fixed textual form. The transforma-
tions are present among the different language groups and within the same lan-
guage. The text folds and unfolds in the different traditions and reshapes
according to specific criteria. The standard textual form of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas – the contents between the beginning and the end – was debated
among scholars.
Some scholars argue that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas became an amalgam
of different Jesus-related stories that were bound together at a certain point,
where the separate stories gradually became the episodes of a more comprehen-
sive narrative. Sheingorn argues that “there is no reason to assume that such sto-
ries, as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, had a completely fixed form.”⁴¹³ Hock ob-
serves that “the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is not a lengthy and coherent narrative
but a collection of largely self-contained stories that are only loosely held togeth-
er by a series of indications of Jesus’ age.”⁴¹⁴ Ehrman and Pleše note that only
the loosest organizational patterns can be found in this book.⁴¹⁵ Gero refers to
it as “the fixation in writing of a cycle of oral tradition, of religious folklore.”⁴¹⁶
 Similar concerns are expressed in Davis, Christ Child, 20.

 Sheingorn, “Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of Jesus,” 254.
 Hock, The Infancy Gospel of James and Thomas, 85.
 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 6.
 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 56; see also Hurtado, “Who Read Early Christian
Apocrypha?” 158.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110752786-004
102 Chapter 3 The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as Text: Transformations of Structure
Hurtado asserts that “the extant manuscripts exhibit considerable fluidity in the
transmission of the text, with deletion and insertion of some stories in a loose
collection of vignettes, at least some of which circulated on their own before
being collected in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.”⁴¹⁷ Davis assumes that episode
Zeno (9) circulated initially independently.⁴¹⁸
It was not only the beginning, the end, and the presence and absence of the
specific episodes within the text that made a difference in the manuscripts. At
times, the same episode is written down differently and with differing length
in the manuscripts. Scholars generally conclude that the reshaping and augmen-
tation of apocryphal texts were the deliberate work of writers and artists in the
past.⁴¹⁹ The episodes of this narrative were written down in a greater or lesser
number of words in the different manuscripts.
During transmission and translation, the narrative logic of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas was disrupted at times. This feature is particularly evident where
one episode ends and the next begins. It suggests that the episodes may have
initially circulated alone before they were compiled together. An additional chal-
lenge to studying this text is that it was probably orally transmitted before it was
written down. Possibly, oral and written transmission for a while occurred con-
currently. Some of the differences in the textual forms could be ascribed to oral
transmission.⁴²⁰
In this chapter, I elaborate on the structure and transformations of the Infan-
cy Gospel of Thomas in the manuscripts. It requires scrutinizing what constitutes
the text’s beginning and end and the internal variations in the manuscripts,
 Hurtado, “Who Read Early Christian Apocrypha?” 158.

 Davis, Christ Child, 102.
 See Sheingorn, “Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of Jesus,” 255; Kathryn A. Smith,
“Accident, Play and Invention: Three Infancy Miracles in the Holkham Bible Picture Book,” in
Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval and Ren-
aissance Manuscripts, Art, and Architecture, eds. Susan L’Engle, and Gerald B. Guest (London:
Harvey Miller, 2006): 357– 69.
 Aasgaard argues that the variants of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas should be studied as
written manifestations of material that has to a large extent been orally transmitted. He proposes
studying it according to an “oral/written paradigm,” with a slightly more significant emphasis
on the oral. As the markers of orality in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, he suggests the story’s
episodic character, the existence of multiform stories, the possible independence of episodes,
and memorization aids in the story that helped to remember it better. To define the interrelation-
ship of oral and written elements, Aasgaard joins the discussion started by Gero, Cameron, and
others and proposes that this story has been transmitted with episodes added and omitted.
While it was written down at different points, at the same time, it continued to circulate orally.
It is why the transmission process was double and interrelated; the oral and the written were in
mutual exchange. See Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 14– 34.
Chapter 3 The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as Text: Transformations of Structure 103
namely, the order, the presence and absence of episodes, and the inner length
adjustments within individual episodes.
In this chapter, I employ narratology as a methodological framework to help
answer the questions about a text written down in medieval manuscripts, dis-
playing a variety that is a consequence of transmission processes and the con-
texts in which it was used. Narratology helps us comprehend the text’s structure,
its transformations, reductions, and augmentations in different settings. The
study of the multiple textual forms of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas pertains
to New Philology in the most fitting way because New Philology approaches
each manuscript as an individual source. Arguing that “variation is what medi-
eval text is about,” New Philology relies on the premise that it is possible to have
as many versions of a text as we have manuscripts. According to New Philology,
varieties usually correspond to the specific environments in which the manu-
scripts were produced and used.
In the first section of the chapter, I deal with the episode order within the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The order is linked to the structure and has a direct
impact on the narrative’s meaning. The following questions are of particular in-
terest: Which episodes are present in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in each of the
manuscripts? In which order are the episodes aligned in the manuscripts? What
do the differences in order mean in a broader context? The episode order and
consequently the meaning of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may be affected by
the rearrangement of the episodes. Since the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is at
times part of a larger cycle of texts, I also look into these cycles and the texts
that precede and follow the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the manuscripts.
In the next section of the chapter, I analyze the junctures between the epi-
sodes to see how they link the text. Sometimes the junctures (the end of an epi-
sode and the beginning of another) have awkward transitions that interrupt the
narrative logic. I have already introduced the scholarly view that the episodes of
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are loosely held together with unconfined junc-
tures. In this section, I investigate whether the narrative logic is interrupted
equally in the manuscripts. Additionally, I analyze why interruptions occur.
In the final section of the chapter, I look into individual episodes to assess
their length, augmentations, and reductions compared to the same episode in
the other manuscripts. The aim is to see in which contexts and why specific epi-
sodes give more or less space to particular topics within the narrative. Why
would a specific episode in a particular manuscript devote more space to a sub-
ject? This question pertains to the structural category of pseudo-duration.
I aim here to bring to light specific features of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
in each manuscript, which make its text different from the texts in other manu-
scripts, related to the specific agendas and contexts of the manuscripts. I am
convinced that a single text could have been transformed many times in different
contexts and utilized in different ways, following the needs of the groups and
societies that used it.
Pseudo-temporal order
The story about Jesus’ childhood presents a sequence of events in his early years
over several years, in the same way as any story one may think of shows a series
of certain events. As was elaborated in Chapter 1, the events that comprise the
subject of a narrative occupy a certain amount of time. They are connected in
some form of temporal order.⁴²¹ Genette defines temporal order as the succession
of the events in the story and pseudo-temporal order as their arrangement in the
narrative.⁴²² The study of the temporal order presupposes a comparison of the
order in which events/temporal sections are arranged in the narrative discourse
with the order of succession the same events have in the story.⁴²³
When the events are turned into a story, they may be presented in a different
order, omitted, told more than once, or reported at greater or lesser length.⁴²⁴ The
story can be laid out in an order different from the chronological order. In this
sense, some episode orders are anachronistic in comparison to others. At
times, the succession of episodes has no connection to the temporal order of
events. When it is impossible to determine the temporal relationship between
the various events, we deal with an achronical narrative.⁴²⁵
In what order did the events in Jesus’ childhood take place? The manuscripts
of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appear to narrate the story about Jesus’ child-
hood chronologically, with occasional references to his age. Some of the later
dated manuscripts even have an introductory statement and an enclosing state-
ment (Postscriptum) of the ascribed author, testifying its credibility and
source.⁴²⁶ Nevertheless, the order and choice of the episodes of this narrative
 de Jong, Narratology and Classics, 73.

 Genette, Narrative Discourse, 35.
 Genette, Narrative Discourse, 35.
 de Jong, Narratology and Classics, 77.
 de Jong, Narratology and Classics, 73.
 Gero reports that the earliest versions, the Syriac Add. 14484 and the Georgian manuscript
A 95, do not have a prologue that mentions Thomas. Burke argues that the ascription of this text
to a named author is only a secondary feature, found in Byzantine, Lt, and Slavonic manu-
scripts. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 205; Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 57.
are not identical in the manuscripts. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas does not
maintain a fixed textual form.
Some scholars argue that the symbiosis of various episodes about Jesus’
childhood was constructed at some point, but the details of the symbiosis proc-
ess are unclear. The narrative form folds and unfolds in multiple traditions; the
episodes fall in and out according to the preferences and different aims of the
specific manuscripts. Gero argues that the order seems to be relatively unimpor-
tant and varies among the versions.⁴²⁷ In his view, the stories in the episodes
seem reasonably self-contained and only loosely connected.⁴²⁸ Although I do
not entirely agree with his statement, I must acknowledge the importance of “ep-
isode” as a principal constituent of the narrative.
Besides the absence of specific episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in
some manuscripts, their differing position is also characteristic. For example, in
the Greek manuscript Sabaiticus 259, the episode Injured Foot (10) occurs after
James’ Snakebite (16). The narrative does not refer to this episode as a flash-for-
ward (prolepsis) or a flash-backward (analepsis) but an event that follows chro-
nologically. It justifies asking: When did the healing of a young man’s injured
foot occur in the story? Did it happen when Jesus was five or when he was
eight? Does the placing of the episode in any way influence the narrative
flow? The narrative in Sabaiticus does not appear as anachronistic regarding
the event; the event is not described as a flash-back. It is rather achronical,
meaning that the narrative does not specify when the event happens.
As the basis of numbering the episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I
use Burke’s book De infantia Iesu. ⁴²⁹ I take the Greek variant Ga as the standard
form for marking the episodes. Burke numerates the episodes by number, where
the maximum length is nineteen episodes (1– 19), as in the Ga variant.⁴³⁰ In this
way, each episode that constitutes the standard narrative has its number. I trans-
fer this numbering to the other Greek variants (Gs, Gd) and the versions in the
 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 59.

 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 58.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 302– 539.
 The standard form is as follows: Prologue (1), Pools (2.1) Sparrows (2.2– 2.5), Annas’ Son
(3), Careless Boy (4), Joseph’s Rebuke (5), First Teacher (6 – 8): Dialogue (6), Lament (7), Excla-
mation (8), Zeno (9), Injured Foot (10), Water in Cloak (11), Harvest (12), Carpenter (13), Second
Teacher (14), Third Teacher (15), James’ Snakebite (16), Dead Baby (17), Dead Laborer (18), Jeru-
salem (19). While this enumeration is taken from Burke’s De infantia Iesu (who took it over from
Tischendorf), most of the titles of the episodes are borrowed from Aasgaard, The Childhood of
Jesus, 246– 247. I use only the shorter titles of the episodes.
other languages.⁴³¹ Although the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has the editions of
the Latin and Slavonic manuscripts, I transfer Burke’s numbering to the struc-
ture of the episodes in these manuscripts to maintain consistency and clarity.
In the Lm variant, I use both Burke’s numbering of the episodes and Tischen-
dorf’s numbering of the text as part of the Pseudo-Matthew, in which the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas covers episodes 26 – 42. In designating the episode names, for
the most part, I use Aasgaard’s titles.⁴³² I also use Aasgaard’s numbering of the
episodes that fall outside of the standard form.⁴³³ Whenever a single episode is
mentioned in what follows, I first use its title (from Aasgaard) and mark its num-
ber in brackets (Burke). In the case of the text of the Lm variant, I first use Ti-
schendorf’s numbering of the episodes within the Pseudo-Matthew (26 – 42)
and then Burke’s numbering. The analysis commences with the Latin manu-
scripts because they offer a significant point of departure compared to the rest
of the corpus and furnish a reasonable basis for establishing further connections
among the manuscripts.
Latin manuscripts
In the following analysis, I use the Latin manuscripts presented in Chapter 1,

Paris 1772, Dijon, and Cambridge, which scholars categorized to belong to differ-
ent variants. The variant Lm is represented by the manuscripts Paris 1772 and
Dijon.⁴³⁴ In Burke’s view, Lm belongs to the first Latin translation from Greek,
which comes from a Greek text related to the other early translations, such as
Syriac, Georgian, and Ethiopic.⁴³⁵ The manuscript Cambridge belongs to what
Burke calls the “late Latin” Lt variant. He regards the Lt as a second translation
from Greek, related to the Greek variant Gd.
The variant-based distinction helps present the pseudo-temporal order of
the episodes because the two manuscripts containing the Lm variant have the
same order of the episodes up to the point where the text in Paris 1772 ends,
 It should be noted that Burke uses the different numbering for his edition of the Gs variant,
for example. R. Aasgaard follows Burke’s numbering in his edition of Gs.
 See Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 245 – 7.
 See Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 245 – 7.
 Comprising episodes 26 – 42 of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 145.
yet their order differs from the Cambridge manuscript (Lt representative).⁴³⁶ The
pseudo-temporal order must be analyzed in connection to the other narratives
combined with this text in the manuscripts, for example, the texts within the
Pseudo-Matthew, which frequently constitute a continuous text.
The pseudo-temporal order of the episodes in the three manuscripts is pre-
sented in the following table:
Manuscripts
Paris  Dijon Cambridge
Epistula of Chro- Letters of Pseudo- Gospel of Nicodemus,

matius and Helio- Jerome, Pseudo- Vindicta salvatoris,
dorus Matthew Diatribe against Jews
Pseudo-Matthew Prologue in Egypt Letter of Chromatius

and Heliodorus, De
cognatis Ioachimo et
Anna, Prologue in Egypt
Title () x
Prologue () x
Pools (/.) x x x
Sparrows (/. – .) x x x
Annas’ Son (/) x x x
Careless Boy (/ – ) x x x ()
Joseph’s Rebuke () x
First Teacher (/) x x
Lament, Exclamation x x ( and )

(/ – )
Zeno (/) x x
Injured Foot () x
Water in Cloak (/) x x
Harvest (/) x x
Lions (/) x
 The manuscript Cambridge has the same order of the episodes as the two thirteenth-four-
teenth-century manuscripts, Paris 3014 and Berne 271 (1– 19.4– 5), which also contain the Lt var-
iant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
Continued
Manuscripts
Paris  Dijon Cambridge
Lions (/) x
Carpenter (/) x x
Second Teacher (/) x x
Third Teacher (/) x x
Joseph Raises Dead (/) x
James’ Snakebite (/) x x
Dead Baby () x
Family Meal (/) x
Jerusalem (. – ) x
Postscriptum x
Augustine, De miraculis Story of the Cross/Post

Sermons on beatae Mariae peccatum Adae
St. Vincent
The eleventh-century Paris 1772 contains the text only in part. Preceded by the
Epistula of Chromatius and Heliodorus and the core of the Pseudo-Matthew, the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas opens with the introductory sentence (title) and con-
tains episodes 26 – 29 of the Pseudo-Matthew. ⁴³⁷ After the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas ends in the middle of a sentence, the manuscript continues immediately
with another text, Augustine’s Sermons on St. Vincent. The textual interruption
came in either through careless planning or else it was done purposefully. The
first option is more likely since occasional capital letters appear in margins
that accompany the main text. These capitals could have been inscribed when
the textual planning was carried out (if there was such planning). In this way,
the capital L next to the title of Augustine’s Sermon on St. Vincent could have
been written earlier to mark the beginning of a new text. The Infancy Gospel
of Thomas is interrupted mid-sentence, but the line above L goes until the
end. The text was undoubtedly not violently interrupted or destroyed.
 The introductory sentence (title) in fol. 88v: De infantia domini nostri Iesu Christi; Incipit
infancia domini nostri Iesu Christi. Postquam reversus est in Galilea de Egipto.
Alternatively, a scribe could have stopped copying this text after realizing
what he was copying. Within the Pseudo-Matthew, the core text focuses on
Mary, while the fragmentary Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears to be almost of
secondary importance, all the more so, since a little bit further, we find two
other texts about Mary and her parents (Descendance of St. Anne, and De genea-
logia beatae Mariae). The four initial episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
copied in this manuscript describe Jesus “in a bad light.” It appears as if a scribe
had thought that enough information had been given about the child Jesus, par-
ticularly since he was described negatively, and that he, therefore, turned back to
the main subject, namely, Mary. Altogether, it is difficult to comprehend why the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas was copied only in part, and it is likewise challenging
to say whether such self-contained fragmented parts were considered a text and
copied in their entirety from other manuscripts or seen only as fragments. In any
case, the abrupt ending of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this manuscript could
not be considered an ending.
The second among the Lm manuscripts, Dijon 38, contains the Letters of
Pseudo-Jerome, the Pseudo-Matthew, and the Prologue in Egypt preceding the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas, which contains episodes 26 – 42. The text is continuous
and without any titles. The De miraculis beatae Mariae follows it. The complete
cycle of Mary’s life and times is placed in this manuscript’s order. The focus of
the Pseudo-Matthew is on Mary.
It is interesting to light on this order of texts in the context of this manuscript
and its provenance since it comes from a founding abbey of the Cistercian order,
Notre-Dame of Cîteaux, located south of Dijon, France, and it was used in Cister-
cian education. Cistercians were known for their veneration of Mary. While her
place was not prominent before the twelfth century in the West, the Cistercians
played a significant role in the explosion of Marian piety in Europe.⁴³⁸ It is no
wonder that this manuscript, with Mary as its principal subject, was used in ed-
ucation in a Cistercian setting.
How do the episodes about Jesus fit in this corpus? The core episodes are
present in the structure of this manuscript: episodes 26 – 32 (2– 9) and 33 – 41
(11– 16). Dijon does not contain the episodes where Jesus helps other people, per-
forms miracles, and heals them, such as Injured Foot (10), Dead Baby (17), and
Dead Laborer (18), but it contains the episodes where Jesus’ hostility towards hu-
mans and his good relations with animals and wild beasts are emphasized, such
as Lions (35 – 36/03). The episode Joseph Raises Dead (40/04) is a healing episode
 See Rozanne E. Elder, ed., Mary Most Holy: Meditating with the Early Cistercians (Kalama-
zoo: Cistercian Publications, 2003).
where a man is raised not by Jesus but by Joseph through Jesus’ intercession.
Dijon ends with the episode Family Meal (42/05), where the members of Jesus’
family are all mentioned by name, including Joseph’s sons and daughters
from the first marriage and Mary’s sister and mother. The extended family is
wholly omitted in the other manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
The manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon contain external analepses, the refer-
ences to the past events which are not covered by the narrative. Their opening
mentions that the events narrated in what follows occurred after Jesus came
back to Galilee from Egypt.⁴³⁹ These analepses are employed to link the standard
narrative with the previous events (in Egypt) and produce a meaningful se-
quence.⁴⁴⁰
The libellus of manuscript Cambridge (twelfth-thirteenth century) containing
the Lt variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas begins with several texts dedicated
to Jesus (Gospel of Nicodemus, Vindicta salvatoris, Diatribe against Jews) before it
turns to the Pseudo-Matthew. We find there De cognatis Ioachimo et Anna, the text
which tells about Anne’s three successive marriages to Joachim, Cleophas, and
Salomas.⁴⁴¹ After describing Jesus’ passion and resurrection, we encounter the
defense of Christ, the treatise against Jews, and the description of Mary’s pa-
rents, possibly also containing the description of her childhood, Prologue in
Egypt, Jesus’ childhood, and the history of the cross, before we find other
moral histories, apocalypses, and letters.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas begins without any title. It contains both Pro-
logue (1) and Postscriptum, which testify to Thomas as its author. The text follows
the order from the Prologue (1) to the episode Jerusalem (19.4– 5). The episodes
describing Jesus’ miracles, Injured Foot (10) and Dead Baby (17), are present
here, unlike in Dijon.⁴⁴² The episode Dead Baby (17.2) is followed immediately
by the episode about scribes and Pharisees talking to Mary about Jesus
 In the Prologue or the title or the introductory sentence of episode 26.
 This feature is also present in the fourteenth-century manuscript Berne 271, which contains
the Lt variant.
 This text was otherwise called the Trinubium Annae. It is a short Apocryphon that narrates
Anne’s three successive marriages to Joachim, Cleophas, and Salomas and identifies her as the
mother of three New Testament Marys (all but Mary Magdalene). Gijsel reports that the insertion
of the Trinubium Annae within the Pseudo-Matthew has been typical for the family Q, to which
this manuscript belongs. Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 95, 168.
 It is important to note that another Lt manuscript, Paris 3014, contains the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas after the core Pseudo-Matthew (De nativitate Marie) and the Prologue in Egypt, and also
begins without any title. This manuscript follows the chronology of Mary’s life, while the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas is taken as a segment of a broader narrative. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
contains both Prologue (1) and Postscriptum, episodes 2– 17, and Jerusalem (19.4– 5) in part.
(19.4– 19.5). Therefore, the episode Jerusalem (19) is present in this manuscript
only in part. The manuscript does not contain much of Jerusalem, which de-
scribes the setting and the events. The part where Jesus gets lost and his parents
look for him is absent. The focus of the libellus is on Mary, Jesus, Jews, and
Mary’s parents.
Altogether, significant differences occur in the episode order of the two Latin
variants, Lm and Lt. The Lm representatives, most notably Dijon, do not contain
the episodes where Jesus performs miracles, heals, and helps other people,
which Cambridge has. Dijon, however, contains the episodes where Jesus’ hostil-
ity towards humans and his good relations with animals and wild beasts are em-
phasized, as well as the description of Jesus’ family relations, which is all absent
from Cambridge. The question of these differences needs to be considered fur-
ther. I will offer some possible answers to these questions further in the book.
It is essential to say that despite the differences between the texts of the two var-
iants, they both appear in the manuscripts in similar contexts, with similar over-
arching themes, and bound with similar texts, without title in one and the other
variant. Finally, the analyzed manuscripts containing the Latin Infancy Gospel of
Thomas are three out of many. The analysis of a larger body of Latin manuscripts
is beyond the scope of this book, but it deserves attention in future research.⁴⁴³
Byzantine manuscripts
The Byzantine manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are less nu-
merous than the Latin manuscripts. The information about the pseudo-temporal
order of the episodes in all extant Byzantine manuscripts is available thanks to
Tony Burke. Therefore, I build the table based on Burke’s presentation of the ep-
isode order in the manuscripts, including the manuscripts that will not be the
subject of my further study. In what follows, I will focus on the order of the epi-
sodes of the three manuscripts presented in Chapter 1, namely, Sabaiticus 259,
Athens 355, and Vienna hist. gr. 91.
The eleventh-century manuscript Sabaiticus includes the Prologue, episodes
2– 5, 6 (including 6.2a-f), 7– 9, 11– 16, 10, and 19.⁴⁴⁴ The order is not the same
 Here, I have in mind particularly the Latin Infancy Gospel of Thomas where Lm and Lt var-
iants are intertwined into a single text, as in the manuscripts Paris BnF lat. 1652, Florence Gaddi
208, Harley and Madrid. The order of episodes in the manuscripts during the high and late Mid-
dle Ages demonstrates the freedom and playfulness of transmitters to come up with unexpected
forms of what they saw as a text of Jesus’ childhood. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 156 – 160.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 127.
112
Manuscripts
S A D
Sab  Vienna hist.  Vatopedi Paris Bologna Dresden Samos Athos Athens  Vienna
 Lavra theol.

Pseudo-Eusebius Leo IV Wise, John of Damas-

Alexandrinus, Sermo Oracula cus, Birth of
de proditione ludae Christ
Egypt Prol. x
Prologue () x x x x x x x x x (James)
Pools (.) x x x x x x x x x
Sparrows x x x x x x x x x
(. – )
Annas’ Son () x x x x x x x x x
Careless Boy () x x x x x x x x x
Joseph’s Re- x x x x x x x x x
buke ()
First Teacher: x x x x (in x (in x (in x (in x (in x

(Dialogue) part) part) part) part) part)
( – .)
Lament () x x x x x x x x
Exclamation () x x x x x x x x
Chapter 3 The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as Text: Transformations of Structure
Continued
Manuscripts
S A D

Zeno () x x x x x x x x
Injured Foot x (after ) x x x x x x x x (.)

()
Water in Cloak x x x x x x x x x
()
Harvest () x x x x x x x x x
Carpenter () x x x x x x x x x
Second Teacher x x x x x x x x x
()
Third Teacher x x x x x x x x x
()
James’ Snake- x x x x x x x x x
bite ()
Pseudo-temporal order
Dead Baby () x x x x x x x
Dead Laborer x x x x x x x
()
113
Continued
114
Manuscripts
S A D

Jerusalem () x x x x x x x x
Dyer () x
Epiphanius Mona- Chrysostom, In Apocalypsis

chus, Vita Deiparae Mattheum homi- Methodii
(frag.) lies
Chapter 3 The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as Text: Transformations of Structure
as in the other manuscripts. From the episode Zeno (9), the text goes straight to
the episode Water in Cloak (11). We have seen the same transition from episode 9
to 11 in Dijon (32 to 33). The episode Injured Foot (10) appears after the episode
James’ Snakebite (16). In Dijon, episode 10 is not present. Episode 10 in Sabaiti-
cus is not used as a flashback (analepsis) but is set chronologically. It means that
the healing of an injured foot of a young man occurred in this manuscript when
Jesus was eight years old, not five as in the other manuscripts.
Sabaiticus does not have the two episodes related to the healing miracles,
Dead Baby (17) and Dead Laborer (18). Episode 18.2 occurs as the ending of
the episode Injured Foot (10). This manuscript also does not contain parts of
some episodes. The end of the episode Annas’ Son (3.3), describing the lament
of the dead child’s parents, is absent. Sabaiticus does not contain the opening
of the episode Joseph’s Rebuke (5.2), where the fear of the miracle witnesses is
described. What is also absent is the part of the episode Second Teacher (14.1),
representing the second teacher’s educational program for the study of Hebrew.
The absence of the scenes of emotional tension, fear, and pain, the segments re-
lated to Jews, and the lack of Jesus’ healing miracles are the characteristics of the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas in Sabaiticus. The fragment from the Vita Deiparae
(Life of Mary) by Epiphanius Monachus follows the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
It is an exciting and unique detail among the Byzantine manuscripts that I ana-
lyze here – the texts about Jesus’ childhood and Mary’s life are placed one after
another, even if they are not joined into one.
Another Byzantine manuscript, the fifteenth-century Athens gr. 355 contains
the Prologue in Egypt, preceding the standard narrative form, and the Prologue
(by James), episodes 2– 5, 6 (6.2a-f), and 7– 19. It is the most extended narrative
in the Byzantine tradition (when taken as a whole with the Prologue in Egypt).
Moreover, the Prologue in Egypt is preceded in this manuscript by John of Dam-
ascus’ Birth of Christ. The two texts may have formed a more extensive sequence
describing Jesus’ birth and childhood, with the Prologue in Egypt between them,
particularly knowing that the Infancy Gospel does not have a title. Gero reports
that this manuscript agrees significantly with Slavonic manuscripts and is thus a
witness to a tenth-century Greek version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ⁴⁴⁵
Other scholars connect the Gd variant, which is written in this manuscript,
with the Lt variant. Unlike Sabaiticus, Athens 355 contains all the miracle epi-
sodes. The same applies to the fourteenth-fifteenth century Vienna hist. gr. 91
 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 50.

– all the miracle episodes are present.⁴⁴⁶ This manuscript includes the nineteen-
episode form: Prologue, episodes 2– 5, 6 (6.2a-f), and 7– 19.⁴⁴⁷ The Infancy Gospel
of Thomas is unrelated to the surrounding texts in this manuscript.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in Sabaiticus does not have the episode In-
jured Foot (10) in the same place as we have it in the two other Byzantine manu-
scripts and the Latin manuscript Cambridge. We have seen the direct transition
from episode 9 to 11 already in Dijon. Also, Sabaiticus does not contain the two
other miracle episodes, Dead Baby (17) and Dead Laborer (18), which two other
manuscripts have. Aside from the absence of the miracle episodes, rearrange-
ment of the episodes proves to be the most significant difference among the By-
zantine manuscripts.
Slavonic manuscripts
Among the Slavonic manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, three
manuscripts are analyzed: St Petersburg 13.3.17, Novaković (edition), and Hludov
162.
Manuscripts
St Petersburg Hludov Novaković
Paterikon (Sayings Chrysostom,

of the Fathers) Birth of Christ
Prologue () x x x
Pools (.) x x x
Sparrows (. – ) x x x
Annas’ Son () x x x
Careless Boy () x x x
Joseph’s Rebuke () x x x
First teacher ()  – .c x x
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 48. The rest of the manuscripts presented in the table above, which
also belong to the Ga variant (Bologna, Dresden, Samos, Athos Lavra), repeat episodes 1– 19 and
contain episode 6 in part. The manuscript Paris 239 is unusual since it contains only episodes
1– 6 (in part) and the beginning of the episode otherwise unknown in the Byzantine manuscripts
– Dyer (07).
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 131.
Continued
Manuscripts
St Petersburg Hludov Novaković
Lament () x x
Exclamation () x x
Zeno () x x
Injured Foot () x x
Water in Cloak () x x
Harvest () x x
Carpenter () x x x
Second Teacher () x x x
Third Teacher () x x .
Temple of Idols x x
Blind Man () x x x
James’ Snakebite () x x x
Dead Baby () x x x
Dead Laborer () X x x
Jerusalem () . x . – 
Children Made Swine () x
Jerusalem . – 
Kalendologion John the Exarch,

Epiphany of Christ
In the fourteenth-century St Petersburg, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is preced-

ed by the Paterikon and followed by the Kalendologion. This manuscript lacks
much of the episode First teacher (6.2d-8.2) and the whole episode Zeno (9), In-
jured Foot (10), Water in Cloak (11), and Harvest (12). It is difficult to conclude
whether the absence of these episodes was intentional or whether it occurred
through translation or copying from a document that lacked these episodes.
The First teacher (6 – 8) seems to have been an unstable episode, judging by
some Byzantine manuscripts. St Petersburg also does not contain Zeno (9) and
Injured Foot (10) episodes, including healing miracles and raising the dead.
However, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this manuscript has a sequence of
Jesus’ miracles related to rising from death and healing towards the end of
the text (013, 16, 17, 18), starting with the episode Blind Man (013), otherwise un-
known in Greek. The absent episodes are probably not omitted intentionally in
the manuscript. Scribe(s) could have skipped the episodes accidentally. Also,
they may have been copied from another source that lacked these episodes. Fi-
nally, the manuscript St Petersburg contains only the beginning of the episode
Jerusalem (19.1).
The Novaković edition is a considerably longer narrative in comparison to St
Petersburg. In this text, a few episodes are placed amid other episodes. It is the
case with Third Teacher (15), where the text starts with section 15.1 but then con-
tinues disconnectedly with Blind Man (013.1). Both sections 15.1 and 013.1 have
better transitions in the other Slavonic manuscripts. Novaković contains the
complete episode Jerusalem (19) but is interrupted by Children Made Swine
(012). Novaković is the only Slavonic text containing the Jewish children’s turning
into swine (012) in the middle of the Jerusalem episode (between 19.2 and 19.3).
Possibly, this text was copied from at least two different sources, and the epi-
sodes were combined.
I have already shown that manuscript Hludov contains the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas between the texts about the Birth of Christ and Epiphany of Christ, mak-
ing a topical sequence. In Hludov, a delicate transition is made between the
Third teacher (15) and Blind Man (013). The Third teacher is a complete episode.
The episode where Jesus destroys and rebuilds the Temple of Idols follows. The
initial section of the episode Blind Man (013.1) is finely expanded to explain Jo-
seph’s reasons for sending Jesus to sorcerers for instruction. The end of the epi-
sode Third teacher (15) is different from that in the Byzantine manuscripts. This
episode ends with Jesus’ success in school (15.4): Hludov relates that Joseph gave
up sending Jesus to teachers and decided to send him to sorcerers instead.
Several episodes in the Slavonic tradition are otherwise almost unknown.
The episode Blind Man (013), where Jesus as a doctor’s apprentice heals a
blind man, appears only in Slavonic and Arabic translations.⁴⁴⁸ The episode of
Jesus turning the Jewish children into swine appears in Slavonic (one manu-
script), Arabic, Old English, and Provençal translations.⁴⁴⁹ The episode where
Jesus destroys and rebuilds the Temple of Idols appears only in the Slavonic
manuscripts Hludov and St Petersburg, but it can be found in the Pseudo-Mat-
thew and the Arabic version.⁴⁵⁰ The link to the Arabic tradition is an exciting
line for further investigation, but it will not be this book’s subject. The additional
 See Gero, “The Infancy Gospel,” 58.

 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel,” 58.
 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel,” 58. Burke calls this episode Jesus and the Temple of Idols and
writes that foreign gods bow to the young Jesus there. Burke, De infantia Iesu, VIII.
Narrative logic 119
episodes mentioned above generally introduce different Jesus’ miracles into the
narrative, either related to healing or another kind.
To sum up, a significant difference among the various versions of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas in the multiple languages and manuscripts is the presence and
absence of the episodes about healing and other miracles. Dijon does not con-
tain the episodes where Jesus helps other people by performing miracles and
healing them. In contrast, it includes the episodes where Jesus’ hostility towards
humans and his good relations with animals and wild beasts are emphasized. By
the time the Lt variant was coined (approximately in the twelfth century) and ap-
peared in manuscript Cambridge (among other manuscripts), some of these epi-
sodes had disappeared from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, such as Lions (35 – 36)
and Family Meal (42), while the healing episodes Injured Foot (10) and Dead Baby
(17) were introduced.
Manuscript Sabaiticus also lacks the two episodes describing healing mira-
cles, Dead Baby (17) and Dead Laborer (18). Additionally, this manuscript misses
the scenes of emotional tension, fear, and pain. The explicit mention of Jews is
also mostly absent from this manuscript. The healing episodes are included in
Vienna hist. 91 and Athens 355. Manuscript Athens 355 additionally attaches
the Prologue in Egypt to the opening of its core narrative. The Slavonic manu-
scripts introduce additional healing and miracle episodes, such as Blind Man,
Temple of Idols, and Children Made Swine (otherwise characteristic of Arabic,
Old English, Provençal, and Latin versions).
External analepses are present in Latin manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon and
in Greek manuscript Athens 355 in the form of references to the events in Egypt.
They link with the Prologue in Egypt, to which the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was
attached in these manuscripts. The inconsistencies in the number and choice of
the episodes leave the impression that this narrative was not firmly fixed in time
and was achronical.
Narrative logic
The episode sequence of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas reveals inconsistency con-
cerning the story and the events in several places and some manuscripts more
than the others, particularly where one episode ends and another begins. Schol-
ars have already argued that this narrative is a collection of loose and self-con-
tained episodes about Jesus’ childhood. I address this scholarly consensus and
argue that the narrative logic is not affected in all manuscripts, but only in some
of them, and not to an equal extent.
The narrative logic is not affected in the manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in these manuscripts is a logical narrative
throughout. In these manuscripts, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has analepses,
where the beginning of one episode refers to the previous events, making a good
narrative flow.⁴⁵¹ Several episodes are of particular interest here. In what follows,
I discuss how they are related in these two manuscripts before I turn to other
manuscripts.
In the episode Sparrows (27/2.2– 5), when Jesus plays with other children,
one of the Jews sees him making the sparrows and slanders him to Joseph.⁴⁵²
Later on, Jesus makes the birds alive, and they fly away in the sight and hearing
of all that stood by. ⁴⁵³ The setting in this manuscript describes the presence of
both children and adults. The focus on the audience proves to be particularly im-
portant for avoiding confusion in the narrative. The text further says:
And, when all those who gathered saw such signs and miracles performed by him, the
Pharisees were filled with great astonishment. Some praised and admired him, and others
reviled him. And they went away to the chief priests and the heads of the Pharisees and
reported…⁴⁵⁴
Further on, in episode Annas’ Son (28/3) of Paris 1772 and Dijon, the son of
Annas, a priest of the temple, who destroys Jesus’ pools, dies after Jesus’
curse in the sight of all. ⁴⁵⁵ The line refers to the same audience as the previous
episode and follows the narrative logic. In the episode Careless Boy (29/4),
Jesus curses and kills another child who collides with him. The child’s parents
come to talk to Joseph, who is concerned about Jesus’ life and is wary of the com-
munity of the people of Israel. He wants to protect Jesus from the community.
When Joseph asks Jesus about the reasons, Jesus’ reply in this episode is consis-
 The opening of episode 28: And again (Nam it[eru]m); episode 31: A second time (It[eru]m);
episode 32: After these things (Post hec); episode 36: After this (Post h[ae]c); episode 39: Again
(It[eru]m), and so on.
 In the following analysis, I use A. Walker’s translation of the Lm variant, based on Tischen-
dorf’s edition. I adjust the translation where it differs from the text in the manuscripts Paris 1772
and Dijon. See Alexander Walker, Apocryphal Gospels, Acts and Revelations (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1873).
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: Tunc stantib[us] om[n]ib[us]. Illis. et videntib[us] et audientib[us];
dix[it].
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: Cu[m] aut[em] om[ne]s qui aderant ei. vidissent talia signa. et virtutes
ab eo factas fuisse. pharisei repleti sunt stupore magno. Alii laudabant eu[m]. et mirabantur. Alii
vituperabant eu[m]. Et habies ad principes sacerdotum et adprimates phariseor[um]. et
nuntiaver[unt]…
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: cunctis videntib[us] et audientib[us].
Narrative logic 121
tent and logical: No one is a wise son but he whom his father had taught according
to the knowledge of this time; and a father’s knowledge can hurt no one but evil-
doers. ⁴⁵⁶ At the end of the episode, Joseph does not punish Jesus, and Jesus
makes the boy alive again. These two features contribute to the narrative logic.
In the episode First teacher (30/6) of the manuscripts other than Dijon, the
conversation between Joseph and the teacher Zacheus appears confusing (as will
be demonstrated further in the text), particularly when Joseph replies to the
teacher, who persuades Joseph to send Jesus to school. This confusion is avoided
in Dijon, where Joseph answers:
Is there anyone who can keep this child and teach him? But if you can keep him and teach
him, we by no means hinder him from being taught…⁴⁵⁷
Further, in the First teacher (30/6), Jesus talks to the teacher. The audience of the
event is mentioned: Then, all who heard these words were exposed to astonish-
ment. ⁴⁵⁸ In Dijon, the audience is always the same – the people of Israel.
When Jesus answers this audience, he says:
And you wonder because you heard these words from a child, due to which you did not
believe in what I said to you. And I said to you: I know when you were born, and all of
you wonder. I will tell you more incredible things, that you may wonder more…I was
with you among children, and you have not known me; I have spoken to you as to wise
men, and you have not understood me; because you are younger than I am and of little
faith.⁴⁵⁹
This passage does not confuse Jesus’ explanation of his status; he talks from the
perspective of a divine in a child’s body. Throughout the text, Jesus’ divine nature
is stressed and openly claimed. Such an announcement makes this episode log-
ical and clear.
 Dijon, fol. 11v: Nullus fili[us] sapiens est nisi que[m] p[ate]r suus s[e]c[un]d[u]m sci[enti]am
hui[us] t[em]p[or]is erudierit. Et p[at]ris sui sapi[enti]a nemini nocet. N[ec] male agentib[us].
 Dijon, fol. 12r: q[ui]s est q[ui] possit ho[c] i[n]fante[m] tene[re] et doce[re]. Et si potes
tene[re] et doce[re] eum. nos mi[ni]me p[ro]hibem[us] doc[er]i eu[m] a te que ab ho[min]ibus
dicu[n]t[ur].
 Dijon, fol. 12v: Tu[n]c om[ne]s q[ui] audier[un]t v[er]ba h[aec] panefacti obstupueru[n]t.
 Dijon, fol. 12v-13r: in h[oc] vos admirami[ni]. Q[uia] talia v[er]ba ab infante d[icu]n[tu]r q[ua]
re [er]go n[on] c[re]ditis m[ihi] in hiis q[uae] loquut[us] sum vobis: Et dixi vobis. Scio q[ua]n[do]
nati estis. Quo om[ne]s mirami[ni]. Ampliora audietis et dicam vob[is] ut magi[s] miremi[ni]…Fui
int[er] vos ex infantib[us] a n[on] cognovistis me. Loquut[us] su[m] vob[is] q[uas]i cu[m] p[ru]
dentib[us] et n[on] intellexistis me. Q[uia] mi[n]ores me estis et modice fidei.
In manuscript Cambridge, which contains the Lt variant, we are given less

information about the audience, which immediately affects the narrative logic.
Without a more specific reference to the audience, it is not completely clear in
the episode Sparrows (2) how the Jewish children slander Jesus to Joseph (2.2),
and afterward, Jews (who were not mentioned earlier) witness the miracle in
2.5. The logic fails in this manuscript in the episode Annas’ Son (3) because ini-
tially, a certain Pharisee destroys Jesus’ pools; yet, his parents arrive later and
describe the dead Pharisee as a child. This scene recurs in Greek manuscript Ath-
ens 355 and some Slavonic manuscripts.
In Cambridge, the logic is disturbed in episodes Careless Boy (4) and Joseph’s
Rebuke (5). In 4.1, Jesus collides with a child whom he curses and who dies. The
child is with his friends, who witness the curse and the child’s death, and who
talk to Joseph about Jesus’ behavior in 4.2. However, when Joseph talks to Jesus
about it (5), he says that the village’s inhabitants disapprove of his behavior, not
the friends of the dead child.
In an otherwise confusing part of First teacher (6), when Joseph talks to the
teacher about Jesus’ going to school, Joseph’s answer appears logical in Cam-
bridge compared to the Byzantine manuscripts. Joseph says: Nobody can teach
him (Jesus) but God alone. Do not believe that this small boy will be small in any-
thing. ⁴⁶⁰ These lines follow the logic.
The audience problem arises in episodes Joseph’s Rebuke (5) and First teach-
er (6) in manuscript Cambridge. In Joseph’s Rebuke (5.1), Jesus blinds the people
who complained about him. The episode First teacher (6) continues immediately
after this. In 6.2c, the audience is Jews who stood and listened to what Jesus
said. ⁴⁶¹ This audience is unexpected, and readers are left to wonder about the
blinded people in the scene just a little earlier. The same audience, Jews who
stood and listened to what Jesus said, recurs in 6.2e.⁴⁶² Jesus offends them in
6.2e in manuscript Cambridge: I say this word to you. I know that you are frail
and ignorant. ⁴⁶³ The offense is unexpected and somewhat odd.
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: Nemo p[otest] docere eu[m] n[isi] solus d[eu]s. Nu[m]q[ui]d paru[m]
creditis. erit parvulus iste. The fourteenth-century manuscript Berne 271 has somewhat different
lines. In fol. 41v, it is said: Nobody can teach him (Jesus) but God alone. But even if he is small in
age and body, he is perfect in knowledge (Nemo potest eu[m] docere n[isi] sol[us] deus. S[ed]
enim etate et corpore sit p[ar]vus tu[m] i[n] scientia p[er]f[ec]t[u]s est).
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: Iudei aute[m] qui astaba[n]t et audieba[n]t.
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: Cum audissent Iudei sermone[m] quem dixerat infans.
 Cambridge, fol. 80r: P[ro]v[er]biu[m] dixi vobi[s]. ego aute[m] scio quia debiles estis et nes-
cientes. Berne manuscript does not contain this line and thereby avoids more confusion at this
point.
Narrative logic 123
All the Byzantine manuscripts have a rupture in the narrative logic.⁴⁶⁴ Vien-
na hist.91 gives little information about the audience, and this sows confusion.
In the episode Sparrows (2.3), this manuscript refers to a Jew (an adult) who wit-
nesses Jesus’ misdeed and slanders Jesus to his father.⁴⁶⁵ When Jesus makes the
sparrows alive, Jews (otherwise unmentioned) witness this miracle in the same
episode (2.5). This inconsistency disturbs the narrative logic.
In Athens 355, the children of the Hebrews, who played with Jesus, slander
him to his father in the episode Sparrows (2.3).⁴⁶⁶ In the same episode (2.5), after
Jesus made the sparrows alive, the same children witnessed this miracle and
went to report about it. Athens 355 appears coherent in this episode by mention-
ing the Jewish children. However, in episode Annas’ Son (3.1), Annas, the scribe
(not the son of Annas), destroys Jesus’ pools.⁴⁶⁷ When Jesus curses him, he dies,
and his parents appear to carry him away (3.3), although he is initially described
as an adult person, a scribe. In this way, the narrative logic is disrupted.
Sabaiticus avoids the confusion in the episode Sparrows (2.3 – 2.5) by stick-
ing to “a certain Jew,” an adult person, who witnesses Jesus’ misdeed and slan-
ders him to his father.⁴⁶⁸ The same person appears later (2.5) as a Pharisee, the
witness of the miracle. The logic is respected in this episode of Sabaiticus be-
cause one person continuously appears from the beginning until the end. In ep-
isode Annas’ Son (3), Jesus curses a boy who withers away. The child’s parents do
not appear at this point. In the following episode Careless Boy (4.1), Jesus leaves
the place with his father immediately after this event. The narrative logic is re-
spected by linking the two episodes. In the other Byzantine manuscripts, the
scene of Jesus walking with his father Joseph takes place after some days. In Sa-
baiticus, the parents appear after Jesus kills another child (4.2). The scene with
the mourning parents recurs twice in Vienna hist.91 and Athens 355. In these ex-
amples, therefore, Sabaiticus consistently follows the logic.
In all three Byzantine manuscripts, however, the First teacher (6.2a) seems
unclear. Joseph answers the teacher who asks him to send Jesus to his school.
 In the following analysis, I use Tony Burke’s translations of the Greek variants. Burke, De
infantia Iesu, 466 – 539.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 199v: Ἰδὼν δὲ τις Ἰουδαῖος ἃ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἐν τῷ σαββάτ[ῳ]
ἀπῆλθεν καὶ ἀπήγγειλε τῷ π[ατ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ Ἰωσὴφ λέγων.
 Athens 355, fol. 62r: ἦν δὲ σάββατον ὅτε ταῦτα ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς παίζων μετὰ τῶν παίδων
τῶν Ἑβραίων. ἀπῆλθον δὲ πρὸς Ἰωσὴφ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ λέγοντες αὐτῷ.
 Athens 355, fol. 62r: Ἄννας δὲ γραμματεὺς ἐκεῖ ἦν μετὰ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ καὶ λαβὼν κλάδον ἐτέας
διέτρεψε τοὺς λάκκους καὶ ἐξέχεε τὸ ὕδωρ ἐξ αὐτων ὃ συνήγαγεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 66v: Ἰδὼν δέ τίς Ἰουδαῖος τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦν μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων παιδίων
ταῦτα ποιοῦντα, πορευθεὶς πρὸς Ἰωσὴφ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ διέβαλλεν τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦν λέγων.
This section is the most concise in Athens 355: Joseph answered and said to him,
“No-one can subjugate this one but God alone. Do not think him to be a small
cross, brother.”⁴⁶⁹ In Vienna hist.91, Joseph became furious and said to the teach-
er: Who can teach such a child? Do not consider him a small cross, brother. ⁴⁷⁰ The
description of Joseph’s fury contradicts the logic. These lines are equally confus-
ing in Sabaiticus: Who can restrain this child and teach him? Do not consider him
to have the worth of a small man, brother. ⁴⁷¹ It is not easy to understand what is
meant by these lines. Interestingly, however, Sabaiticus refers to Jesus as a small
man in the same way as manuscript Cambridge (and other Lt manuscripts).
Sabaiticus gives misleading information about the audience in Joseph’s Re-
buke (5) and First Teacher (6). The scene in which the teacher talks to Joseph
(6.1) about Jesus going to school comes immediately after the scene in which
Jesus blinds the group of people who complained about him (5.1). During epi-
sode 6, there is no mention of any other audience; yet, in 6.2c in Sabaiticus,
the Jews who cried out aloud suddenly appear as the audience.⁴⁷²
In all three Byzantine manuscripts, the First teacher (6.2e) presents a chal-
lenge to the logic, as does its transition to episode 6.2 f. People listen to Jesus’
words and are speechless. Jesus approaches them and explains why he played
with them (the verb may mean: why he mocked them). He says in all three manu-
scripts: I played with you because I know you are amazed by trifles and small-
minded. ⁴⁷³ In this way, Jesus offends them. However, all three manuscripts
have a line in episode 6.2 f: Now that they seemed to be comforted by the child’s
consolation…⁴⁷⁴ How could Jesus comfort his audience by uttering harsh words in
the previous paragraph and offending them? This line disrupts the narrative
logic.
 Athens 355, fol. 63r: Οὐ δύναταί τίς τοῦτον ὑποτάξαι εἰ μὴ μόνος Θεός. μὴ μικρὸν σταυρὸν
νομίζῃς αὐτὸν εἶναι ἀδελφέ.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200v: ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ ὀργισάμενος πρὸς αὐτ[ὸν], εἶπε τῷ καθηγητῇ Ζακχαί
[ῳ]. τίς δύναται τοῦτον παιδίον διδάξαι μικροῦ στ[αυ]ροῦ αὐτοῦ ὄντος. μή νομίσῃς ἀδελφέ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67v: Καὶ τίς δύναται τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο κρατῆσαι καὶ παιδεῦσαι αὐτὸ μὴ μικ-
ροῦ ἀνθρώπου ἶναι νομίζῃς ἀδελφὲ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67v-68r: ᾿Aνεβόησαν δὲ Ἰουδαῖοι μέγα καὶ εἶπαν αὐτῷ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 68r: Ἔπαιζον πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἐπειδὴ οἶδα μικροθαύμαστοί ἐστε. καὶ τοῖς φρονί-
μοις ὀλίγοι. Vienna, fol. 201r: Ἔπαιξα πρὸ[ς] ὑμᾶς. ἐπειδὴ οἶδα ὅτι μικροί θαυμαστοί ἐστὲ καὶ μικ-
ροὶ τοῖς φρονήμασιν; Athens 355, fol. 63v: Ἔπαιξα ὑμᾶς. οἶδα γὰρ ὅτι μικροθαύμαστοί ἐστε μικροὶ
τοῖς φρονήμασιν.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 68r: Ὡς οὖν ἔδοξαν παριγορίσθαι. ἐπὶ τῇ παρακλήσει τοῦ παιδίου; Vienna
hist. 91, fol. 201r: Ὡς οὖν ἔδοξαν παρηχωρεῖσθ[αι] ἐπὶ τῇ παρακλήσει τοῦ παιδὸς; Athens 355,
fol. 63v: Ὡς οὖν ἔδοξαν παρηγορεῖσθαι ἐν τῇ παρακλήσει τοῦ παιδίου.
Narrative logic 125
The episode Zeno (9.3) also strikes the reader as odd in Sabaiticus. Jesus
makes the dead boy Zeno alive in front of his parents. However, Jesus asks
Zeno to fall asleep again.⁴⁷⁵ In this way, Zeno dies again. This scene does not ap-
pear in the other manuscripts analyzed here.⁴⁷⁶
Athens 355 applies analepsis (an allusion to the previous event), albeit a
false one, in episode Third Teacher (15.4). At the end of this episode, Jesus brings
back to life the second teacher because the third teacher praised him. Jesus says:
The one who had suffered yesterday also shall be saved. ⁴⁷⁷ The word yesterday
strikes the reader as odd because, in 15.1, it is indicated that some days had
passed. This internal analepsis (occurring within the time of the narrative)
shows the irrelevance of the temporal component of this narrative and makes
it achronical.
The Slavonic manuscripts mostly repeat the stumbling stones of logic in this
narrative.⁴⁷⁸ Manuscript Hludov interrupts the logic in the episode Annas’ Son
(3.1– 3.3) in the same way as Athens 355, because an adult person, a scribe, de-
stroyed Jesus’ pools while his parents came later and referred to him as a
child.⁴⁷⁹
In the manuscripts Hludov and St Petersburg, the episode Careless Boy (4.2)
ends with the confusing sentence that the dead child’s parents utter when they
talk to Joseph about what he did to other children: He makes our children art-
ful. ⁴⁸⁰ This line varies among the manuscripts, and the confusion may result
from the processes of translation.⁴⁸¹
The lines in the episode First teacher (6.2a), when Joseph talks to the teacher
about Jesus going to school, are confusing in the Slavonic manuscripts. These
lines may have been misunderstood in the translation process or loosely inter-
preted. They differ in the manuscripts. In Novaković, Joseph says to the teacher:
 Sabaiticus, fol. 69v: καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ πάλιν ὁ Ἰησοῦς. καὶ κοιμοῦ.
 Burke notes that the Armenian Gospel of Infancy and the Irish version of IGT speak about
Zeno, who “falls asleep” again. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 169.
 Athens 355, fol. 67r: ἐπειδὴ ἀληθῶς ἐμαρτύρησας διὰ ἐσὲ κἀκεῖνος σωθήσεται ὃς χθὲς
πέπονθε καὶ παραχρῆμα.
 In the following analysis, I translate the examples from the Slavonic manuscripts.
 Hludov, fol. 200v-201r: И се видѣвь, іже бѣ книжникь тоу стое сь Їѡсїфомь…И роди-
телѩ же ѡслабленнааго приидоста плачющасе ѡтрочета своего.
 Hludov, fol. 201r: наше дѣти иско[у]сни творити; St Petersburg, fol. 178r: Нашѧ бо дѣти
искоусны твори[т].
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: τὸ γὰρ παιδίον ἡμῶν ἐστερήθημεν (For we have been deprived of our
child); Vienna hist.91, fol. 200r: τὰ γὰρ παιδία ἡμῶν θανατοὶ; In Athens 355, fol. 62v: τὰ γὰρ παι-
δία ἡμῶν ὡς ἀνάπηρα ἐποίησεν (For he made our children cripples). In Cambridge, fol. 79v: filii
aute[m] n[ost]ri insensati sunt (As our children are dead).
Who could teach him, my little Christ, who could be better than him, my broth-
er…⁴⁸² In Hludov, Joseph says: And who could be both young and clever? He is
calm and meek…⁴⁸³ In St Petersburg, Joseph says: And who could teach him?
By which …⁴⁸⁴ It makes little sense that Joseph gets angry at this point, as in No-
vaković, St Petersburg, and Vienna hist.91.
The confusion also exists in episode 6.2e in Novaković and Hludov (St Pe-
tersburg does not have this episode), when Jesus offends his audience.⁴⁸⁵ It is fol-
lowed in Novaković and Hludov by sentences with an unclear meaning.⁴⁸⁶
If one observes the logic of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the various
manuscripts, the text in manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon is generally more log-
ical than the other manuscripts. There are, in fact, no illogical transitions in the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas in these manuscripts. The manuscript Cambridge (Lt)
and the Greek manuscript Sabaiticus (Gs) contain many inconsistencies, but
fewer than the other Byzantine and Slavonic manuscripts, such as Vienna
hist. 91 (Ga), Athens 355 (Gd), Hludov, St Petersburg, and Novaković. The manu-
script Cambridge and Greek manuscript Sabaiticus can be considered an inter-
mediate phase, although they too have some illogical sections.
The inconsistency in the narrative logic indicates that what we read today in
the manuscripts in various languages are, in fact, translations.⁴⁸⁷ The majority of
scholars considered Greek as the original language, although some argued in
favor of Syriac.⁴⁸⁸ The complicated question of the original language is not of
 Novaković, 49: Оучителю, томоу кто можеть наоучити ѥго, кто моу маломоу Христоу
или мниши быти ѥго, брате мои!
 Hludov, fol. 201v: да кто можеть мла[д] соуща хитра. Смѣрен бо ѥ[ст] и кротькь.
 St Petersburg, fol. 178v-179r: да кто може[т] наоучити его. чим же маломоу гви его
мниши бо ти ѩко бра[т] ти е[сть].
 Novaković, 50: Пришьдь же отроче Ісоусь сказаше играѥ и роугаѥ се имь, глаголаше,
зане ихь вѣдѣше мало чюдьнѣхь и мало разоумьныхь; Hludov, fol. 202r: И ѡш[д]ьшиихь
ѡтрочеть. Играахоу ра[д]ваахоу се. И досаж[д]аше гл[агол]ь. Понеже азь вѣде ѩко
чюдни ѥсте. и маломощни есте.
 Novaković, 50: ѩкоже слава вь мнѣ вьмѣнѩше се на оутѣшениѥ отрочетоу; Hludov,
fol. 202r: Ѩко слава вьмѣнѩше се, на поспѣшение ѡтрочете.
 An alternative explanation to this could be confusion. Scribes could have also combined
different variants in creating a new text.
 Peeters argued for the Syro-Arabian theory of the origin of the various infancy gospel tra-
ditions. The Greek Tradition of IGT goes back to a Syriac original, in his view. This theory holds
that a more voluminous collection of childhood-of-Jesus stories had seen the light of day in Sy-
riac in the fifth century. The IGT material was soon detached from this collection; it circulated
separately and was translated into Greek and Latin to form the variants such as in Vienna
hist. 91, the variant Gb, and some Latin variants. A. de Santos Otero, S. Voicu, Cullman, and
Hock spoke against this theory. Gero and Elliott left the question of the original language
Pseudo-duration 127
concern in this book. The processes that occurred after the translation and trans-
mission are equally complex; yet, they here form part of the subject.
Pseudo-duration
This section analyzes the Infancy Gospel of Thomas with the help of Genette’s
concept of pseudo-duration. Pseudo-duration is a component of his concept of
duration. Genette understands duration as the temporal length of the events
or story sections, while pseudo-duration is the length of the story told in the nar-
rative.⁴⁸⁹ Duration relates to the time of the events, while pseudo-duration per-
tains to the time spent reading a text or the space it occupies on paper, i. e.,
the space its narrators use to describe these events. Pseudo-duration is of inter-
est here, especially when linked to the topics that the text describes. The length
of the episodes concerning the subjects they depict helps bring to light the agen-
da of the specific textual forms and the ideas they promote. The episodes de-
scribe the events in more or fewer words.
The episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are affected form-wise not only
by simple reductions and augmentations but often by more sophisticated alter-
ations in the narratives. I apply several categories of reduction and augmentation
described in the section on theory and method in Chapter 1. I analyze the differ-
ences in length of episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the manuscripts to
discern whether augmentations and reductions reveal underlying strategies of
meaning and the reasons behind the application of such techniques. The follow-
ing analysis commences with the Latin manuscripts.
Latin manuscripts
The analysis of pseudo-duration involves the same Latin manuscripts as in the

previous section.⁴⁹⁰ The analysis consists first of the literal counting of the
words on the page. The aim is to measure the length of the episodes of the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas. Further, I juxtapose these numbers and compare
open. See Paul Peeters, “Introduction,” in Évangiles apocryphes II, ed. Paul Peeters (Paris: Au-
guste Picard, 1914): i-lix, xx; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 71; Burke, “Authorship and Identity,” 27– 43,
30, n. 32, n. 33; Horn and Phenix, “Apocryphal Gospels in Syriac,” 543.
 Genette, Narrative Discourse, 35.
 Namely, the manuscripts Paris 1772 (eleventh century), Dijon (thirteenth century), and Cam-
bridge (twelfth-thirteenth century).
them. How many words describe the events of Jesus’ childhood in each of the
manuscripts? This analysis provides conclusions about which episodes and top-
ics are more elaborate and given more space within the narrative. Further, I lo-
cate reductions and augmentations of the specific episodes and analyze their dif-
ferences in connection to the topics they describe. The analysis is based on the
premise that the topics which take more extensive space were considered more
prominent by authors, scribes, and translators, who conducted textual revisions.
The following table shows the number of words of each episode in the Latin
manuscripts:
Manuscripts
Lm Lt
Episode Paris  Dijon Cambridge
Prologue ()   
Pools (/.)⁴⁹¹   
Sparrows (/. – .)   
Annas’ Son (/)   
Careless Boy (/)⁴⁹² 

 
Joseph’s rebuke (/) 
First teacher (/)⁴⁹³  
Lament (/)⁴⁹⁴ 


Exclamation (/) 
Zeno (/)  
Injured Foot ()⁴⁹⁵ 
 Episode 2 consists of Pools (2.1) and Sparrows (2.2 – 2.5). In Lm manuscripts, episode 26 cor-
responds to Pools and episode 27 to Sparrows.
 Episode 29 of the Lm manuscripts parallels episodes 4 and 5 in Cambridge (Careless Boy
and Joseph’s Rebuke). The manuscript Paris 1772 ends its text in the middle of this episode.
 Episodes 30 and 31 in Dijon describe First Teacher, Lament, and Exclamation (episodes 6 – 8
in Cambridge).
 The division of episodes 30 and 31 in Dijon does not topically correspond to their arrange-
ment in episodes 6, 7, and 8. In Dijon, episode First teacher topically goes beyond the 401 words
counted above (where episode 30 ends). The First teacher is described in 616 words, which
makes this part longer in comparison to Cambridge. In episodes 7– 8, Dijon and Cambridge ap-
pear almost equal.
 The episode Injured Foot (10) is not found in Dijon.
Pseudo-duration 129
Continued
Manuscripts
Lm Lt
Episode Paris  Dijon Cambridge
Water in cloak (/)  
Harvest (/)  
Lions ()
 
Lions ()
Carpenter (/)  
Second Teacher (/)  
Third Teacher (/)  
Joseph Raises Dead ()  
James’ Snakebite (/)  
Family Meal ()  
Dead Baby ()  
Jerusalem (. – )  
Postscriptum  
What do these numbers mean in terms of the topics that were reduced, augment-
ed, or altered in these episodes? If we exclude the Prologue (1)⁴⁹⁶ from the anal-
ysis, the manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon demonstrate a significant augmenta-
tion of the initial episodes 26 – 30 (2– 6) in comparison to Cambridge.⁴⁹⁷ The
 Prologue (1) contains the title and the opening sentence. Paris 1772 has a title and an open-
ing sentence, while Cambridge has only the opening sentence. Dijon’s opening sentence belongs
to episode 26. Both Paris 1772 and Dijon refer to the events in Egypt, but the same happens with
the fourteenth-century manuscript Berne 271, although Berne does not contain the Prologue in
Egypt before IGT. It is likewise not clear whether Paris 1772 has the Prologue in Egypt. Berne 271
has some words corresponding to the two Lm manuscripts (postquam regressus est ihesus de
egypto). Cambridge introduces Thomas as the narrator. Gero argues that the ascription of this
text to Thomas did not begin until the Middle Ages, more specifically, before the Greek Vorlage
of the Slavonic version appeared around the tenth century. See Hock, The Infancy Gospels, 90;
Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 59.
 The differences between the manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon are insignificant. The manu-
scripts are comparable only in episodes 26 – 29. Paris 1772 is expanded compared to Dijon with
words, phrases, and sentences that do not significantly change the meaning but only better de-
extension is particularly apparent in episode Pools (26/2.1), where a significant

part is excised in Cambridge compared to Dijon and Paris 1772.
This excision may attempt to delete Jesus’ behavior “in a bad light” and his
aggression towards others. The story in Dijon and Paris 1772 goes as follows: after
one of the children shuts the passages of the water flow that Jesus made, Jesus
becomes furious and curses the child, after which the child dies. The parents of
the dead child complain to Mary and Joseph, who decide to talk to Jesus. Joseph
asks Mary to talk to Jesus since he does not dare. Jesus says that the child de-
served death. Mary asks him not to kill the child, and he, wishing not to grieve
his mother, raises the boy from the dead. He does this by kicking the boy by his
foot and uttering harsh words. The child is raised afterward while Jesus restores
the pools. The raising of the child to life displays Jesus’ low opinion of the boy;
he unwillingly reverses him from death.
In Cambridge, the description is brief: it starts with rain, after which Jesus
gathers water in a pool and cleans it.⁴⁹⁸ The story is excised in Cambridge
scribe the episodes. The most significant difference between the two manuscripts appears when
the parents say in Paris 1772: Take Jesus (Tollite, in plural), while in Dijon, they address only Jo-
seph: Tolle (Take!) (Paris 1772, fol. 90r; Dijon, fol. 11v). The plural form includes Mary as well. In
this way, the order that initially refers to Joseph and Mary is later directed only to Joseph. The
broader differences among the numerous representatives of the Lm variant have yet to be inves-
tigated. Gijsel reports 76 manuscripts containing this textual variant. Such a comparison goes
beyond the scope and size of this book.
 The IGT in manuscript Cambridge appears to be almost identical with the thirteenth-four-
teenth-century manuscript Paris 3014, while the text of these manuscripts slightly differs from
the fourteenth-century Berne 271. Berne stands out by having a briefer text of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas (14 episodes are briefer). In several instances, Jesus is presented as a typical child in
Cambridge and Paris 3014, unlike in Berne, where Jesus is a divine figure (a feature that brings
Berne closer to the Lm variant). In the episode Careless Boy (4), in Berne, Jesus walks alone in
public while he walks with his father in the other two manuscripts. In episode Harvest (12) of the
Lm variant, Jesus sows alone, while in the Lt manuscripts, Jesus sows with his father. In both
cases, Jesus seems to be closer to being a typical child by being accompanied by his father rather
than being alone in the street. In episode Joseph’s Rebuke (5.2), Berne again resembles the Lm
variant by stating that the citizens want to expel Jesus’ family from the village (Berne, fol. 41v).
The hostility of others towards Jesus is emphasized more in the manuscripts of the Lm variant,
Dijon and Paris 1772, than in the Lt manuscripts. The parallels of Berne to Dijon, especially in
comparison to Cambridge and Paris 3014, are visible in the choice of some words, in the pseu-
do-duration of some episodes, and the description of Jesus’ responsibility towards other people.
Both Paris 3014 and Cambridge have the ending, Postscriptum. In this section, Thomas Ismahe-
lita gives testimony to the story about Jesus’ childhood based on his remembering and witness-
ing the events. This part may have been added to lend credibility to the text. Berne does not con-
tain it. Apart from being briefer in several sections, the narrative in Berne is sometimes altered in
comparison to Cambridge and Paris 3014. In episode Careless Boy (4.1), Jesus’ curse is harsher in
Pseudo-duration 131
from the moment when another child comes and shuts the passages. Visually,
the comparison of the two texts looks as follows. The underlined words differ
in the two variants.
Paris  (Lm) Cambridge (Lt)
(/.) factum est aut[em] cu[m] eu[m] Ih[esu]s Cum autem e[ss]et Ih[esu]s .v. annor[um]
ia[m] inchoante quinto anno etatis sue. f[ac]ta est pluvia erat terribilis. quem
Una aut[em] die sabbati. ipse Ih[esu]s congregavit in piscinam. et precepit
cu[m] infantib[us] ludebat ad torrentem verbo suo ut fieret clara. Et statim f[ac]ta
iordanis alueu[m]. Cu[m] [er]go sederet est.⁵⁰⁰
Ih[esu]s. fecitq[ue]; ipse sibi de luto
septe[m] lacos. in quib[us] singulis
eor[um] fecit arati unculas ducati. P[er]
quas de torrente ad suu[m] imperiu[m] in
eas ducebat aquas in lacos. et iterum
reducebat. Tunc aut[em] unus ex eis iu-
venis filius diaboli animo invido. clausit
eor[um] que aditus op[er]a eiusq[ue] qui
ministrabant in lacos. clausit eos atq[ue]
evertit quod op[er]atus fuerat d[omi]n[u]s
n[oste]r Ih[esu]s Chr[istu]s. Tunc dix[it] ei
Ih[esu]s. Vere filius mortis. Op[er]a sa-
thane op[er]a que ego op[er]atus sum tu
dissipas. et statim q[ui] hoc fecerat.
mortuus est. Tunc aut[em] sediciosa voce
clamabant parentes mortui. Cont[ra] io-
seph et maria[m] dicentes eis filius
v[este]r maledix[it] filiu[m] n[ost]r[u]m. et
mortuus e[st]. Cu[m] aut[em] audissent
ioseph et maria. statim vener[unt] ad
Ih[esu]m p[ro]pt[er] sedicione[m] paren-
tum pueri. Aut adclamationem
iudeor[um]. Cepit eni[m] ioseph marie
dicere. quod ille non audebat illi dicere.
Mone eni[m] tu eu[m]. et dic ei. Quare
excitasti nobis hodium populi. et
Berne, and in episode First Teacher (6.2d), he expands his response to the Jews in Berne and
elaborates on God’s powers that Father gave him. It is difficult to grasp the overall relations
of Lt manuscripts based on the three samples, especially since the body of manuscripts contain-
ing this text is vast. The text in Berne contains a briefer Lt variant. The expansions in Cambridge
and Paris 3014 may be textual interpolations and are possibly a consequence of scribal activities.
Further analysis of the Lt manuscripts is undoubtedly a demand for the future.
 Paris 1772, fol. 88v-89r.
 Cambridge, fol. 79r.
Continued
sustinent[ur] molestias homin[ib]us

cu[m] venisset ad eu[m] maria mat[er]
sua. rogabat eu[m] dicens ei. D[omi]ne
n[oste]r. quid faciendo iste fecit. ut mor-
eretur at ille dix[it] ei. Dign[us] eni[m]
erat mortis. qui dissipavit op[er]a que
ego op[er]or. Rogabat aut[em] eu[m]
mat[er] sua. dicens ad eu[m]. Noli d[omi]
ne n[oste]r quia homines insurgunt in
nos. At ille nolens matre[m] sua[m] con-
tristari pede[m] suu[m] dextru[m] p[er]
cuciens innates ei[us]. Dix[it] ad eu[m].
Exurge filius pestilentie iniquitatis. non
eni[m] tu dignus es ut intres in requie[m]
patris mei. qui dissipas op[er]a que ego
op[er]or. Tunc aut[em] qui erat mortuus.
Resurrex[it]. Et habu[n]t[ur]. De aqua et
de passerib[us]. Ih[esu]s v[er]o iteru[m]
ad suu[m] imperiu[m] p[er] aqueductus.
Aqua[m] ducebat in lacos.⁴⁹⁹
In the short section 2.1 of manuscript Cambridge, Jesus’ cleaning and purifica-
tion of the water is described, which manuscripts Dijon and Paris 1772 do not
mention.
In episode Sparrows (27/2.2– 5), Dijon and Paris 1772 emphasize the audi-
ence. On two occasions, they state that the events took place in the sight of
all.⁵⁰¹ The section 2.5 states that the audience who witnessed the miracle was as-
tonished, and some praised him, while others blamed him. Some went to the
chief priests and reported Jesus’ miracle.⁵⁰² It is made concise in Cambridge
through the statement that those who witnessed the event were amazed and
went to report what Jesus did.⁵⁰³
 Paris 1772, fol. 89r: videntib[us] cunctis, fol. 89v: stantib[us] om[n]ib[us]. Illis. et
videntib[us] et audientib[us].
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v.
 Cambridge, fol. 79r.
Pseudo-duration 133
/. Cu[m] aut[em] om[ne]s qui aderant ei. Videntes aute[m] Iudei que f[ac]ta sunt.
vidissent talia signa. et virtutes ab eo admirati s[un]t. et abierunt nuntiantes
factas fuisse. pharisei repleti sunt stu- signa que fecit Ih[esu]s.
pore magno. Alii laudabant eu[m]. et
mirabantur. Alii vituperabant eu[m]. Et
habies ad principes sacerdotum et ad-
primates phariseor[um]. et nuntiaver[unt]
eis quod Ih[esu]s filius d[i]i. in conspectu
totius p[o]p[u]li isr[ae]litici. hec talia
signa et virtutes fecisset et
adnunciatu[m] e[st] hoc ad xii trib[us]
isr[ae]l[is].
In episode Annas’ Son (28/3), Paris 1772 expands the description of the destruc-
tion of the pools with more detail and emphasizes the curse and the audience.
Cambridge extends the narrative by describing the parents of the dead child.
The toning down of the curse in Cambridge and the appearance of the parents
of the dead child may be an attempt to purify the negative behavior of Jesus
and to reflect on the people affected by Jesus. The underlined text differs in
Paris 1772 and Cambridge, although the two variants speak of the same topic.⁵⁰⁴
Paris  (Lm)⁵⁰⁵ Cambridge (Lt)⁵⁰⁶
Title Caput vii. De lacis
Destruction of Nam iteru[m] filius anne sacerdotis Pharisaeus autem q[ui] erat cu[m]
Pools/Springs te[m]pli qui cu[m] ioseph advenerat Ih[es]u. apprehendit ramum olive. et
tene[n]s virga[m] in manu sua de cepit derigare fontem que[m] fecit
populo. et cunctis videntib[us]. Cu[m] Ih[esu]s.
furore nimio exclusit lacos quos
Ih[esu]s fecerat manib[us]. suis. et
effudit ex eis aquam qua[m] congre-
gaverat Ih[esu]s de torrente in lacos.
Nam et ipsum aque ductu[m] unde
introiebat aqua clausit atq[ue]
iteru[m] evertit.
 Certain words and phrases repeat, such as fecit Ih[esu]s, cumq[ue] hoc vidiss[et] Ih[esu]s,
dixit ad eum, arida, radices, fructu[m], arefactus, mortuus e[st].
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v.
 Cambridge, fol. 79r.
Continued
Paris  (Lm)⁵⁰⁵ Cambridge (Lt)⁵⁰⁶
Title Caput vii. De lacis
Jesus saw the Cu[m] aut[em] hoc vidisset Ih[esu]s Cumq[ue] hoc vidiss[et] Ih[esu]s
destruction d[omi]n[u]s n[oste]r fieri. Dix[it] ad turbat[us] dixit ad eum.
pueru[m] illu[m] qui dissipavit lacos
suos.
Curse O semen iniquitatis pessimu[m]. fil- Sodomite impie et nesciens. Q[ui]d

ius mortis. Op[er]a sathane. vere fil- te dampnaver[un]t fontes aque fac-
ius diaboli. erit fructus seminis tui ture me. Ecce sicut arida fies non
sine vigore. radices er[it] aridi rami h[abe]ns radices nec folia nec
tui qui non afferent fructu[m]. fructu[m].
The child is dead Hoc dicto a Ih[esu]m. cunctis Et statim arefact[us] cecidit i[n] t[er]
videntib[us] et audientib[us] subito ra[m] et mortuus e[st].
arefactus est puer qui hoc fecerat. et
mortuus e[st].
Parents of the parentes eius detuleru[nt] eum

dead child mortuu[m]. et increpabant Ioseph
dicentes ecce quid fecit filius tuus
doce eum orare et non fecit blas-
phemare.
Episode 29 in Dijon combines two episodes of Cambridge into one, namely, Care-
less Boy and Joseph’s Rebuke (4 – 5). The child who attacked Jesus is described
more negatively in Dijon. Joseph is wary of Jesus and even hesitates to talk to
him and warn him, while in Cambridge, he takes the father’s role and punishes
him without understanding his divine nature. The manuscripts have different
endings. In Dijon, the community gathers and complains to Joseph about
Jesus. Joseph becomes concerned about Jesus’ safety because of the uproar
and violence. At the same time, Jesus revives the dead boy by lifting him by
the ear. In Cambridge, all who talk against Jesus are blinded. When Joseph
sees this, he pulls Jesus by the ear. Jesus gets upset and answers to Joseph.
The underlined sections differ in Dijon and Cambridge, although the subject
is, to the most part, the same.
Pseudo-duration 135
Dijon (Lm)⁵⁰⁷ Cambridge (Lt)⁵⁰⁸
Joseph walks with Deinde tenuit io[seph] Ih[esu]m. et Et post paucos dies deambulante
Jesus ibat cu[m] eo ad domu[m] sua[m] et Ih[es]u cu[m] Ioseph p[er] villam cu-
m[at]r[em] ei[us] cu[m] illo. Et ecce currit de infantib[us] un[us] et p[er]
s[u]bito q[ui]dam puer ex adv[er]so. cussit Ih[esu]m in ulnas. Ih[esu]s
Et ip[s]e puer iniq[ui]tatis c[ur]rens aut[em] dixit ad eum:
impulit se s[upe]r humeru[m] Ih[es]u.
Volens illu[m] illide[re] aut noce[re] si
posse. Dix[it] aut[em] illi Ih[esu]s.
Curse No[n] rev[er]taris san[us] de via tua Sic p[er]ficias iter tuu[m].
q[ua] vadis.
The child is dead Et stati[m] corruit et mortu[us] [est]. Et statim cecidit in t[er]ram et mor-
tuus e[st].
Revolt of the Et exclamav[er]unt p[ar]entes mortui Illi aute[m] vidente[s] mirabilia.

parents of the qui audiera[n]t et viderant. Q[uo]d Clamaveru[n]t dice[n]te[s]. Unde e[st]
dead child/of the f[ac]t[u]m fu[er]at d[ice]ntes. Un[de] puer iste: et dixerunt ad Ioseph.
community nat[us] est hic infans manifestu[m] N[on] op[or]tet e[ss]e nobiscum
[est]. Q[uo]d om[n]e v[er]bu[m] q[uo] talem pueru[m]. Ille aute[m] abiit et
d dic[it] v[er]um est. Et freq[ue]nter tulit eum. Et dixerunt ei. Recede de
an[te]q[uam] dicat adi[m]plet[ur]. Et loco isto. et si op[or]tet te nobiscum
accesseru[n]t p[ar]entes mortui ad doce eum orare et no[n] blasphe-
ioseph: et dixerunt ei. Tolle Ih[esu]m mare. filii aute[m] n[ost]ri insensati
illu[m] de loco illo. no[n] eni[m] pot- sunt.
est hic h[ab]itare nob[is]cum eo mu-
nicipio. Aut c[er]te doce illu[m] b[e]
n[e]d[ice]re et n[on] maledicere.
Joseph talks to Accedens aut[em] ioseph ad Ih[esu] Vocavit Ioseph Ih[esu]m et p[er]cepit
Jesus m: monebat eu[m] dice[n]s. Ut q[ui]d eum docere. Ut q[ui]d blasphemas.
talia facis? Iam m[u]lti dolentes con- Habitatores isti odium h[abe]nt
tra te su[n]t. Et p[ro]p[ter] te h[abe]nt s[upe]r nos de loco isto.
nos odio: et p[ro]p[ter] te molestias
sustinem[us].
Jesus’ answer Respondens Ih[esu]s dixit ad ioseph. Ih[esu]s aute[m] dixit. Ego aute[m]
Nullus fili[us] sapiens est nisi que[m] scio quia isti sermones no[n] sunt
p[ate]r suus s[e]c[un]d[u]m sci[enti] mei. S[ed] tui sunt. ego aute[m] ta-
am hui[us] t[em]p[or]is erudierit. Et cebo pro te. Ip[s]i aute[m] videant in
p[at]ris sui sapi[enti]a nemini nocet. sapientia[m] suam.
N[ec] male agentib[us].
 Dijon, fol. 11r-11v.

 Cambridge, fol. 79v.
Continued
Dijon (Lm)⁵⁰⁷ Cambridge (Lt)⁵⁰⁸
Ending Tu[n]c cong[re]gati su[n]t om[ne]s Et hii statim q[ui] loquebant[ur] ad-
adv[er]sus Ih[esu]m. Et acc[us]abant versus Ih[esu]m. ceci f[ac]ti s[un]t. Et
eum adv[er]sus ioseph. Ut h[oc] vidit deambulantes dicebat. Omnes ser-
ioseph p[er]t[er]rit[us] est nimiu[m]. mones qui p[ro]cedunt de ore eius
Timens vim p[o]p[u]li sui Isr[ae]l. exercitiu[m] h[abe]nt. Et cu[m] vidis-
Eade[m] hora Ih[esu]s app[re]hendit set Ioseph que fecit Ih[esu]s: cum
mortuu[m] infante[m] ab aure et furore app[re]hendit eum p[er] auric-
suspendit eu[m] a t[er]ram in co[n] ulam. Ih[esu]s aute[m] turbat[us]
sp[ec]tu omn[ium] ut vid[er]ent dixit ad Ioseph. Sufficit tibi vide[re]
Ih[esu]m loq[ue]nte[m] cu[m] eo me et non me tangere. Tu aut[em]
tanq[uam] p[at]rem cu[m] filio suo. Et nescis qui ego sum. Q[uod] si scires
rev[er]sus [est]. Sp[iritu]s ei[us] in n[on] me co[n]t[ri]stares. Et q[uam]
ip[su]m. Et revixit et amirati su[n]t vi[s] ego modo tecu[m] sum ante te
univ[er]si. fact[us] sum.
The complete episode First teacher comprises episodes 6 – 8 in Cambridge (Lt)

and 30 – 31 in Dijon (Lm). Its first section, First teacher (6), stretches to episodes
30 and partly 31 in Dijon and takes up 616 words, being longer than Cambridge.
The topical division of episodes 6 – 8 (First teacher–Lament–Exclamation) is not
at the same place in Dijon as the division of episodes 30 and 31. In episode First
teacher: Lament (7), the manuscript Cambridge has almost the same number of
words (209) as Dijon (205). Also, episode First teacher: Exclamation (8) in Dijon
(74) is almost equal to Cambridge (68).
In the episode First teacher (30/6), the community’s rules and the attitude to
Jesus are described differently in the manuscripts. In Dijon, the community is
skeptical and suspicious of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. In Cambridge, Joseph and
the others do not seem to understand Jesus’ nature. In the story in Dijon, a Jew-
ish schoolmaster, Zachias, talks to Joseph in a hostile tone, warning him that
Jesus should go to school and reminding him that he and Mary should have
more regard for the community of the church of Israel. Jesus should go to school
to learn Jewish learning and bond with other children.⁵⁰⁹ In Cambridge, the
 Dijon, fol. 11v-12r: Magister aut[em] quidam videns no[m]i[n]e zachias audivit Ih[esu]m talia
v[er]ba loq[ue]nte[m] cum eo. Et eo q[ui]d erat insup[er]abilis sapi[enti]e v[ir]tutis. F[ac]tus est
dolens. Et cepit indisciplinate et stulte et s[i]n[e] timore loq[ui] contra ioseph. Dicebat enim
adv[er]sus ioseph. Tu no[n] vis filium tuu[m] trade[re] ut doceat[ur] sci[enti]am hu[m]ani timoris.
sed video te et maria[m] plus velle dilige[re] filiu[m] v[est]r[u]m. Q[ua]m tradito[r]es senior[um]
p[o]p[u]li. Oportebat enim nos pri[us] honorare p[res]b[yte]ros toti[us] eccl[es]ie isr[ae]l: ut et ex
infantib[us] mutua[m] h[ab]eat cari[ta]te[m]. Ut int[er] illos erudiat[ur] iudaica doct[ri]na.
Pseudo-duration 137
teacher Zacheus listens to the conversation of Jesus and Joseph; he is amazed by

a child who speaks in this way. He approaches Joseph, praising Jesus as clever,
and asks him to entrust Jesus to his school. He promises to teach him so that he
does not stay unwise.⁵¹⁰ Joseph’s answer to the teacher in Dijon expresses flex-
ibility and openness towards the community, yet also the concealed but proper
understanding of Jesus’ divine nature. Joseph understands that the community’s
rules are clearly defined, and he does not object, although he understands that
Jesus, as a divine figure, does not need this kind of education. He says:
And is there anyone who can keep this child and teach him? But if you can keep him and
teach him, we by no means hinder him from being taught by you those things which are
learned by people.⁵¹¹
Instead, Joseph says in Cambridge only: Nobody can teach this child but God
alone. ⁵¹² There is no mention of the context and the rules and expectations of
the community.
In Dijon, the issue of understanding Jesus arises in section 6.2e of First
teacher, where Jesus openly expresses that although he was among children,
he is not one of the children but a divine being:
I was with you among children, and you have not known me; I have spoken to you as to
wise men, and you have not understood my words; because you are younger than I am
and of little faith.⁵¹³
In Cambridge, this line confuses readers when Jesus says to the audience: I am
saying to you. I know that you are stupid and unknowledgeable. ⁵¹⁴
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: Igitur q[ui]da[m] homo nomi[n]e Zache[us] ascultabat om[n]ia que
loq[ue]bat[ur] Ih[esu]s ad Ioseph et a[d]miratus in semet ip[su]m dicebat. Talem puerum ita
loque[n]te[m] nu[m]q[ua]m vidi. Et appropinquas ad Ioseph dixit ei. Sapiente[m] pueru[m]
habe[s] trade eum ad docendu[m] litteras. Cu[m] aut[em] doct[us] fuerit in studio litterarum.
ego docebo eum honorifice ut non fiat insipie[n]s.
 Dijon, fol. 12r: q[ui]s est q[ui] possit ho[c] i[n]fante[m] tene[re] et doce[re]. Et si potes
tene[re] et doce[re] eum. nos mi[ni]me p[ro]hibem[us] doc[er]i eu[m] a te que ab ho[min]ibus
dicu[n]t[ur].
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: Nemo p[otest] docere eu[m] n[isi] solus d[eu]s.
 Dijon, fol. 13r: Fui int[er] vos ex infantib[us] a n[on] cognovistis me. Loquut[us] su[m]
vob[is] q[uas]i cu[m] p[ru]dentib[us] et n[on] intellexistis me. Q[uia] mi[n]ores me estis et modice
fidei.
 Cambridge, fol. 80r: P[ro]v[er]biu[m] dixi vobi[s]. ego aute[m] scio quia debiles estis et nes-
cientes.
In the continuation of First teacher (31) in Dijon, the teacher is very harsh to
Jesus. The teacher Zachias, who previously talked to Joseph and Mary about
Jesus’ school, now hands him over to another teacher, Levi. In the class with
Levi, Jesus is silent and does not give answers. Levi becomes angry and seizes
his storax-tree rod and strikes Jesus on the head. Jesus answers Levi with a
long speech.⁵¹⁵ In Cambridge, the teacher Zacheus punishes Jesus more mildly
by striking him on the head with his hand.⁵¹⁶ In both examples, Jesus explains
the issues to the teacher at length.
After analyzing the first six episodes of the Infancy Gospel in Paris 1772,
Dijon (Lm) and Cambridge (Lt), where the first two, particularly Dijon, had the
advantage in length, I now turn to the rest of the narrative. Dijon has a smaller
number of words in comparison to Cambridge in the episodes Lament (7), Har-
vest (12), and Third Teacher (15). Dijon and Cambridge are of similar length in the
episodes Exclamation (8), Water in Cloak (11), and Second Teacher (14). Dijon
once again has a more significant number of words in the episodes Zeno (9), Car-
penter (13), and James’ Snakebite (16).
In the episode Zeno (32/9), Dijon extends the text by describing the departure
of Joseph and Mary to Nazareth.⁵¹⁷ The concluding sentence also extends the nar-
rative by saying that Mary and Joseph moved from Nazareth to Jericho.⁵¹⁸ In Cam-
bridge, neither of Jesus’ parents appears in this episode, nor is there any mention
of the moving. The description of the whereabouts of Jesus’ family may have
been elaborated in Dijon to emphasize a continuation of the travel that starts
in the Prologue in Egypt when the family had to move to Egypt because Jesus’
life was in danger. Repeated moving at this point could have meant the same
thing – that other people were acting unjustly to Jesus, and his family was forced
to leave.
 Dijon, fol. 13r-13v: It[eru]m mag[iste]r zachias legis doctor dix[it] ad ioseph et maria[m].
Date m[ihi] pu[eru]m et e[g]o t[ra]dam eu[m] mag[ist]ro levi. Q[ui] doceat eu[m] litt[er]as et erud-
iat. Tu[n]c ioseph et m[ari]a blandientes Ih[esu]m dux[er]unt eu[m] in scolam. Ut doce[re]t[ur]
litt[er]as a sene levi. Quo cu[m] int[ro]isset tacebat. et mag[iste]r levi una[m] l[itte]ram dicebat
ad Ih[esu]m. Et incipiens a p[rim]a l[itte]ra alpha. Dicebat ei. R[espo]nde. Ih[esu]s v[er]o tacebat
et n[on] r[espo]ndebat. Un[de] p[rae]ceptor levi irat[us] apprehendens v[ir]ga[m] scoratina[m].
p[er]cussit eu[m] i[n] capite. Ih[esu]s au[tem] dix[it] ad didascalu[m] levi. Ut q[ui]d me p[er]
cutis. In v[er]itate scias q[uia] ip[s]e q[ui] p[er]cutit[ur] mag[is] docet p[er]cutiente[m] se. Q[ua]
m ab eo doceat[ur]. Sed hi om[ne]s ceci su[n]t qui dicu[n]t et audiunt q[uas]i es sonans aut
ci[m]balum ti[n]niens. In quib[us] no[n] est sensus aut int[e]ll[e]ctus ip[s]or[um] que int[e]
lligunt[ur] p[er] sonu[m] eor[um].
 Cambridge, fol. 80r: Doctor autem ille p[er]cussit infante[m] in capite.
 Dijon, fol. 14v: Post hec abieru[n]t inde ioseph and maria cu[m] Ih[es]u in civitate Nazareth.
 Dijon, fol. 15r: Abieru[n]t inde maria et io[seph] cu[m] Ih[es]u. i[n] iherico.
Pseudo-duration 139
In the episode Carpenter (37/13), the story is expanded and somewhat altered
in Dijon by emphasizing Joseph’s understanding of Jesus’ nature. In the story, Jo-
seph, as a carpenter, specializes in producing ox-yokes, plows, implements of
husbandry, and wooden beds.⁵¹⁹ He has a servant whom he orders to cut the
wood. The servant makes a mistake, and Joseph becomes perplexed, considering
what to do. He knows that whatever Jesus wants to do, he can. It is one of the
few episodes in Dijon where Jesus helps other people. In Dijon, Joseph does
not appear as desperate or sad as he is in Cambridge.
Finally, the episode James’ Snakebite (41/16) in Dijon begins with another
moving of Jesus’ family, from Capernaum (where they arrived in episode 40)
to Bethlehem. James is mentioned as Joseph’s first-born son. In Cambridge,
the explanation of the family ties of Joseph with James is excised. In Dijon, Jo-
seph sends James to the garden to gather vegetables for broth. Jesus follows
him, while Mary and Joseph do not know this. A viper strikes James, and he
cries out and calls for help. Jesus comes, blows on the bite, and heals James.
The parents run out to the garden to see James cured and the serpent dead.
This story has a slightly different plot in Cambridge: James collects wood
while Jesus follows him.
From this point, we turn to the episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas aug-
mented in Cambridge in comparison to Dijon, namely, the episodes Lament (7),
Harvest (12), and Third Teacher (15). In Lament (7), not only does Cambridge ex-
pand the teacher’s lament with the focus on self-pity, but the teacher reveals a
different attitude to Jesus. The teacher begs Joseph to take Jesus away from
him since he cannot look him in the face or listen to his speech. The teacher
only guesses Jesus’ background but quickly goes back to himself, describing
his embarrassment and the limitation of his mind. Above all, he mentions his
old age and the additional embarrassment that this causes. In Dijon, the teacher
starts to cry out loud, asking whether Jesus ought to live on earth, and he an-
swers that Jesus should be hanged on the cross. He says that Jesus lived before
the flood. The teacher withdraws because he cannot withstand Jesus’ words and
claims that nobody can understand him except God. He calls himself an unfor-
tunate wretch and a laughing-stock.⁵²⁰ The teacher reveals that Jesus is not of
 Dijon, fol. 16v: Nich[il] q[uod] ex ligno op[er]aret[ur] n[isi] iuga boum et aratra t[er]re v[er]
soria et culture apta ligneosque lectos.
 Dijon, fol. 13v-14r: Tu[n]c cepit cu[n]ctis audientib[us] clamare et d[ice]re. N[on] d[ebet] iste
s[upe]r t[er]ram viv[er]e: imo in magna cruce d[ebet] appendi. Na[m] pot[est] igne[m] extinguere:
et alia delude[re] torm[en]ta. Ego puto q[uod] an[te] cathaclismu[m] hic fu[er]it nat[us]. Quis
eni[m] vent[us] illu[m] portavit. Aut que m[ate]r illu[m] genuit. Aut que ub[er]a illum
lactav[er]unt. Fugiam an[te] illu[m] non enim valeo sustine[re] v[er]bu[m] ex ore ei[us]. Sed
this world, and he is aware of it. He tries to justify himself by saying that Jesus is
not a mortal man.⁵²¹
In the episode Harvest (12), Cambridge expands the episode by describing
Jesus sowing with his father. In Dijon, Jesus sows alone. He reaped and gave
wheat to his acquaintances. Dijon focuses on Jesus and does not introduce
other characters. In Cambridge, he comes closer to describing a typical child
in this activity with his father.
In episode Third Teacher (39/15), Jesus’ divine nature is clear to his parents in
Dijon, while this is not the case in Cambridge, where Joseph is not aware of it. In
Dijon, Joseph and Mary are asked by the Jews to bring Jesus to school again.
They are afraid of the Jewish community and are reluctant to send him to school,
knowing that he can learn nothing from human beings. In Cambridge, Joseph
sends Jesus to school again because he thinks that Jesus could indeed learn
something, although he is skeptical of Jesus’ behavior. In Dijon, Jesus acts
more self-confidently in the classroom when he enters and takes the book
from the teacher’s hand. The teacher falls on the ground and worships Jesus.
In this scene in Cambridge, the teacher is supportive throughout, while Jesus
acts as a good student.
The episodes which are of a similar length in Dijon and Cambridge are Ex-
clamation (8), Water in Cloak (11), and Second Teacher (14). These episodes some-
times have content alteration from Dijon to Cambridge. In Water in Cloak (33/11)
in Dijon, Jesus is put in the victim’s position. Jesus goes to fetch water for his
mother, and his pitcher breaks because he is attacked by another child, who
bumps into him and strikes the pitcher, breaking it. In Cambridge, the pitcher
breaks because of the crowd.
In the episode Second Teacher (38/14), the attitude of Jesus’ parents to him is
benevolent in Dijon, while in Cambridge, their treatment reflects a lack of under-
standing of Jesus’ nature. In Dijon, Joseph and Mary are asked for the second
time by the people (community) to send Jesus to school, and they do not refuse.
cor meu[m] stupescit v[er]ba audire talia. Nullu[m] enim hominu[m] puto ei[us] consequi v[er]
bu[m] n[isi] fu[er]it d[eu]s cu[m] illo. Nam e[g]o ip[s]e infelix t[ra]didi me huic in derisum.
Cu[m] e[rg]o ip[s]e putare[m] me habe[re] discip[u]l[u]m. Ignorans eu[m] meu[m] i[n]veni
mag[ist]r[u]m.
 Dijon, fol. 14r: Q[ui]d dicam. No[n] valeo sustine[re] v[er]ba pu[er]i hui[us]. De hoc iam mu-
nicipio fugiam: q[uia] illu[m] inte[n]d[er]e n[on] valeo. Ab infante senex vict[us] su[m]. Q[uia]
neq[ue] initiu[m] de quib[us] ip[s]e affirmat invenire possu[m] neq[ue] fine[m]. Difficile eni[m]
[est]. I[n]itiu[m] cause ip[s]i[us] rep[er]ire. Certe dico vobis n[ec] me[n]tior. Q[uia] an[te] oc[u]
los quod meos op[er]at[i]o hui[us] pu[er]i et senia sermonis ei[us] et i[n]tent[i]o[n]is exit[us]
nich[il] ex ho[min]ib[us] commune videt[ur] h[abe]re.
Pseudo-duration 141
By the commandment of the elders in charge of the study subjects, Jesus is to be

instructed in human learning. Jesus has a dispute in the classroom with the
teacher, and consequently, the teacher dies. Jesus goes home to his mother. Jo-
seph complains to Mary that he is afraid for Jesus’ destiny,⁵²² but Mary convinces
him that God will protect Jesus.⁵²³ In Cambridge, Joseph forcefully keeps Jesus in
the house so that he will not hurt other people.
The Latin manuscripts analyzed above are consistent concerning the begin-
ning of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Jesus is five years old. As for speed, in
Cambridge, Jesus turned six by episode 11 and eight by episode 13. From this ep-
isode on, his age is no longer mentioned in Cambridge. In Dijon, Jesus turns six
by episode 30 (6), and eight by episode 35, after which there is no further refer-
ence to his age.
To sum up, significant differences exist between Paris 1772 and Dijon as the
representatives of the Lm variant and Cambridge as a representative of the Lt var-
iant. Jesus’ behavior “in a bad light” is reduced in Cambridge. The excision is en-
forced by removing Jesus’ lousy behavior and introducing his improved charac-
ter. Cambridge attempts to filter Jesus’ behavior and focus on the people who are
affected by it. Dijon, on the other hand, does not emphasize other people’s suf-
fering and concerns. It negatively describes Jesus’ opponents, thereby justifying
Jesus’ behavior.
Dijon also describes Joseph and Mary as being on Jesus’ side and completely
understanding his divine nature. Many times, Joseph is afraid of Jesus’ destiny,
and the parents are concerned about the community of the church of Israel.
Cambridge presents Joseph as not being aware of his son’s divine nature. It is
why Joseph does not punish Jesus in Dijon, as he does in Cambridge.
Dijon emphasizes the moving of Jesus’ family, which starts in the Prologue in
Egypt when the family had to move to Egypt because Jesus’ life was in danger.
The description of repeated moving seems to emphasize the unjust behavior of
other people toward Jesus and his family. Dijon also refers to Jesus’ extended
family, including the children of Joseph from his first marriage, which is not
mentioned in Cambridge.
 Dijon, fol. 17v: Timens aut[em] ioseph vocavit ad se maria[m] et dix[it] ei. Ve[re] tristis [sum].
A[n]i[m]a m[e]a usq[ue] ad morte[m] p[ro]p[ter] pu[er]um istu[m]. Pot[est] fi[eri] ut aliq[ua]n[do]
aliq[ui]s duct[us] malitia p[er]cutiat illu[m]. Et moriat[ur].
 Dijon, fol. 17v: Vir dei noli time[re] n[ec] crede[re] q[uo]d h[oc] fi[eri] possit. immo sec[ur]e
crede q[uo]d q[ui] eu[m] missit int[er] ho[m]i[n]es nasci: ip[s]e eu[m] ab ho[min]ib[us]
malignantib[us] [con]servabit. et in suo no[m]i[n]e custodiet illu[m] a malo.
Slavonic manuscripts
I now turn to the three Slavonic manuscripts concerning their pseudo-duration.

First, no Slavonic text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in one manuscript is iden-
tical to another manuscript, nor do they agree in the selection of episodes. In
Gero’s view, the interrelation of the various Slavonic texts is complicated, and
they all go back to one or more Slavonic translations made from Greek variants
in the tenth and eleventh centuries.⁵²⁴ In addition, the Slavonic variants are not
identical to any of the extant Greek texts.⁵²⁵ I will demonstrate that all the Greek
and Slavonic manuscripts I analyze have links with the later Latin Lt variant as
in the Cambridge manuscript. The connections with the earlier Lm variant, as in
the manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon, will be emphasized, where visible.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas of manuscript St Petersburg does not have ep-
isodes 6.2c-13. Consequently, it is the shortest narrative among the Slavonic
manuscripts. In the places where the Infancy Gospel of Thomas of St Petersburg
contains a comparable episode, it is lengthier than manuscript Hludov in seven
episodes (1, 2, 3, 5, 15, 013, 16). Hludov is longer than St Petersburg in four epi-
sodes (13, 14, 17, 18). Altogether, Novaković is the most extended narrative, but it
is not the longest in every episode. In the places where Hludov is longer than St
Petersburg, it is also longer than Novaković (episodes 13, 14, 17, 18). The following
table shows the length of the single episodes:
Novaković Hludov St Petersburg
Prologue ()   
Pools (.)   
Sparrows (. – .)   
Annas’ Son ()   
Careless Boy ()   
Joseph’s Rebuke ()   
First Teacher ()   
Lament ()   
Exclamation ()   
Zeno ()   
 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 55.

 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 55.
Pseudo-duration 143
Continued
Novaković Hludov St Petersburg
Injured Foot ()   
Water in Cloak ()   
Harvest ()   
Carpenter ()   
Second Teacher ()   
Third Teacher ()   
Temple of Idols   
Blind Man ()   
James’ Snakebite ()   
Dead Baby ()   
Dead Laborer ()   
Jerusalem (. – )   
Children Made Swine ()   
Jerusalem (. – )   
Novaković has the initial episodes of the narrative expanded in comparison to

the other Slavonic manuscripts. This expansion pertains to the first twelve epi-
sodes. From episode 13, the manuscripts are of approximately equal length
where they contain full episodes.⁵²⁶ In episode Blind Man (013), St Petersburg
has a significantly longer text, and in episode James’ Snakebite (16), Novaković
again has a lengthier text.
In episodes where Novaković and St Petersburg are expanded in comparison
to Hludov (1, 2, 3, 5, 013, 16), and where Novaković alone is more prolonged than
Hludov (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12), they elaborate their narrative by describing the
events in more detail, in this way contributing to narration and dramatic inten-
sity rather than changing the story. Such an expansion can be seen in Sparrows
(2.3), where Novaković says: When one of the Jews saw what Jesus made while
 Novaković does not contain the full episode 15, and St Petersburg does not have the full
episode 19.
playing on Saturday…⁵²⁷ The line is made concise in Hludov: Jews saw and… ⁵²⁸ In
the episode Annas’ Son (3), small extensions can be seen in Novaković through
the addition of phrases such as: In that moment…⁵²⁹ In the continuation of the
same episode (3.3) in Novaković, the parents of the dead child approach Joseph
to take their child while crying. ⁵³⁰ This scene is made concise in Hludov by using
one word, crying. ⁵³¹
In the episode James’ Snakebite (16), Novaković extends the narrative by a
phrase: And then the other day…,⁵³² where the other two manuscripts have
then. ⁵³³ Novaković extends another section of the same episode by a more de-
tailed description of the narrative: As he bound the wood, he brought it to his
home. While he was going and collecting wood…⁵³⁴ Gero argues that Novaković
is a version rewritten by a verbose redactor who added many embellishing seg-
ments.⁵³⁵ Although it is more concise than Novaković, manuscript Hludov con-
tains all or most of the narrative details.
Novaković is longer than Hludov in the episodes that St Petersburg does not
have. Mainly, the length contributes to the narrative development and intensity.
Hludov does not omit information regarding the narrative but only describes it in
a more concise way. Novaković, on the other hand, inserts some narratological
enhancing phrases and words, which improve the narrative dynamics. In episode
First Teacher (6.4), Novaković significantly extends Jesus’ lecture to the teacher.
Novaković sets out Jesus’ explanation in detail, whereas Hludov only introduces
readers to the scene without relating any of Jesus’ words.
This trend continues to episode 12. In episode Zeno (9), Novaković expands
the lines: The child rose and said,⁵³⁶ which improves narrative dynamics. In Zeno
(9.1), the setting is described in more detail in Novaković than in the other manu-
scripts. In the episode Injured Foot (10), Novaković is expanded by more detailed
medical descriptions. In episode 10.1, Novaković describes at length the medical
 Novaković, 48: Видѣвь же ѥдинь оть Юдеи ѥже твораше Ісоусь играѥ вь соуботоу; St
Petersburg, fol. 177r: And the Jews saw what he did while playing (И видѣвше жидове еже
творѣше играѫщи).
 Hludov, fol. 200v: Видѣвше же їюдеие.
 Novaković, 48: Вь ть чась.
 Novaković, 48: пришьдьша вьзеста сь плачемь.
 Hludov, fol. 201r: плачющасе.
 Novaković, 54: Вь дроугы же дьнь.
 Hludov, fol. 205r: потомь; St Petersburg, fol. 182v: Посемъ.
 Novaković, 54: свезавь дрьва донесеть вь домь свои. Идоуштоу же ѥмоу и сьбыраюш-
тоу дрьва.
 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 54.
 Novaković, 52: И вьскрьсе отроче и рече.
Pseudo-duration 145
condition of the wounded young man: And he hit with the axe and cut his leg, and
he was terrified,⁵³⁷ while Hludov says: And he cut his leg. ⁵³⁸ Novaković contains
the expanded sentence in 10.2: The sick man’s cut leg was immediately intact
again,⁵³⁹ where Hludov has only one word.⁵⁴⁰ In the episode Harvest (12), Nova-
ković expands the introductory sentence: When there was a time of sowing… ⁵⁴¹
Hludov extends several episodes in this narrative in comparison to Novako-
vić and St Petersburg. In the episode Carpenter (13), Hludov and St Petersburg
are very similar in their choice of vocabulary, the sentence structure, and the ex-
cessive use of dative absolute. Novaković here gives the impression of being re-
told and very concise. In the episode Second Teacher (14), Hludov is longer than
Novaković by several words, but this difference is not relevant. The same applies
to Dead Baby (17) and Dead Laborer (18); the word choice does not demonstrate
significant differences in meaning.
On several occasions, Hludov demonstrates some parallels to Dijon and
Paris 1772. Hludov contains some details related to the Jewish setting, describes
other people’s hostility to Jesus, neglects the descriptions of other peoples’ suf-
fering because of Jesus, and implies Jesus’ divine nature.
In episode Joseph’s Rebuke (5.1), Novaković and St Petersburg state that
other people suffer because of Jesus and hate his family,⁵⁴² while Hludov empha-
sizes that others pounce at them aggressively.⁵⁴³ Hludov highlights the descrip-
tion of other people’s hostility towards Jesus, and the other two manuscripts
highlight other people’s suffering because of Jesus. At the end of 5.1, Hludov (un-
like Novaković and St Petersburg) does not state that other people are blinded.
Similarly, Hludov emphasizes in episode Zeno (9.2) that the dead child’s parents
shout at Jesus, while Novaković does not mention this.
In First Teacher (6.2a), Joseph gets upset at Jesus in Novaković and St Peters-
burg, but not in Hludov. The attitude of Joseph, who is understanding and toler-
ant of Jesus, is an essential characteristic of manuscript Dijon. In the episode La-
ment (7), Novaković describes the teacher’s desperation by expanding his
speech, while in Hludov, the teacher’s speech is briefer. The same recurs in 7.2
and 7.3 – Novaković lengthens the teacher’s speech, emphasizing his despera-
 Novaković, 52: и оудари се сѣкырою и отсѣче пласоу оть ногы своѥ и оужасе се.
 Hludov, fol. 203r: И прѣсече си ногу.
 Novaković, 52: и оусѣченоу и абиѥ цѣла бысть нога болештаго.
 Hludov, fol. 203r: заврѣдноую.
 Novaković, 52: Егда бысть пакы вь врѣме сѣдьбѣ.
 Novaković, 49; St Petersburg, fol. 178r: и страж[д]ѫть си. И ненавидѧ[т] на[с].
 Hludov, fol. 201r: И рьпщоуть на на[с] людие вси.
tion.⁵⁴⁴ In Hludov, the teacher’s embarrassment is toned down. This feature may
be similar with what we have seen in Dijon – the teacher understands that Jesus
is not of this world, and he cannot compare to him.
The episode Harvest (12) contributes to the conclusion that Hludov has some
parallels to Dijon: it describes Jesus sowing alone, without his father. Finally, in
the Prologue (1) of Hludov, some references are made to the Jewish setting. Tho-
mas the Israelite informs all of you in the city of Jerusalem about the deeds of
Jesus Christ.⁵⁴⁵ He relates that Jesus was born from the kin of the Jews from Beth-
lehem. ⁵⁴⁶
All three Slavonic manuscripts emphasize the episodes of healing that ap-
pear towards the end, including the lengthy episode Blind Man (013). In Nova-
ković, this episode, to a large extent, replaces the Third Teacher. Novaković con-
tains only the introduction to the Third Teacher (15.1) and then goes straight to
the episode Blind Man. Episode 15.1 in Novaković introduces readers to the epi-
sode Blind Man. It is the only manuscript where the teacher stresses that Jesus
should be taught from sorcery books. ⁵⁴⁷
The episode Blind Man appears only in the Slavonic and Arabic versions.⁵⁴⁸
St Petersburg has the most extended episode Blind Man. In 013.1, Hludov and St
Petersburg describe Joseph’s many unsuccessful attempts to send Jesus to
school. In this episode, Joseph’s sending Jesus to sorcerers is justified: As Joseph
saw that he (Jesus) did not learn from any teacher but taught the teachers, he sent
him to the sorcerers. ⁵⁴⁹ The texts justify studying sorcery rather than attending a
regular school.
In 013.2, Hludov and especially St Petersburg have a more extended section
than Novaković. The scene takes place in the sorcerer’s office, where a semi-
blind man comes to have his sick eye treated. Jesus sits there while the sorcerer
is absent. Hludov and St Petersburg expand the scene by explaining how the
 Novaković, 51: Азь бо не знаю ѥго. О горѣ мьнѣ дроузи мои? Забыхь се и не имаю оума
своѥго, прѣльстихь бо се много безоумны и страстьны азь.
 Hludov, fol. 200v: Азь ϴѡма Ис[раи]льтѣнинь избраннѣ вьзвѣстихь вамь всѣмь вь
градѣ їер[осо]л[и]мѣ.
 Hludov, fol. 200v: рождеи се вь странѣ жидовсцѣмь виθлеωмѣ. Вь градѣ Назарѣте.
 Novaković, 53: врачебьнымь боуквамь.
 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 58: Gero calls it Jesus as doctor’s apprentice heals a
blind man.
 Hludov, fol. 204r-v: Ѩко видѣ їѡсїфь ѡ[т] ни единого оучителѩ не наоучи се нь па оу-
чителѥ оучаше и потомь прѣда его врачеви; St Petersburg, fol. 181r: Прѣдаваеть его їѡсїфа
ини единомоу ненавыченѧ ѡнь паче оучаше. И посе[м] врачеви его прѣдаде.
Pseudo-duration 147
man’s other eye had previously been healed.⁵⁵⁰ Both manuscripts describe how
the man came to have the eye anointed and found only Jesus there, not the sor-
cerer. He then asked where the sorcerer is. All this is absent in Novaković. Hlu-
dov and St Petersburg expand this section by Jesus’ offer to heal the man’s eye.
In Novaković and St Petersburg, the man brings gifts at the end of this section. In
St Petersburg, these are bread and wine.
In the lengthy section of 013.3, all three manuscripts tell the same story. The
wording is more similar in Novaković and St Petersburg than in Hludov. When
the man with the healed eye comes to bring gifts, the sorcerer does not recognize
him. The man has to remind the sorcerer who he is. The sorcerer asks the man
how he was healed, and the man explains that it was the sorcerer’s disciple
Jesus who had healed him. The man retells the entire dialogue with Jesus. The
sorcerer wonders about Jesus’ skills. In 013.4, the episode ends with the sorcer-
er’s invitation to Joseph to come and take his son Jesus home since he already
knows the sorcerers’ work.
Hludov and St Petersburg have an episode Temple of Idols between the epi-
sodes Third Teacher (15) and Blind Man (013). This episode is characteristic only
of Slavonic and Arabic versions and sometimes of the Pseudo-Matthew. ⁵⁵¹ The
story is similar in both manuscripts, albeit with somewhat different wording:
Jesus was walking to the church buildings when кїрамида (?) fell and hit
him. Jesus cursed this building, and immediately it was destroyed. He ordered
that a new building be built, but a good building, not the building of demons
and idolatry.⁵⁵² This episode certainly belongs among the miracle episodes in
the story of Jesus’ childhood.
Finally, the three Slavonic manuscripts have different endings. St Petersburg
ends its narrative with Jerusalem (19.1) abruptly in the middle of a sentence: Jo-
seph and Mary came back…,⁵⁵³ after which the title of the following text commen-
ces in the same folio.⁵⁵⁴ Novaković has the episode Children Made Swine (012)
inserted between Jerusalem 19.2 and 19.3. The episode Children Made Swine
(012) comes quite unexpectedly in Novaković. In this episode, Jesus asks Jews
about his friends since he wishes to play with them. They are hidden in a cottage.
 Hludov, fol. 204v: Да зреше око исцѣлѩеть а слѣпааго не брѣжаше. Ѡшдьшоу же
оучителю. Прииде ч[е]л[о]в[е]кь на помазание; St Petersburg, fol. 181v: Изрѧщее око его
болѣше и помазовааше е. Патри лоуча оуже единомоу ѡбрѣтшоусѧ.
 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 58.
 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 61.
 St Petersburg, fol. 183v: їѡсїфь же и мариа[м], възвратистасѧ…
 Reading of Saint (четенїе стго). However, there is only a title here, while the text is missing
and the folio is blank.
Jesus approaches the door and says: Let them become swine. ⁵⁵⁵ When their pa-
rents come, the swine run out of the cottage. This episode is present in the Sla-
vonic, Arabic, and Old English versions.⁵⁵⁶ After this, Novaković continues with
the sections Jerusalem 19.3 – 19.5. Hludov has a complete episode Jerusalem
19.1– 5.
Finally, the opening of Hludov in the Prologue (1) contains the word “reading
of the childhood…” (Чтениѥ). This word indicates that the text was used as a
“reading” in a monastic context, perhaps in the liturgy. All three Slavonic manu-
scripts additionally have the formula God bless us in the Prologue.
Regarding speed, in Novaković and Hludov, Jesus is three years old at the
beginning of the Infancy Gospel, while he is four in St Petersburg. In 6.2c, in No-
vaković, he is five; in Hludov, he is three, and it is not clear how old he is in St
Petersburg. By episode 11, Jesus is eight in Novaković and Hludov. He is ten by
episode 13 in all three manuscripts and 12 by episode 19 in Novaković and St Pe-
tersburg. Novaković, therefore, covers five years in the first 11 episodes (two until
6.2c), two years in episodes 11– 13, and two years in episodes 13 – 19, thus slowing
down the speed of the narrative. Hludov covers five years in the first 11 episodes
(the same age of three at least in the first six episodes) and two years in episodes
11– 13. After the age of ten, there is no further reference to age in Hludov. It
makes readers think that all the events from episode 13 until the end occur
when Jesus is ten. St Petersburg covers six years from the beginning until epi-
sode 13 and two years in episodes 13 – 19, thus elaborating on his age from ten
to twelve.
To sum up, Novaković contains a more extended narrative in some episodes.
It is extended by elaborating narrative sections in more detail, contributing to
narration and dramatic intensity rather than changes in the storyline. Hludov
is concise, but it nevertheless contains all or most of the details of the narrative.
Hludov additionally demonstrates some parallels to the Lm variant (as in the
manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon), which are reflected in the descriptions of
the Jewish setting, in the hostility of other people to Jesus, in neglecting the de-
scriptions of other peoples’ suffering because of Jesus, and in allusions to Jesus’
divine nature. In their narrative about Jesus’ childhood, all three Slavonic manu-
scripts emphasize miraculous episodes about healing, sorcery, and Jesus’ other
miraculous childhood activities.
 Novaković, 54: да боудоуть свиниѥ.

 Gero, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 58: Gero calls this episode Jesus turns Jewish chil-
dren into swine.
Pseudo-duration 149
Byzantine manuscripts
In the following, I analyze the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the three Greek
manuscripts: Sabaiticus (eleventh century), Vienna hist. 91 (fourteenth-fifteenth
century) and Athens 355 (fifteenth century). When we compare the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas in these manuscripts regarding the pseudo-duration of its epi-
sodes, several specific features come to light. First, not one manuscript is iden-
tical to another. Vienna hist. 91 and Athens 355 have more corresponding
sections in comparison to Sabaiticus. Sabaiticus corresponds to Vienna hist.91
in many parts. In only a few cases, Sabaiticus and Athens 355 overlap, where
Vienna hist. 91 differs. The length of the episodes is as follows:
Sabaiticus Vienna hist.  Athens 
Prologue ()   
Pools (.)   
Sparrows (. – .)   
Annas’ Son ()   
Careless Boy ()   
Joseph’s Rebuke ()   
First Teacher ()   
Lament ()   
Exclamation ()   
Zeno ()   
Injured Foot ()   
Water in Cloak ()   
Harvest ()   
Carpenter ()   
Second Teacher ()   
Third Teacher ()   
James’ Snakebite ()   
Dead Baby ()   
Dead Laborer ()   
Jerusalem ()   

Where Sabaiticus differs from the other two manuscripts, it is often excised of the
text that the two manuscripts have.⁵⁵⁷ When I say excised, I do not imply that one
of these texts in the manuscripts dates earlier than the others (as we do not know
the precise dating of the texts, only of manuscripts). However, it is better to say
that the manuscripts Vienna hist. 91 and Athens 355 are extended in comparison
to Sabaiticus (as they are later manuscripts). Less commonly, Sabaiticus is ex-
tended in the sections that the other two manuscripts do not have.⁵⁵⁸ It also alters
entire sections by containing a different text in comparison to the two other
manuscripts.⁵⁵⁹
In the sections where Sabaiticus lacks the text in comparison to Vienna hist.
91 and Athens 355, it does not discuss the subjects that the two other manu-
scripts cover. In several cases, Sabaiticus does not emphasize that Jesus is a
child, such as in First teacher (6.1).⁵⁶⁰ In 6.2, Sabaiticus does not incorporate
the lines where the first teacher estimates Jesus as a potential student, using
the word child. ⁵⁶¹ In Third teacher (15.2), Sabaiticus (unlike the two other manu-
scripts) does not include the lines where Jesus is said to be a child.⁵⁶²
In a few instances, the descriptions of other people’s anger towards Jesus are
missing in Sabaiticus. In Annas’ Son (3.3), Sabaiticus does not depict the parents
of the dead child raging and accusing Jesus of his death. These passages are pre-
sent in the later dated manuscripts Vienna and Athens. In Joseph’s Rebuke (5.2),
Sabaiticus lacks any mention of the audience’s rage, fear, and disturbance after
Jesus had blinded them.
The sections where Jesus tries to convince people of his divine nature are
also absent in Sabaiticus. In First teacher (6.2b), Jesus does not affirm that he
is divine and states that whatever his father said was true.⁵⁶³ In 6.2d, Sabaiticus
 In episodes 2.4, 3.3, 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 6.2, 6.2b, 6.2d, 6.2 f, 9.1, 12.1, 12.2, 14.1, 14.2, 15.2, 15.4, 17,
18. See Burke, De infantia Iesu.
 In episodes 3.1, 6.2a, 14.3.
 In episodes 3.2, 4.1, 5.1, 5.3, 6.2b, 10.3.
 Athens 355, fol. 63r: τοιοῦτον παιδίον ταῦτα φθέγγεται; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: ὅτι παι-
δίον τοιαῦταν ὃν τοιαῦτα φθέγγεται.
 Athens 355, fol. 63r: Φρόνιμον παιδίον ἔχεις καὶ καλὸν νοῦν ἔχει; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r:
τὸ παιδίον α[ὐτ]οῦ φρόνιμον ἐσ[τι] καὶ νοῦν ἔχει.
 Athens 355, fol. 67r: ὅτι νήπιος ὢν τοιαῦτα φθέγγεται; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 203r: ὅτι νήπι[ος]
ὂν τοιαῦτ[α] φθέγγε[ται].
 Athens 355, fol. 63v: καὶ ὅταν ἴδῃς τὸν σταυρόν μου ὃν εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ μου τότε πιστεύσεις
ὅτι πάντα ὅσα εἶπόν σοι ἀληθῆ εἰσιν; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200v: καὶ ὅταν ἴδῃς τὸν σταυρόν μ[ου]
ὃν εἴπεν σοι ὁ πατήρ μου τότε πιστεύσει. ὅτι πάντα ὅσα εἶπον σοί ἀληθινά εἰσι.
Pseudo-duration 151
does not confirm that God the Father sent Jesus to the people.⁵⁶⁴ A section in the
Second teacher (14.1) is absent from Sabaiticus, where the teacher and Joseph dis-
cuss Jesus’ syllabus, and Joseph says that Jesus should study Greek letters first,
and then Hebrew letters. The references to Jews mostly lack in Sabaiticus.
Sabaiticus does not have the episode Dead Baby (17.1), which describes
Jesus’ healing miracle; this episode appears in Vienna hist. 91 and Athens 355.
Vienna hist. 91 expands it by describing the great sorrow and distress of those
who were present at the event.⁵⁶⁵ Similarly, the episode Dead Laborer (18.1) is an-
other healing episode absent from Sabaiticus and appearing in Vienna hist. 91
and Athens 355.
Sabaiticus expands the Infancy Gospel in a few places compared to the other
two manuscripts (or else, the other two manuscripts make it concise). In Spar-
rows (2.4), Sabaiticus states that the sparrows flew away in front of everyone,⁵⁶⁶
thus emphasizing in greater detail the audience of Jesus’ miracle (which some-
what resembles the Lm variant). Athens 355 and Vienna hist.91 do not describe
the audience in this scene.⁵⁶⁷ Besides, the line in the Second teacher (14.3), the
child went home to his parents, potentially implies both parents, like the Lm var-
iant.⁵⁶⁸
In several places, Sabaiticus completely alters parts of the text. In Annas’ Son
(3.2), Jesus’ speech is amended, and the language of the curse is milder, while in
Vienna hist. 91 and Athens 355, we see a very straightforward and harsh lan-
guage.⁵⁶⁹ The curse in Sabaiticus is written in elaborate, moralizing, and meta-
phorical language. It is short, and it does not contain the description of Jesus’
anger. Jesus’ curse in Careless Boy (4.1) does not affect the cursed boy directly.⁵⁷⁰
 Athens 355, fol. 63v: ἐγὼ εἰμὶ καὶ ὁ πέμψας με πρὸς ὑμᾶς; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200v: καὶ ὁ
πέμψας πρὸ[ς] ὑμᾶς οἶδε.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 203v: καὶ ἔκλαιεν ἡ μή[τη]ρ αὐτοῦ σφόδρα. ἤκουσεν δὲ ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ὅ[τι]
πένθος μέγα καὶ θόρυβος γίνεται ἔδραμεν σπουδαῖος καὶ εὑρ[ὼν] τὸ παιδίον νεκρ[ὸν] ἥψατο τοῦ
στήθους αὐτοῦ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 66v: ἐπέτασαν τὰ ὄρναια ἐνώπιον πάντων.
 Athens 355, fol. 62r: Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς κρωτήσας τὰς χεῖρας λέγει τοῖς στρουθίοις; Vienna hist.
91, fol. 203r: Ὁ δὲ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς συγκροτήσας τὰς χεῖρας, ἀνέκραξεν τοῖς στρουθίοις.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 71r: καὶ τὸ παιδίον ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοὺς γονεῖς αὐτοῦ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Ἄριζος ὁ καρπός σου καὶ ξηρὸς ὁ βλαστός σου ὡς κλάδος ἐκκομένος ἐν
πνεύματι τιμίῳ; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 199v: ἄδικε ἀσεβὴ καὶ ἀνόητε τί ἠδίκησάν σε τὰ ὕδατ[α] καὶ
οἱ λάκκοι. Ἰδοὺ νῦν καὶ σύ, ὡς δένδρον ἀποξηρανθῇς ὅ καὶ οὐ μὴ ἐνέγκῃς φύλλα οὔτε ῥίζαν οὔτε
καρπ[όν]; Athens 355, fol. 62r: Σοδομίτα ἄσεβες καὶ ἀνόητε τί σε ἠδίκησαν οἱ λάκκοι οἱ ἐμοὶ καὶ τὰ
ἐμὰ ὕδατα. Ἰδοὺ νῦν ὡς δένδρον ἀποξηρανθῇς καὶ μὴ ἔχῃς ῥίζαν μήτε κεφαλὴν μήτε καρπόν.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Ἐπικατάρατός συ ὁ ἡγεμών σου; Vienna hist.91, fol. 200r: Οὐκ ἀπελεύ-
σει τὴν ὁδόν σου; Athens 355, fol. 62v: Οὐκ ἀπελεύσει τὴν ὁδόν σου.
Confrontational language is absent from Sabaiticus. Vienna hist.91 and Athens

355 describe Jesus’ emotional reaction, his irritation, and fury.⁵⁷¹ The curse is di-
rected against a boy, and it is straightforward. In Joseph’s Rebuke (5.1), Jesus an-
swers Joseph in Sabaiticus in a tone that implies his divine nature, while he ad-
mits his father’s authority in the other two manuscripts.⁵⁷² In First teacher (6.2b),
Jesus talks to the teacher in Sabaiticus as a divine being, while in the other two
manuscripts, he submits to his father.⁵⁷³ This feature in Sabaiticus, where entire
sentences are different from the other manuscripts, may result from rewriting. It
appears only in Sabaiticus. I would consider it a particular feature of this manu-
script if this was the only manuscript containing this text variant.
Sabaiticus has the judgment directed against Jesus by others toned down; it
focuses on his deeds. In Careless boy (4.2), Athens 355 and Vienna hist.91 explic-
itly describe the misdeeds of Jesus towards other children, while in Sabaiticus
only one child is harmed, and the parents’ words diminish Jesus’ guilt.⁵⁷⁴ They
say that they have been deprived of their child instead of explicitly saying that
Jesus killed him and other children.⁵⁷⁵ In Zeno (9.2), only in Sabaiticus is Jesus
presented as equal to the parents of the dead child, who attack him in this sit-
uation, since he replies to the accusations in an equal manner.⁵⁷⁶
Vienna hist.91 and Athens 355 resemble each other more than Sabaiticus,
but not throughout the entire narrative. At times, there are better textual corre-
spondences between Sabaiticus and Vienna hist. 91 in comparison to Athens
355. In the places where Sabaiticus and Vienna differ from Athens 355, they
are extended,⁵⁷⁷ altered,⁵⁷⁸ and excised. ⁵⁷⁹
 Athens 355, fol. 62v: ὀργισθεὶς; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: πικρανθ[εὶς].
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Φρόνιμα ῥήματά συ ἐγινώσκες ἄν πόθεν ἦν τὰ ῥήματά σου οὐκ ἀγνοεῖς.
Ἐπίπεπτα διήγισαν κἀκεῖνα; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: ἐγὼ οἶδα ὅ[τι] τὰ ῥήματά σου ταῦτα, ἐμά
οὐκ εἰσὶν ἀλλὰ σά. ὅμως σιγήσω διὰ σέ; Athens 355, fol. 62v: ἐγὼ οἶδα ὅτι τὰ ῥήματα οὐκ ἔστιν
ἐμὰ ἀλλὰ σά εἰσιν. ὅμως ἔχω σιωπῆσαι διὰ σέ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67v: Καθηγητὴς ὢν εὐφυῶς ἐξήχθης καὶ τὸ ὄνομα ᾧ ὀνομάζῃ ἀλλότριος
τυγχάνεις. Ἔξωθεν γὰρ εἰμι ὑμῶν. ἔνδωθεν δὲ ὑμῖν διὰ τὴν σαρκικὴν εὐγένειαν ὑπάρχων. Σὺ
δὲ νομικὸς ὢν τὸν νόμον οὐκ οἶδες; Vienna hist.91, fol. 200v: ἀληθ[ῶς] καθηγητά πάντα ὅσα
εἴρηκέν σοι ὁ π[ατ]ήρ μου ἀληθὰ ἐισὶν; Athens 355, fol. 63r: ἀληθῶς καθηγητά ὅσα εἴρηκέ σοι
ὁ πατήρ μου ἀληθές ἐστί.
 Athens 355, fol. 62v: τὰ γὰρ παιδία ἡμῶν ὡς ἀνάπηρα ἐποίησεν; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: τὰ
γὰρ παιδία ἡμῶν θανατοὶ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: τὸ γὰρ παιδίον ἡμῶν ἐστερήθημεν.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 69v: Ἐγὼ οὐ κατέβαλα αὐτό.
 In episodes 2.1, 2.3, 3.1, 4.2, 6.2c, 6.2 f, 9.1, 9.2, 13.1, 13.2, 15.1, 15.3.
 In episode 4.1.
 In episode 5.1, 12.2, 13.2, 19.1, 19.2, 19.5.
Pseudo-duration 153
In the places where Sabaiticus and Vienna are extended, they mainly change
the narrative by introducing new characters or relating the narrative in more de-
tail. In the episode Sparrows (2.3), they introduce a character, a Jew, who betrays
Jesus to his father. In Athens 355, we see the children of the Hebrews reporting to
Joseph about Jesus’ behavior. Similarly, in Annas’ Son (3.1), they present Annas’
son, where Athens 355 has Annas.
The correspondence between Sabaiticus and Vienna hist. 91 is often reflect-
ed in similar wording and grammatical forms when they differ from Athens 355,
such as in Careless Boy (4.1).⁵⁸⁰ This type of rephrasing or reformulation of the
text would be best described as condensation, where different words are used
but the meaning is kept. In 4.1, the two manuscripts present the episode’s audi-
ence as people, where Athens 355 has Jews. Sabaiticus and Vienna emphasize in
the same episode that Jesus’ every word becomes a deed, a line absent in Athens
355. In 4.2, as the episode continues, in Athens 355, the Jews are the same audi-
ence, while Sabaiticus and Vienna introduce parents of the dead child, who now
talk to Joseph.
In First Teacher (6.2c), Sabaiticus and Vienna extend their narrative by de-
scribing in more detail the scene in which Jews are amazed by Jesus’ words.
In both manuscripts, the Jews say that they have not heard such words spoken
by anyone before – neither from high priests, teachers of the law, scribes, Phari-
sees, as from Jesus. ⁵⁸¹ These lines are absent from Athens 355.
In Zeno (9.1), Sabaiticus and Vienna hist.91 describe the setting in more de-
tail. The scene occurred after many days, on a roof of an upstairs room. Athens
355 does not have a description of the setting. Further, in episode 9.2, Athens
355 explains the situation with the parents briefly: They came and said to
Jesus. ⁵⁸² Vienna hist. 91 expands the lines: They came and made accusations,
thinking that he had knocked him down. ⁵⁸³
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: καὶ τρέχων ἐκεῖνος ἐρράγη εἰς τὸν ὦμον αὐτοῦ; Vienna hist. 91,
fol. 200r: καὶ παιδίον τρέχοντα διερράγη εἰς τὸν ὦμον αὐτοῦ; Athens 355, fol. 62v: καὶ δραμὸν
ἓν παιδίον ἔδωκε τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐπὶ τὸν ὦμον.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 68r: Τοιούτους λόγους οὐδέποτε οἴδαμεν. οὐδενὸς εἰρηκότος οὐδὲ νομοδι-
δασκάλου οὐδὲ φαρισαίου τινὸς ὡς τοῦ παιδίου τούτου; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200v: Τάχα ὅλων
πέντε ἐτῶν οὐκ ἐστιν τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο. καὶ οἶδε ποῖ[α] φθέγγηται. ἤ οὐκ ἠκούσαμεν εἰρηκότος
[…] οὔτε ἀρχιερέ[ως] οὔτε νομοδιδασκάλου οὔτε γραμματέ[ως] ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ Φαρισαί[ου] τινὸς ὡς
τοῦ παιδίου τούτου.
 Athens 355, fol. 65v: ἐλθόντες δὲ οἰ γονεῖς τοῦ τεθνηκότος παιδίου ἔλεγον τῷ Ἰησοῦ.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 202r: καὶ ἐλθῶντες οἰ γονεῖς τοῦ ἀποθανώντος παιδίου ἐνεγκάλουν
αὐτὸν ὡς αὐτὸς καταβαλόντος αὐτ[ὸν]. Ἐκείνον δὲ ἐπηρεαζόντων αὐτ[ὸν] καταβαλόντων
αὐτ[ὸν].
Where the text is excised in Sabaiticus and Vienna hist. 91 compared to Ath-
ens 355, the latter mainly insists on the descriptions of the emotions of other
people who either suffered from Jesus or benefited from him. In Joseph’s Rebuke
(5.1), Athens 355 goes into more detail about how other people suffer because of
Jesus, hate them, and wish to drive them away from the village. ⁵⁸⁴ These lines are,
to some extent, excised from Vienna and even more from Sabaiticus. The episode
Harvest (12) is expanded in Athens 355 and excised in the other two manuscripts,
particularly in Sabaiticus. It goes into more detail about how Jesus helped other
people and how his father benefited from Jesus’ harvest.
Vienna hist. 91 often expands the narrative by introducing more words to de-
scribe scenes and improve the narrative dynamics. This manuscript augments
the narrative by applying features that make for a more detailed description.
The episode Sparrows (2.4) is extended by describing the scene in more
words.⁵⁸⁵ The episode Joseph’s Rebuke (5.1) in Vienna hist. 91 describes the
fear, disturbance, and rage of the blinded people and the audience after Jesus
had blinded some of them.⁵⁸⁶ Athens 355 contains only one sentence on this sub-
ject, while this section is absent in Sabaiticus.⁵⁸⁷ Sabaiticus lacks descriptions
where people develop negative feelings towards Jesus. In the continuation of
5.2, where Jesus receives the punishment from his father, Vienna hist.91 is ex-
tended: When he saw what Jesus did, Joseph rose and…⁵⁸⁸ This line describes
the scene better.
In the episode First Teacher (6.2), Vienna hist. 91 contributes to a better ex-
planation of the scene: After a few days, he approached Joseph and said to
him…⁵⁸⁹ Sabaiticus only briefly states: He said to Joseph. ⁵⁹⁰ The last section of
6.2d, and that before the world was created, lacks in Sabaiticus.⁵⁹¹ Vienna
hist.91, on the other hand, extends this line for the sake of narrative embellish-
 Athens 355, fol. 62v: Διὰ τί καταρᾶσαι καὶ πάσχουσιν καὶ μισοῦσιν ἡμᾶς. καὶ διώκουσιν ἐκ
τῆς κώμης.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 199v: Καὶ ἐλθὼν ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον καὶ ἰδὼν ἀνέκραξεν αὐτὸν
λέγων. This line is the briefest in Athens 355, fol. 62r: Καὶ ἀπελθὼν ὁ Ἰωσὴφ λέγει. In Sabaiticus,
one more word is introduced, fol. 66v: Καὶ ἐλθῶν Ἰωσὴφ ἐπετίμα αὐτὸν λέγων.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 202r: Καὶ οἱ ἐγκαλοῦντες αὐτ[ὸν] ἐτυφλώθησαν. καὶ ἰδόντες ἐφοβήθη-
σαν σφόδρα καὶ ἠπόρουν καὶ ἔλεγον περὶ αὐτ[οῦ].
 Athens 355, fol. 63r: καὶ διηπόρουν μαινόμενοι.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: καὶ ἐγερθεὶς Ἰωσήφ, ἐπελέβετο αὐτοῦ τὸ ὠτίον. καὶ ἔτιλλ[εν]
αὐτῷ σφό[δρα].
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: καὶ μετ’ ὀλί[γας] ἡμέ[ρας] προσήγγι[σε] τῷ Ἰωσὴφ καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67v: Καὶ εἶπεν τῷ Ἰωσὴφ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 68r: καὶ ὃ πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον κτισθῆναι.
Pseudo-duration 155
ment: And I say this incredible thing to you: I know when the world was created
and the one who sent me to you knows. ⁵⁹²
In episode Injured Foot (10.1), Vienna hist. 91 gives an additional description
compared to the other manuscripts, explaining the narrative better by speaking
of the neighborhood, falling of the axe that splits the foot, becoming drained of
blood, and dying.⁵⁹³ This part is briefer in both Sabaiticus and Athens 355.
In episode Third Teacher (15.4), the opening is extended in Vienna hist.91:
When the child heard the teacher saying these things…⁵⁹⁴ This line introduces
readers to the scene and improves the narrative dynamics. A similar extension
can be seen in Athens 355.⁵⁹⁵ Sabaiticus states only briefly: And he said to the
teacher. ⁵⁹⁶
Athens 355 and Sabaiticus textually correspond only in three cases, where
the text in Vienna is altered (11.2) or absent (15.2, 19.1) in comparison to these
two manuscripts. In Water in Cloak (11.2), Mary addresses the Lord in Sabaiticus
and Athens 355, asking him to bless Jesus and have mercy. In Vienna, she keeps
to herself the miracles Jesus performed. In Third Teacher (15.2), when the third
teacher sits near Jesus, listens to him, and encourages him to say more is absent
from Vienna hist.91. Sabaiticus and Athens 355 have this section with similar
wording.
Athens 355 contains descriptions of excessive emotional characters’ reac-
tions and dramatic scenes. In Athens 355, the family of Jesus is practically
thrown out of the village in Careless Boy (4.2).⁵⁹⁷ In Sabaiticus and Vienna
hist.91, the situation is moderate; Jesus’ family does not need to leave, but
only to fulfill the requirements of their stay.⁵⁹⁸ In Lament (7.3), the teacher’s emo-
tional condition is emphasized when the first teacher says in Athens 355: I cannot
endure the shame. ⁵⁹⁹ In Sabaiticus and Vienna hist.91, he says: I think about my
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 201r: καὶ τὸ παράδοξον ὅτι οἶδα ὅτε ὁ κόσμος ἐκτίσθη, καὶ ὁ πέμψας πρὸ
[ς] ὑμᾶς οἶδε.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 203v: τις νεώτε[ρος] ἐν γειτονίᾳ τούτου ἔπεσεν ἡ ἀξίνη καὶ ἔσχισεν τὴν
βάσιν τοῦ ποδὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ αὐτίκα ὄλι[…] ἰαθήμησθεν μικρ[ὸν] δὲ ἀπέθνῃσκεν.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 203r: ὡς δὲ ἤκουσεν τὸ παιδίον ταῦτ[α] αὐτοῦ εἰρηκό[τος] πρὸτον
Ἰωσὴφ εὐθέ[ως] προσεγέλασεν αὐτ[ὸν] καὶ εἶπε.
 Athens 355, fol. 67r: ὡς δὲ ἤκουσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς τοῦ καθηγητοῦ τούτους λόγους ὄντος μει-
διάσας εἶπεν.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 71r: Ὁ δὲ εἶπεν τῷ καθηγητῇ.
 Athens 355, fol. 62v: λαβὲ αὐτὸ καὶ ἀναχώρησον ἀπεντεῦθεν.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Εἰ θέλῃς ἴναι ἐνταῦθα…
 Athens 355, fol.64v: Οἴμοι ὅτι ἠπατήθην ὁ τάλας ἐγὼ καὶ ἐμαυτῷ αἰσχύνην κατέσχον.
shame. ⁶⁰⁰ Further on in 7.4, in Athens 355, the teacher begs the father to take
back the child. In Vienna hist.91, he asks him. These narrative changes demon-
strate a gradation in the teacher’s despair, which is the highest in Athens 355.
The level of despair shows how greatly Jesus made other people desperate in
each text.
In Carpenter (13.1), Athens 355 emphasizes Joseph’s emotional condition; he
is in great distress. Jesus tells him not to be distressed. In Vienna hist. 91, Joseph
does not know what to do. In Second Teacher (14.2), in Sabaiticus and Vienna
hist. 91, the teacher is irritated (πικρανθεὶς), while in Athens 355, he is furious
(ὀργισθεὶς).
Athens 355 sometimes describes medical conditions in greater detail, where
the other two manuscripts do not do. Athens 355 particularly emphasizes the line
in 10.2 the medical nature of Jesus’ activities: The one who heals illnesses, our
Lord Jesus Christ. ⁶⁰¹ In James’ Snakebite (16.2), Athens 355 describes more thor-
oughly the details of the medical condition of James.⁶⁰² The episode Dead
Baby (17.1) in Athens 355 states that the child died of sickness, another medical
condition that does not appear elsewhere.
Regarding speed, in all three Greek manuscripts, the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas starts when Jesus is five. In Sabaiticus, he turns seven by episode 11, eight
by episode 13, and twelve by episode 19. In both Vienna hist.91 and Athens 355,
he turns six by episode 11, eight by episode 13, and twelve by episode 19. In this
way, the episodes from 2 – 11 describe one year in these two manuscripts, while
Sabaiticus covers two years in the same episodes. The other manuscripts (Latin
and other Greek manuscripts) also cover a year. From episodes 11 to 13, Sabaiti-
cus covers a year, while the other manuscripts cover two years. Sabaiticus, there-
fore, slows down the speed of its narrative, while the other manuscripts speed it
up. This temporal component of the narrative seems to have had little relevance
for the narrative in the different manuscripts, making the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas an achronical narrative.
To sum up, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in Sabaiticus demonstrates many
specificities. Future research may help determine whether these characterize
only this manuscript or reflect the features of a variant (Gs). Sabaiticus lacks
the descriptions of other people’s anger towards Jesus, the sections where
Jesus tries to convince people of his divine nature, the sections where the empha-
sis is placed on Jesus as a child, and the episodes that describe healing miracles.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 69r: Οἴμοι οἴμοι ἠπορήθην ὁ ταλαίπωρος ἐγώ. ἐμαυτὸν αἰσχύνην παρέσχον
ἐπικατασπασάμενος τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο.
 Athens 355, fol. 65v: καὶ ἰώμενος τὰς νόσους ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς Χριστός.
 Athens 355, fol. 67r: καὶ πεσὼν εἰς τὴν γῆν ἔμελλε τελευτᾶν ἐκ τοῦ πόνου τοῦ φαρμάκου.
Sabaiticus tones down other persons’ judgment of Jesus and focuses on his
deeds. It also emphasizes the audience of Jesus’ miracle, which brings it close
to the Lm variant of Dijon. The most specific feature in Sabaiticus is that this
manuscript completely alters parts of the text and replaces them with another
text. The manuscript Vienna hist. 91 primarily extends its narrative by introduc-
ing readers to the scenes better and improving the narrative dynamics. Some-
times, it changes the narrative by having new characters or by describing the
narrative in more detail. Finally, the manuscript Athens 355 contains descrip-
tions of excessive emotional reactions by the characters and dramatic scenes,
while it also particularly emphasizes the scenes of illness and injury.
Intra- and inter-lingual connections
In this chapter, I compared the textual transformations of the Infancy Gospel of

Thomas in various languages and manuscripts. The analysis was supported by
narratology within the framework of New Philology. I have studied the pseu-
do-temporal order of the episodes, the narrative logic, and the pseudo-duration
of the episodes. The chapter aimed to reveal specific meaning and agendas un-
derlying these textual transformations in the different manuscripts.
In the Latin tradition, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is closely attached to the
other surrounding texts already in the earliest manuscript witnesses from the
fifth century. When assessing the pseudo-temporal order of the episodes of the
Infancy Gospel in these manuscripts, one needs to consider that these episodes
are part of a larger cycle of texts. Manuscript Dijon 38 (Lm) places a complete
cycle of Mary’s life and achievements in chronological order of her life. The In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas appears in this manuscript as a continuous text without
a title, and it belongs to a larger narrative. Concerning the choice of episodes,
Dijon does not contain the healing episodes Injured Foot (10), Dead Baby (17),
and Dead Laborer (18), but it has the episodes Lions (35 – 36), Joseph Raises
Dead Man (40), and Family Meal (42), which do not appear in the other manu-
scripts. It emphasizes the Jewish audience of Jesus’ acts, the misdeeds of other
people towards Jesus, the understanding of Jesus’ divine nature by his parents,
and the explanation of the family ties of Joseph to James. In the Latin tradition,
the text in the manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon (Lm) mainly follows the inner
narrative logic better than the other manuscripts.
The Lt variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears in the Latin West by
the twelfth–thirteenth century. Manuscript Cambridge, which contains the Lt var-
iant, tones down Jesus’ behavior “in a bad light” and his aggression towards oth-
ers. It emphasizes the cleansing and purification that Jesus performs as an at-
tempt to polish Jesus’ character. It tones down the curses Jesus utters and de-
scribes the feelings of the people affected by Jesus. Joseph no longer under-
stands Jesus’ divine nature. Cambridge extends the sections describing the
teacher’s lament and self-pity and introduces the healing episodes Injured
Foot (10) and Dead Baby (17), which are absent in Dijon (Lm). Cambridge dem-
onstrates some illogical sections and transitions in the text.
When we look into a more extended sequence of texts in Cambridge (Lt), we
notice that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this manuscript is also part of a larg-
er narrative; it appears without a title.⁶⁰³ One might think that more meaningful
structural transformations would occur in the pseudo-temporal order of the ex-
tensive sequence of texts in the Pseudo-Matthew with the revision and creation
of the Lt variant of Thomas’ Infancy Gospel, but this is not the case. At least ac-
cording to the available evidence, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in both Lt and
Lm variants usually appears in the manuscripts within a sequence of narratives
of the Pseudo-Matthew with Mary as their subject (sometimes expanded to both
Mary and Jesus). This feature did not change with the emergence of the Lt var-
iant.
It means that the Lt variant, as it appears in the manuscript Cambridge, even
if constructed to produce the textual differences in comparison to the Lm variant,
which I noted above, did not bring in changes in the use of the text because it
was still used in the context of the larger cycle of the Pseudo-Matthew in the thir-
teenth century and later. Possibly scribes, who were in charge of the order of
texts in manuscripts, sometimes were not aware of the exact differences between
the Lm and Lt variants of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Therefore, they contin-
ued copying the two variants within similar contents.
The Lt variant with all its inner textual adjustments could have been a Latin
translation of a Greek text. Scholars have already argued that the Lt variant is a
later Latin translation of a Greek text. The explanation above would make more
sense if the text of the Lt variant, as we know it from the manuscript Cambridge,
was translated from a Greek text and then inserted into the same old context in
the Latin tradition.
The changes of the text in manuscript Cambridge (Lt) in comparison to Dijon
(Lm) turned Jesus from a divine into a typical child and widened the misunder-
standing between him and his father, Joseph.⁶⁰⁴ These details were not necessa-
 The same applies to the manuscript Paris 3014. This manuscript also follows the chronol-
ogy of Mary’s life, while the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a segment of the broader narrative.
 I will comment on these features in more detail in Chapter 4.
rily apparent to those who copied the texts since the evidence in the manuscripts
shows that Lt and Lm variants often appeared within similar contents.⁶⁰⁵
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Byzantine manuscripts has proved to be
closer to the Latin Lt tradition (as in Cambridge). Sabaiticus is excised of the de-
scriptions of other people’s anger towards Jesus, Jesus’ justification of his divin-
ity, the references to Jews, the scenes of emotional tension, fear and pain, and
Jesus’ healing miracles. The variant in Sabaiticus shows some correspondence
in detail to the text in Dijon (Lm). This manuscript also contains whole sentences
replaced by other sentences. This feature may have been a consequence of rewrit-
ing. Voicu, supported by Burke, argues that the Gs variant in Sabaiticus is an in-
termediate stage in developing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, between the short
recension and the long recension.⁶⁰⁶ Voicu argues that the Gs variant is “already
interpolated,” while Burke disagrees.⁶⁰⁷ I tend to agree with Voicu’s opinion on
this matter. This view is corroborated by the fact that Sabaiticus contains some
sentences replaced by other sentences, as I emphasized above, and some illog-
ical sections.
The other Greek and Slavonic manuscripts have some logical inconsistencies
in the text. Manuscript Vienna hist. gr. 91 includes the nineteen-episode form un-
related to the texts around it. This manuscript extends the narrative by introduc-
ing more elaborate descriptions, improving the narrative dynamics, and adding
features that contribute to the narrative’s understanding.
In Athens gr. 355, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is preceded by John of Dam-
ascus’ Birth of Christ. The two may have formed a link by describing Jesus’ birth
and childhood, mainly since the Prologue in Egypt goes before the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas and since the Infancy Gospel has no title. This sequence of texts
reminds, to some extent, of the Latin tradition. The text of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas contains excessive emotional reactions by the characters and more
dramatic descriptions. It places a greater emphasis on Joseph’s emotional condi-
tion. Athens 355 also, at times, contains more detailed medical descriptions.
The miracle episodes were present in the pseudo-temporal order of some
manuscripts, while they were absent in others. All three Slavonic manuscripts
emphasize the healing and other miracle episodes. The episodes inserted partic-
ularly in the Slavonic tradition introduce various Jesus’ miracles, healing mira-
 My conclusions about the Lt variant would undoubtedly strengthen by a more extensive
analysis of Lt manuscripts. The manuscript Cambridge and the occasional reference to the
manuscripts Paris 3014 and Berne 271 are only a tiny part of the corpus and cannot offer a com-
plete overview of the Lt tradition.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 196; Voicu, “Notes,” 120; Voicu, “Verso,” 26 – 27.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 196; Voicu, “Notes,” 131; Voicu, “Verso,” 24.
cles, and other kinds. The Slavonic tradition also demonstrates some links to the
Arabic tradition.
Similar to Vienna hist. 91, Novaković appears to be a considerably longer
narrative (among the Slavonic versions), which extends the text by describing
the narrative in more detail, thereby contributing to the dramatic intensity but
only slightly to the transformation of the story. Its random insertions of some ep-
isodes in the middle of others are difficult to explain, such as when the Third
Teacher (15) continues into the Blind Man (013.1) and when Jerusalem (19) is in-
terrupted by the episode Children Made Swine (012).
Manuscript Hludov contains the Infancy Gospel of Thomas between the texts
about the Birth of Christ and the Epiphany of Christ, thus making a sequence.
Hludov does not omit information regarding the narrative but only narrates in
a more concise way. It contains the complete episodes without interruption
and adds some new episodes, like the Temple of Idols. Hludov demonstrates
some correspondence in detail to Dijon (Lm), such as descriptions of the Jewish
setting, descriptions of other people’s hostility, lack of descriptions of other peo-
ple’s suffering because of Jesus, and allusions to Jesus’ divine nature.
Enough said about the text. I now move from the form and structure to the
content, its meaning, and its significance. I will discuss the details in the differ-
ent manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that relate to children, child-
hood, family, and everyday life as windows onto various social, cultural, and re-
ligious matters in the environments in which this text was copied and used.
Chapter 4
Childhood, Family and Everyday Life in the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas
In the preceding chapters, I analyzed the manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas and its textual transformations. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas incorpo-
rates further specificities concerning differing words and phrases. These seem-
ingly minor details sometimes reveal views on various social, cultural, and reli-
gious issues. Whose views are expressed in the different words and phrases? As I
understand it, author(s), translators, scribes, and audiences may have contribut-
ed to these details during the transmission and may have influenced the trans-
formations of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This understanding aligns with New
Philology, which studies texts within the environments where they were copied
and used, regardless of their original forms.
Many persons with different intentions worked on the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas. We may assume that an author or several authors worked on the original
version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, although we have no details of its con-
text. Translators may have inserted some of their ideas and convictions into the
text through the transmission. Scribes and copyists as mediators reproduced the
text in manuscripts. Some of its parts (or the whole account) may have been
transmitted orally for a while. Some features of the text in the manuscripts
may reflect oral transmission. When copying the text, scribes and copyists
may have attempted to contribute to the presentation of its episodes in more
nuanced and picturesque ways. Such a feature was common during rewriting
processes in the Middle Ages. The differences we spot in the text may also result
from inner textual narration introduced to improve its narrative aspects. Scribes
and copyists may have intended to make the text more accessible to a contem-
porary audience as a written product. They may have adjusted the text to specific
agendas or copied it with the presupposition of their knowledge or the common
understanding of the environment in which they lived. Their own previous expe-
rience may have been embedded in the text. Scribes and copyists may have been
aware of what the intended audiences of this text would understand best. In this
way, they acted as a medium between the text and the audience. It was not only
authors but also scribes who had in mind the “intended audience.” The differ-
ences of this text in the manuscripts may reflect everyday matters common in
specific environments in which the text was planned to be used. Thus, it was
not only the author or the audience, but a complex chain of people, consisting
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110752786-005
162 Chapter 4 Childhood, Family and Everyday Life in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
of authors, translators, scribes, and audiences that influenced the textual trans-
formations of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
In this chapter, I mainly focus on words and phrases that describe children,
childhood, family, and everyday life in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the dif-
ferent manuscripts. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas describes the early years of
Jesus’ childhood and adolescence, and scholars argue that at least some of
these descriptions mirror the ideas and attitudes about children, childhood,
and everyday life in the environments in which this text was transmitted.⁶⁰⁸
This distinction is essential because the descriptions of children, childhood, ev-
eryday and family life may reflect other concealed textual strategies or speak of
Jesus as a divine being. However, some passages relate to ideas and attitudes
about children and everyday life in the past. I identify the words and phrases
that reflect ideas and attitudes about children and everyday life in the past
and examine them with the environments in which they emerge, seeking to de-
termine their proper setting and explanation.
To give an example: the Byzantine manuscripts state that Joseph became
angry (at Jesus) and took hold of Jesus’ ear and pulled hard ⁶⁰⁹ when punishing
him, whereas, in the Arabic text, Joseph thrashed Jesus and scolded him strong-
ly. ⁶¹⁰ Does the difference in the two formulations indicate that mediators
chose these ways to present the text to their audience with a presumption of
what this audience would understand best? Does this tell us that the intended
audience would understand a child’s punishment best as the text presents it?
Why is Jesus punished in different ways in these two examples? Children and
childhood were perceived differently in different societies; this chapter will
build on this idea and add our further knowledge.⁶¹¹
Although my focus is on the descriptions of children, childhood, family, and
everyday life communicated through different words and phrases in the manu-
scripts, I also comment on descriptions that are very similar in wording and
 Aasgaard argues in connection to this: “It has been an assumption in previous chapters to
see in IGT’s narrative world a reflection not primarily of first-century Palestine, but of the setting
in which the story was transmitted, namely late antique Christianity – although the differences
between the two need not be exaggerated.” See Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 166.
 Sabaiticus, 5.2, fol. 67r: Ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ ἐπελάβετο τοῦ ὁτίοὐ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔτιλεν σφόδρα; Athens
355, 5.2, fol. 63r: ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἔτεινεν αὐτοῦ τὸ ὠτίον; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: καὶ ἐγερθεὶς
Ἰωσήφ, ἐπελάβετο αὐτοῦ τὸ ὠτίον. καὶ ἔτιλλ[εν] αὐτῷ σφό[δρα].
 See Sergio Noja, “L’Évangile arabe apocryphe de Thomas, de la ‘Biblioteca Ambrosiana’ de
Milan (G 11 sup),” in Biblische und Judistische Studien: Festschrift für Paolo Sacchi, ed. Angelo
Vivian (Paris: Peter Lang, 1990): 681– 690.
 Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to
Modern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 4.
Chapter 4 Childhood, Family and Everyday Life in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas 163
phrasing because they indicate that some ideas about children and everyday life
were at least commonly acknowledged if not accepted by different environments.
They possibly present a general cultural capital shared or conceded by all the
audiences of this text. I, therefore, analyze whether the descriptions of children,
family, and everyday life epitomize the ideas and attitudes about everyday life,
whether they share some general cultural values, or whether they use expres-
sions that introduce the disguised ideology of the text while talking about
Jesus and his divinity.
The chapter is organized in a number of sub-sections according to the sub-
jects that they appear to describe. I start by discussing the descriptions of Jesus’
relationship with his parents, which take a great deal of focus in the text. First, I
examine how much Jesus’ parents appear in this text. Which of them is more pre-
sent? Jesus’ mother, Mary, has received unprecedented attention in Christianity
as the Mother of God. Differently, however, this text mainly describes Joseph
in the scenes with Jesus. Why is this so?
Further, I examine how Jesus is depicted as a genuine child of his parents.
Does he appear as an average child, or is he the divine Jesus in a child’s body?
How are his obedience and submission to his parents expressed in this text in
the different manuscripts? I also analyze the examples where Jesus is punished
and encouraged by his parents. After this, I discuss Jesus’ relationship with his
siblings and teachers, as described in the manuscripts, to see whether they could
offer a glimpse of the ideas about sibling, peer, and child-teacher relationships
in the past.
Then I study the activities and behavior of Jesus described in the text in var-
ious manuscripts. I start by discussing Jesus’ experience in school. Could any de-
scriptions of Jesus’ experience in school relate to everyday occurrences in some
environments in which the text was used? Since Jesus also carries out physical
work in this text, I dedicate a section to this subject to assess whether these ac-
tivities are related to ideas and attitudes about everyday life features of some en-
vironments or tell us something else. I then consider Jesus’ “odd behavior,” ex-
pressed in his cursing and anger. Was Jesus supposed to curse and be angry?
How is this issue handled in the different manuscripts?
Finally, I discuss family and everyday life as depicted in the text. Here I ex-
amine the life of Jesus’ family in the community, habits, rules, and different com-
munity attitudes towards Jesus and his family and the decisions his parents
make under the community’s pressure. Another section touches upon housing
as described in the Infancy Gospel, juxtaposed to housing as it looked like in By-
zantium, the medieval West, and among Slavs. Since the Slavonic manuscripts
describe Jesus having a sorcerer as a teacher, I end this chapter by discussing
the practices of healing and sorcery linked to this environment. This section may
contribute to the history of medicine.
In conclusion, I determine whether the examples describing children, child-
hood, family, and everyday life presented here reflect only their general cultural
understanding in the different environments or relate to the features specific to
some of them. I also comment on whether the examples talk about Jesus as a
divine being (although he is a child in this text). All the conclusions are juxta-
posed to the contexts that have already been presented in earlier chapters.
Presence of Joseph and Mary
Even a glance at this text shows that Joseph is given a larger space than Mary in
most of the textual forms of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The mother, Mary, ap-
pears only in a few episodes and is given mainly secondary roles.⁶¹² This feature
is surprising for several reasons. First, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is often at-
tached in the Latin tradition to the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew because of the fig-
ure of Mary, where its placing offers details about Mary’s adult years, during
which Jesus was a small child. How was this attachment justified, given that
Mary appears in the text a few times? Second, this feature is unexpected given
Mary’s prominence in the history of Christianity. Mary’s presence in the text con-
tradicts the Christian tradition in which the Mother of God has the most critical
position. In late antique and medieval Christianity, the mother of Jesus – Theo-
tokos – gradually became an omnipresent figure. Her status led to an almost
total eclipse of Joseph, who was ascribed only a peripheral role.⁶¹³ In contrast
to his spouse, Joseph remained limited to the context of these nativity and child-
hood narratives of Jesus and Mary.⁶¹⁴ On this point, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
runs counter to much of the history of ancient and medieval Christianity.⁶¹⁵
In the view of Voicu, “this remarkable feature of the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas has not been paid all the attention it deserves, because it is the only ancient
text which repeatedly depicts Joseph – who is almost always seen as a shadowy
character in the main Christian tradition – as someone who has real authority
 Voicu, “Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha,” 412.

 See Patrick J. Geary, Women at the Beginning. Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin
Mary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 60 – 75, 61.
 Geary, Women at the Beginning, 61.
 On the latest views about the family in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, see Christopher Fri-
lingos, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2017).
over Jesus.”⁶¹⁶ While I do not entirely agree with Voicu about the extent of au-
thority that Joseph has over Jesus, I certainly agree that he is more present
than Mary in this text. Joseph is more present than Mary in most of the textual
forms in different languages.⁶¹⁷ In this section, however, I will highlight those ep-
isodes in the various manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which de-
scribe Mary’s appearances. Although they are rare and sometimes unexpected,
Mary’s appearances may lead to some conclusions about the history and trans-
mission of the text, which I will elaborate in what follows.
Mary usually appears only in a few episodes, such as Water in Cloak (11),
when she sends Jesus to fetch water.⁶¹⁸ She also appears in episode Jerusalem
(19), when she, together with Joseph, searches for Jesus, who got lost.⁶¹⁹ When
they find him, his mother is the one to start a conversation with Jesus. It is
one of the few places in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas where God is spoken of
as Jesus’ father.⁶²⁰ The priests address the mother of Jesus, uttering praises.⁶²¹
 Voicu, “Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha,” 412, n. 51.
 Joseph is informed when Jesus makes the sparrows out of clay on Sabbath, and he comes to
talk to him. Joseph is present in the scene with Annas’ son when Jesus curses him. Joseph listens
to the complaints about Jesus from the parents of a dead child. The first teacher approaches Jo-
seph to ask him to send Jesus to his school. Joseph negotiates with Zacheus. Joseph takes him to
school for the first time. Joseph takes him back home when the first teacher sends him away.
Jesus sows with Joseph. Jesus helps his father Joseph in his carpenter’s work. Joseph decides
to send him to school the second time. Joseph decides on Jesus’ initial curriculum. Joseph is dis-
tressed and embarrassed because Jesus curses the second teacher, and he forbids Mary to let
Jesus leave the house. Joseph discusses with the third teacher – his friend – the return of
Jesus to school. Joseph is the one who receives the praises of Jesus by the third teacher, and
he is the one who takes him home again.
 This episode is present in all the analyzed manuscripts, except in the St Petersburg manu-
script.
 The episode Jerusalem (19) does not appear in all the manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. It is present in the Byzantine manuscripts Sabaiticus, Vienna hist.91, Athens 355, the
Slavonic edition of Novaković, and manuscript Hludov (in St Petersburg only 19.1 in part). Cam-
bridge has the ending of this episode (19.4– 5) when scribes and Pharisees talk to Mary about
Jesus.
 Jesus answers his mother: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be
in the place of my Father?” Sabaiticus, fol. 72v: ἵνα τί ἐζητεῖτέ με οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πα-
τρός μου δεῖ εἶναί με; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 204r: οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἐν τ[οῖ]ς οἴκοις τοῦ π[ατ]ρ[ό]ς μου
δεῖ εἶναί με τί ἄρα ἐζητεῖτε με; Athens 355, fol. 68r: τί με ἐζητεῖτε οὐκ εἶπον ὑμῖν ὅτι ἐν τοῖς τοῦ
πατρός μου δεῖ εἶναί με; Novaković, 55: что искаста мене, ли не вѣста, ѩко иже соуть отьца
моѥго и мнѣ вь тѣхь подобаѥть быти; Hludov, fol. 205v: почтѡ искасте мене скрьбеше не
вѣсте ли ѩже ѥ[смь] оу ѡца моего. Вь тѣх ми достои ть быти.
 “Blessed are you among women because God has blessed the fruit of your womb.” Sabai-
ticus, fol. 72v: μακαρία εἶ σύ ὅτι ηὐλόγησεν κύριος Θεὸς τὸν καρπὸν τῆς κοιλίας σου; Vienna hist.
Jesus follows his mother when they decide to go back home. She treasures all the
things about him in her heart. In the view of Horn and Martens, the Gospel of
Luke gives priority in this episode to God the father over his human parents.⁶²²
In Betsworth’s view, more attention is paid to Mary in the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas’ version of Jerusalem episode than in Luke.⁶²³
Mary’s presence becomes prominent in some manuscripts which contain the
Prologue in Egypt appended to the opening of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. In
the Prologue in Egypt of manuscript Athens 355, an angel warns Mary in a dream
that Jesus is in danger. This manuscript refers only to Mary going to Egypt with
Jesus. In Egypt, Jesus walks in the street with Mary. Jesus is forced to leave a
town with Mary. Again, an angel warns Mary to go back home with Jesus.
Apart from Athens 355, the Prologue in Egypt is present in the Latin manuscripts
Dijon, Cambridge, and perhaps Paris 1772.⁶²⁴
Some manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, such as the Latin Paris
1772 and Dijon, depict the mother and father appearing together in some scenes,
where otherwise Joseph has a sole role.⁶²⁵ Voicu notes this increasingly impor-
tant role of Mary in the Lm variant.⁶²⁶ Mary’s appearance does not play down
Joseph’s appearance in these manuscripts; they appear together in several epi-
sodes.⁶²⁷
91, fol. 204r: μακαρί[α] σὺ ἐν γυναιξὶν ὅτι εὐλόγησ[εν] ὁ Θ[εὸ]ς τ[ὸν] καρπ[ὸν] τῆς κοιλία[ς] σου;
Athens 355, fol. 68r: μακαρία σὺ ἐν γυναιξὶν ὅτι εὐλόγησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν καρπὸν τῆς κοιλίας σου;
Novaković, 55: благословлѥиьна ты ѥси вь женахь, и благословлень плодь оутробы твоѥ;
Hludov, fol. 205v: бл[а]женна ты еси вь женахь. И бл[а]г[осло]вень пло[д] удѣва твоего;
Cambridge, fol. 81v: Beata es tu int[er] mulieres q[uonia]m b[e]n[e]dix[it] d[eu]s fructu[m] ventris
tui.
 Cornelia B. Horn, and John W. Martens,“Let the little children come to me:” Childhood and
Children in Early Christianity (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009),
79.
 Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 156.
 It is also present in manuscript Paris 3014. Interestingly, Sheingorn argues that episodes
18 – 24 create a certain distance between Mary and Joseph and construct Jesus as his mother’s
primary defender and protector. See Sheingorn, “Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of
Jesus,” 257.
 In the fifth-century palimpsest of manuscript Vienna 563, on folio 141v, Joseph appears to-
gether with Mary only in episode Jerusalem (19). See Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 408.
 Voicu, “La tradition latine des Paidika,” 14.
 It is interesting to note that some late medieval manuscripts, such as the fourteenth-cen-
tury Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. Misc. 476 contain IGT with illuminations that accompany
the text of Jesus’ childhood. In one of them, Mary leads (if not “drags,” in Dzon’s words) the
unwilling son Jesus to school. A straightforward replacement of Joseph with Mary occurs in
this visual representation and changes the traditional narrative. Canon. Misc. 476 recycles IGT
In Paris 1772, episode Pools (26) depicts Jesus throwing a curse on a child,
who dies afterward. The parents of the dead child complain to Mary and Joseph
together.⁶²⁸ The parents come together to talk to Jesus.⁶²⁹ Moreover, Joseph is hes-
itant to talk to Jesus, and he lets Mary do it.⁶³⁰ Jesus, not wishing to grieve his
mother, raises a dead boy to life.⁶³¹
Episode Careless Boy (29) in Paris 1772 presents Jesus together with his father
and mother.⁶³² In First Teacher (30), the teacher Zacchias approaches Joseph and
Mary and criticizes them.⁶³³ In First Teacher (31), Zacchias asks Joseph and Mary
to send Jesus to his school. In Zeno (32), when Jesus plays on a roof with other
children, Mary and Joseph appear. In Second Teacher (38), people ask Joseph and
Mary to let Jesus be taught the letters in school. At the end of this episode, he
kills the second teacher and returns home (to his mother). At this point, Joseph
is afraid for Jesus’ safety and complains to Mary.⁶³⁴ However, Mary appears sta-
ble and confident in this scene (as always), reassuring Joseph that God the Fa-
ther will protect their son.⁶³⁵
material within a continuous Life of the Virgin Mary. Also, in the illuminated manuscript L. 58.
Sup. from Ambrosiana, Mary takes the boy Jesus to school in the image that accompanies the
text, although the text says that Joseph takes him to school. See Dzon, “Boys Will Be Boys,”
182; see also Michael Clanchy, “An Icon of Literacy: The Depiction at Tuse of Jesus Going to
School,” in Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavian Culture, ed. Pernille Hermann
(Odense: University of Southern Denmark Press, 2005): 47– 73; Isa Ragusa, “Il manoscritto am-
brosiano L. 58. Sup.: l’infanzia di Christo e le fonti apocrife,” Arte Lombarda 83, No. 4 (1987):
5 – 19; Angelo della Croce, Canonical Histories and Apocryphal Legends Relating to the New Testa-
ment (Milan: J. B. Pogliani and Co., 1873).
 Paris 1772, fol. 89r: Tunc aut[em] sediciosa voce clamabant parentes mortui. Cont[ra] ioseph
et maria[m] dicentes eis.
 Paris 1772, fol. 89r: Cu[m] aut[em] audissent ioseph et maria. statim vener[unt] ad Ih[esu]m.
 Paris 1772, fol. 89r: Cepit eni[m] ioseph marie dicere. quod ille non audebat illi dicere. Mone
eni[m] tu eu[m]. et dic ei. Quare excitasti nobis hodium populi.
 Paris 1772, fol. 89r: At ille nolens matre[m] sua[m] contristari pede[m] suu[m] dextru[m]
p[er]cuciens innates ei[us].
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: Et mox tenuit Ih[esu]m ioseph. et ibat cu[m] eo ad domu[m] sua[m] et
matre[m] cu[m] eo.
 Dijon, fol. 12r: sed video te et maria[m] plus velle dilige[re] filiu[m] v[est]r[u]m. Q[ua]m
tradito[r]es senior[um] p[o]p[u]li. Oportebat enim nos pri[us] honorare p[res]b[yte]ros toti[us]
eccl[es]ie isr[ae]l.
 Dijon, fol. 17v: Timens aut[em] ioseph vocavit ad se maria[m] et dix[it] ei. Ve[re] tristis [sum].
 Dijon, fol. 17v: Maria aut[em] dix[it] illi. Vir dei noli time[re] n[ec] crede[re] q[uo]d h[oc]
fi[eri] possit. Immo sec[ur]e crede q[uo]d q[ui] eu[m] missit int[er] ho[m]i[n]es nasci: ip[s]e
The examples in Paris 1772 and Dijon show that these manuscripts have a
more prominent presence of Mary than the other manuscripts. The Lm variant
in these manuscripts has an almost identical form up to the point where the
text in Paris 1772 stops. Paris 1772 and Dijon are the two earliest Latin manu-
scripts that contain this variant in the medieval West and the earliest evidence
of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas bound together with the Gospel of Pseudo-Mat-
thew. The presence of Mary together with Joseph is uncomplicated to explain
here: these manuscripts, as the earliest evidence of the Lm tradition, contained
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas within a sequence of texts about Mary. Mary could
have been added in these scenes to accompany Joseph. The more of Mary was
undoubtedly desirable in the group of texts whose subject was Mary. The manu-
scripts were tools in the promotion of the figure of Mary. Mary was the overarch-
ing figure in this group of texts. Manuscript Dijon was kept in the founding Cis-
tercian abbey, Cîteaux, and was used in the Cistercian education, while the
Cistercians were known for their specific devotion to Mary.⁶³⁶ Such devotion
was characteristic of an enormous number of monasteries, monastic orders,
and churches at the time in the medieval West. The detail above thus fits well
into the larger picture.
The increased presence of Mary could be a characteristic of the entire Lm tra-
dition, appearing not only in Dijon and Paris 1772 but also in other manuscripts
containing this variant.⁶³⁷ A few other manuscripts dating to the thirteenth cen-
eu[m] ab ho[min]ib[us] malignantib[us] [con]servabit. Et in suo no[m]i[n]e custodiet illu[m] a

malo.
 Rubin, Mother of God, 149 – 157.
 Even if it is not the subject of this book, I need to refer here to an “early” dating of the Lm
variant, which some scholars argued. Voicu claimed that the Lm variant, otherwise regarded as
an “early” Latin variant, had its origin even before the Lv variant, which appeared in the fifth-
century palimpsest. It provokes suspicion that the Lm variant originates from a period earlier
than the fifth century. If this is so, in this early variant, Mary and Joseph appeared together,
while Mary became a more marginal character in the variants that appeared later. In this con-
text, the interpretations of some feminist scholars in the 1980s and 1990s are particularly excit-
ing. They argue that the Gospels give us a glimpse of an early egalitarian community, which held
women and men in equal regard, something that was very unusual at that time. Amy-Jill Levine
said that the “feminist NT scholarship in the early 1970s optimistically argued for the existence
of an initially egalitarian movement. When the canon did not yield evidence of an egalitarian
movement, feminist scholars found what seemed to be proof in the Apocryphal Acts.” In the
light of this, is it justified to ask whether the appearances of Mary together with Joseph in the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas could be a trace of early Christian egalitarian principles found in
the Gospels and the Apocryphal Acts? The hypothesis is nevertheless challenging to prove:
that the Lm variant in these two medieval manuscripts, after the lapse of so many centuries, pre-
served early Christian textual remnants of the Infancy Gospel, in which Mary and Joseph were
tury contain this variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,⁶³⁸ as well as a number
of fourteenth-century manuscripts such as London Harley, Madrid, and others
mentioned by Gijsel.⁶³⁹
If we consider this option, we must ask: given the growing veneration of
Mary in the high and later Middle Ages in the West, why would the Lm variant,
which displays Mary’s increased presence, be substituted by the Lt variant,
where she was not so prominent? This question is particularly relevant, knowing
that the context of the aligned texts about Mary within the Pseudo-Matthew was
not significantly different in the thirteenth century compared to the earlier peri-
ods. The manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon contain the cycles of Marian texts
around the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, but the same goes for the manuscripts
Cambridge and Paris 3014, which contain the Lt variant. Why would some of
these manuscripts keep the text that presents Mary together with Joseph and oth-
ers not?
This question can be answered by restating my conclusion from Chapter 3:
the Lt variant was probably introduced in the West after being translated from
a revised Greek version. In this way, everything in the text, including Mary’s de-
creased presence, was transferred to the West and incorporated into the Pseudo-
Matthew. Scribes may have picked up a text from Byzantium already revised by
redactors and translators, not being fully aware of what the text said. Thus, the Lt
variant continued serving the purpose of devotion to Mary, even if the text con-
tained less of her.
At the same time, a Greek version that served as the basis for the Latin Lt
variant (as well as all other extant Greek variants) was not used for the Marian
depicted as equally present. See Voicu, “La tradition latine des Paidika,” 15; Burke, De infantia
Iesu, 122; Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction
of Christian Origins (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1983); Ross Shepard Kraem-
er, Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the
Greco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Ross Shepard Kraemer, with Mary
Rose D’Angelo, eds., Women and Christian Origins (New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999); Ross Shepard Kraemer, Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); see also Chris Maunder, “Origins of the Cult of the Vir-
gin Mary in the New Testament,” in Origins of the Cult of the Virgin Mary, ed. Chris Maunder
(London: Burns and Oates, 2008): 23 – 39, 24; Susan Frank Parsons, ed., The Cambridge Compan-
ion to Feminist Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Amy-Jill Levine, “Intro-
duction,” in A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Amy-Jill Levine, with
Maria Mayo Robbins (London: T&T Clark International, 2006): 1– 17, 1.
 The manuscripts London, College of Arms, Arundel XXIV, and Durham, Dean and Chapter
Library, B III 26. See Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 505.
 A quick look at Harley 3199 shows that the text of IGT in this fourteenth-century manu-
script mentions Mary together with Joseph in some scenes.
devotion in Byzantium; therefore, the less of Mary in this text would not disrupt
the use of the text. Judging by the manuscripts I analyzed, the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas was not among the texts that corroborated the celebration of the most
prominent cult of Mary in Byzantium.⁶⁴⁰
Jesus’ obedience to his parents
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas devotes significant space to the interaction be-
tween Jesus’ parents, particularly his father, and the child Jesus. What is their
relationship like in the different manuscripts? How does Jesus appear in connec-
tion to his parents? Does he demonstrate any features of ordinary children? Is
there anything in the relationship of Jesus and his parents that indicates an or-
dinary child-parent relationship?
Some scholars have already written on this topic. Cornelia Horn and John
Martens argue:
Jesus is not, in most respects, a model for understanding the infancy of other children nor
does the limited portrayal of his childhood give the reader serious data to enhance his or
her understanding of the life of children at the time in general.⁶⁴¹
Horn and Martens, nevertheless, conclude that one can derive some insights
from this material, saying that “common cultural understandings of childhood
and family life often underlie such stereotypical portrayals.”⁶⁴² In Burke’s
view, the portrayal of Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas must have been
based on the author/compiler’s Christological view of the adult Jesus.⁶⁴³ The lit-
erature from the ancient Mediterranean had “the tendency to depict their protag-
onist children as possessing adult-like features while still being only chil-
dren.”⁶⁴⁴ Such a child is called puer senex. The child-like qualities are
eradicated because ambivalence to childhood was deeply rooted in the Mediter-
ranean societies.⁶⁴⁵ On the other hand, Aasgaard sees the puer senex only in
 In the Byzantine tradition, it is only manuscript Sabaiticus, which contains the fragment of
the Life of Mary following the Infancy Gospel of Thomas; yet, this detail is insufficient to claim
the role of the Infancy Gospel in the cult of Mary in Byzantium, particularly as such alignment of
texts has not reappeared in later manuscripts.
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 75.
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 75.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 276.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 223.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 261.
Jesus’ relationships with adults when verbal communication is employed. In all

other situations, Jesus acts like a child.⁶⁴⁶ According to Aasgaard, “the most ad-
equate approach is to see Jesus in this text as a fairly true-to-life portrait of a late
antique child.”⁶⁴⁷ Betsworth also views Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas as
indeed a child.⁶⁴⁸ In my view, these opinions depend on the textual forms of the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas that different scholars used in their research. In the
various versions, Jesus’ divinity and child-like features are perceived differently
by the other characters of the story, while his relationship with his parents also
varies from one version to another.
In this section, I mainly focus on the depictions of Jesus’ obedience and sub-
mission to his parents. The subject of obedience is essential in the early Christian
literature that deals with the topic of children.⁶⁴⁹ For children in antiquity and
early Christianity, obedience was a central part of a personal relationship with
the parent.⁶⁵⁰ In Christian communities, a lack of discipline in children reflected
a lack of adherence to the faith.⁶⁵¹ In Aasgaard’s view, “obedience emerges as an
important value in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, within the family and vis-à-vis
other authority figures: Jesus is to obey his parents.”⁶⁵²
In the following analysis, I will demonstrate that Jesus of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas is obedient to his parents to a different extent in the different manu-
scripts. In some manuscripts, while not in the others, the parents try to impose
their authority. The dynamics of their relationship must be examined through the
parents’ actions and Jesus’ response to these actions. Jesus’ obedience must also
be examined through the lens of his divine nature. The critical distinction to be
made concerns Jesus’ divinity versus his actions as an ordinary child who is obe-
dient to his parents.
The two manuscripts containing the Lm variant of the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas, Paris 1772 and Dijon, describe this relationship significantly differently from
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 101.

 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 101– 102.
 Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 186.
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 79.
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 79, 85. For example, in the Gospel of
Luke, Jesus sets the model of children’s obedience to their parents as an expected model of
Christian behavior. Jesus is twelve years old at the end of this Gospel pericope. His parents
lose him in Jerusalem, and after a three-day search, they find him in the temple. Although
the precedence in the episode is given to God his Father over his earthly parents, the story
“still ends with Jesus acknowledging his earthly parents’ authority; Luke states that Jesus was
obedient or ‘subject’ to them.”
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 81.
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 75.
the rest of the material (although the other manuscripts also have their nuances).
In Paris 1772 and particularly in Dijon, Jesus is neither obedient nor rebellious.
His parents understand his divine nature and act accordingly. The family gets
along, and many times acts against others as a unit. There is no space for
Jesus to behave disobediently.
In Pools (26), after Jesus kills a child and the child’s parents complain, Jo-
seph does not dare to talk to Jesus, and he asks Mary to do it. Jesus fulfills
the request of his mother to bring the child back to life because he does not
wish to grieve her…⁶⁵³ After Jesus kills the son of Annas, in the episode Careless
Boy (29), his father Joseph took hold of Jesus and went with him to his own
house…⁶⁵⁴ In the same episode, the father and the son talk about it reasonably
and understand each other.⁶⁵⁵ Joseph’s sole concern is with the uproar of the
people of Israel; nevertheless, he does not attempt to impose his authority
and force Jesus to obey him. In two further episodes, Carpenter (37) and Joseph
Raises Dead (40), Jesus advises Joseph, who takes the advice without hesitation.
Jesus appears almost as a father figure, while Joseph fully complies.
However, in the rest of the manuscripts, Jesus’ relationship with his father
involves more considerable misunderstandings. The father does not seem to
comprehend Jesus’ divine nature, and he imposes his authority. I emphasized
that Joseph appears mainly without Mary in the rest of the manuscripts, while
they appear together in Dijon and Paris 1772. Accordingly, in the manuscripts
that I shall comment on further, mainly Jesus’ relationship with his father dete-
riorates regarding their understanding.
In Sparrows (2.4), Joseph imposes his authority on Jesus in manuscripts Sa-
baiticus and Vienna hist.91.⁶⁵⁶ Joseph is warned that Jesus has made sparrows
out of clay and profaned Sabbath in this way. In Sabaiticus, the verb ἐπιτιμάω
 Paris 1772, fol. 89r: At ille nolens matre[m] sua[m] contristari pede[m] suu[m] dextru[m]
p[er]cuciens innates ei[us].
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: Et mox tenuit Ih[esu]m ioseph. et ibat cu[m] eo ad domu[m] sua[m] et
matre[m] cu[m] eo.
 Dijon, fol. 11v: Accedens aut[em] ioseph ad Ih[esu]m: monebat eu[m] dice[n]s. Ut q[ui]d
talia facis? Iam m[u]lti dolentes contra te su[n]t. Et p[ro]p[ter] te h[abe]nt nos odio: et p[ro]
p[ter] te molestias sustinem[us]. Respondens Ih[esu]s dixit ad ioseph. Nullus fili[us] sapiens
est nisi que[m] p[ate]r suus s[e]c[un]d[u]m sci[enti]am hui[us] t[em]p[or]is erudierit. Et p[at]ris
sui sapi[enti]a nemini nocet. N[ec] male agentib[us]. Tu[n]c cong[re]gati su[n]t om[ne]s adv[er]
sus Ih[esu]m. Et acc[us]abant eum adv[er]sus ioseph. Ut h[oc] vidit ioseph p[er]t[er]rit[us] est
nimiu[m]. Timens vim p[o]p[u]li sui Isr[ae]l.
 The two Greek manuscripts insist on the father’s authority over the son; the other manu-
scripts do not display this trait. Sabaiticus, fol. 66v: Καὶ ἐλθῶν Ἰωσὴφ ἐπετίμα αὐτὸν λέγων;
Vienna hist. 91, fol. 199v: Καὶ ἐλθὼν ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον καὶ ἰδὼν ἀνέκραξεν αὐτὸν λέγων.
means imposing a moral and corrective value upon someone. In Vienna hist.91,
Joseph shouted at Jesus (ἀνέκραξεν). Jesus appears as an ordinary child who re-
ceives harsh remarks from his father.
In Joseph’s Rebuke (5.1), Joseph tries to talk to Jesus after the parents of a
dead child complain about him. He explains the situation to Jesus, approaching
him as a father proper in manuscript Cambridge.⁶⁵⁷ In manuscripts Vienna
hist.91 and Athens 355, Joseph explains things to Jesus privately.⁶⁵⁸ Joseph called
his child Jesus and (secretly – Hludov) taught him saying in all Slavonic manu-
scripts.⁶⁵⁹ These examples reflect a typical interaction between parents and chil-
dren. However, Sabaiticus describes the conversation as if two adults conduct
it.⁶⁶⁰
In the continuation of episode 5.1, Jesus answers his father Joseph in a com-
plex way, yet he willingly submits himself to Joseph in most manuscripts, saying
that he will be silent for his father’s sake.⁶⁶¹ Jesus’s conscious submission may
indicate that he acts as a divine being who willingly and generously decides
to be subjugated to Joseph. Jesus and Joseph are still able to reach an agreement
about the issue. In Sabaiticus, however, Jesus does not act in this way but says:
You might know wise words; you are not ignorant where your words came from;
they too shall not be raised. ⁶⁶² Here too, Jesus acts as a divine being, but the mis-
understanding between the father and the son grows.
In most manuscripts, Joseph punishes Jesus after this scene (in 5.2) to im-
pose his authority. It does not happen in Paris 1772 and Dijon, where Joseph
does not use physical violence towards Jesus. The way he talks to his father in
Joseph’s Rebuke (5.3) does not look like a child’s conversation with a parent.
The manuscripts mainly present Jesus as hostile to his father. When he addresses
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: Vocavit Ioseph Ih[esu]m et p[er]cepit eum docere.
 Athens 355, fol. 62v: Προσκαλεσάμενος δὲ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐνουθέτει αὐτὸν κατ’ ἰδίαν
λέγων; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: Προσκαλεσάμενος δὲ ὁ Ἰωσήφ τὸ παιδίον κατ’ ἰδίαν, ἐνουθέ
[τει] αὐτὸν λέγων.
 Novaković, 49: призва Иосифь отроче своѥ Ісоуса, и сице оучаше и, глаголѥ; Hludov,
fol. 201r: И призва Їѡсїфь ѡтроче ѡ таинно г[лаго]ль; St Petersburg, fol. 178r: Призвав же
їѡсифь ѡтрочѧ ї[соу]са, и оучаше е гл[агол]ѧ.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Καὶ λέγει τῷ Ἰησοῦ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ; A similar description occurs in the four-
teenth-century Berne, fol. 41v: Vocavit ioseph ihesum et dixit ei.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: ἐγὼ οἶδα ὅ[τι] τὰ ῥήματά σου ταῦτα, ἐμά οὐκ εἰσὶν ἀλλὰ σά. ὅμως
σιγήσω διὰ σέ; Athens 355, fol. 62v: ὅμως ἔχω σιωπῆσαι διὰ σέ; Novaković, 49: обаче азь да
прѣмлькноу тебе ради, отьче; Hludov, fol. 201r: Ѡбаче тебе рада оумльчоуть; St Peters-
burg, fol. 178r: ѡбаче тебе ради прѣмлъчѧ; Cambridge, fol. 79v: ego aute[m] tacebo pro te.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Φρόνιμα ῥήματά συ ἐγινώσκες ἄν πόθεν ἦν τὰ ῥήματά σου οὐκ ἀγνοεῖς.
Ἐπίπεπτα διήγισαν κἀκεῖνα οὐκ ἀναστήσονται. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 481.
Joseph in Athens 355, Jesus implies that his father does not know his nature.⁶⁶³ In
the Slavonic manuscripts, Jesus “protested” and “deprecated,” and additionally
offended his father, diminishing his respect for him: Jesus calls him a “scourer”
(разбоиниче). Jesus threatens his father directly, and his behavior is disobedi-
ent.⁶⁶⁴ The Slavonic manuscripts, and Athens 355, describe Jesus’ hostility to
his father, Joseph. In manuscript Cambridge, he is disturbed (turbatus) and im-
plies that his father does not know his nature. Jesus threatens: Do not make me
upset. ⁶⁶⁵
This feature is toned down in Sabaiticus and to some extent in Vienna
hist.91. Although Vienna hist.91 states that Jesus became angry, he uses milder
words in addressing his father,⁶⁶⁶ and reconciliation is close at hand. In Sabai-
ticus, Jesus’ answer is longer, more elaborate, and less threatening.⁶⁶⁷ Jesus ex-
plains to Joseph how he should treat him correctly, and he even admits his fa-
ther’s authority at the end. Although he acknowledges his submission to his
father, he appears eloquently superior here, speaking words unusual for a child.
In the episode First teacher (6.2b), Jesus submits to his father in Vienna
hist.91 and Athens 355, saying: Truly, teacher, all that my father said to you is
true. ⁶⁶⁸ The Slavonic manuscripts repeat the submission of Jesus to his father.⁶⁶⁹
However, they continue: All that my father told you is true – that I am the
 Athens 355, fol. 63r: ᾿Aρκεῖ σοι ὅτι βλέπεις με καὶ μή με λοπϊάζεις. οὐ γὰρ οἶδας τίς εἰμὶ καὶ
πρὸς σὲ πάρειμι.
 Novaković, 49: Достоить ти, да иштеши мене обрѣзати, отьче, разбоиниче мои, исти-
ноу ты не вѣси ли, твои ли ѥсмь азь? То и ты не оскрьблѩи мене, нь оубо твои ѥсмь сынь,
ѩко кь тебѣ придохь; Hludov, fol. 201r-201v: Докле стрти искати мене и неѡбрѣтати. раз-
боиниче ег[д]а истинине веси твои ли ѥсмь азь. Аще ли то не гнѣваи мене. Обаче твои
ѥсмь к тебѣ приидохь; St Petersburg, fol. 178v: Довлеть пти искати мене и не ѡбрѣтати
ѡ разбоиниче ѩко въ истинѫ твои ли есмь не вѣси. Абїе не ѡскръблѣи мене. твои бо
есмъ и к тебѣ прїидо[х].
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: Sufficit tibi vide[re] me et non me tangere. Tu aut[em] nescis qui ego
sum. Q[uod] si scires n[on] me co[n]t[ri]stares. Et q[uam]vi[s] ego modo tecu[m] sum ante te
fact[us] sum.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: ᾿Aρκετόν σοί ἐσ[τίν] ζητεῖν καὶ μή εὑρίσκ[ειν]. Μάλι[στα] ὅτι σοφὸς
ἔπραξας οὐκ οἶδας ὅτι σός εἰμί, μή με λύπ[ει].
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r-v: ᾿Aρκείτω σοι τὸ ζητεῖν με καὶ εὑρίσκειν μὴ πρὸς τούτῳ ἔτι καὶ μωλω-
πίζειν φυσικὴν ἄγνοιαν ἐπιλαβόμενος καὶ οὐκ εἶδες με σαφῶς τί σοῦ εἰμι. Ἴδε οἶδας μὴ λυπεῖν με.
Σὸς γὰρ ἡμῖν. καὶ πρὸς σε ἐχειρώθην.
 Athens 355, fol. 63r: ἀληθῶς καθηγητά ὅσα εἴρηκέ σοι ὁ πατήρ μου ἀληθές ἐστί; Vienna hist.
91, fol. 200v: ἀληθ[ῶς] καθηγητά πάντα ὅσα εἴρηκέν σοι ὁ π[ατ]ήρ μου ἀληθὰ ἐισὶν.
 Novaković, 49: Вьса, ѥлико ти рече отьць мои, истина ѥсть; Hludov, fol. 201v: вса ѥже
ти ре[че] ѡ[т]ць мои истина ѥ[сть]; St Petersburg, fol. 179r: истина е[с] оучителю. Въсе еже
ре[че] ѡ[та]ць мои.
Lord….⁶⁷⁰ In manuscript Cambridge, there is no submission of Jesus to his father,

nor any mention of the father’s confirmation of Jesus’ words. Whatever comes,
not from his father’s mouth, but his mouth, is truth.⁶⁷¹ Jesus is therefore present-
ed as an authority. Sabaiticus also presents Jesus as the sole authority.⁶⁷²
At the end of episode 6.2b, Jesus refers to his father, Joseph, as a witness to
his authority. In Athens 355 and Vienna hist.91, Jesus says: When you see my
cross which my father mentioned, then you will believe that all I said to you is
true. ⁶⁷³ The end of episode 6.2b in the Slavonic manuscripts has an exciting
line, where Novaković says: When you see my cross, which my father mentioned,
it will be true that I am the Lord and father in everything. ⁶⁷⁴ Hludov and St Peters-
burg have a similar message.⁶⁷⁵ The Latin manuscript Cambridge has the same
mention of the father as a witness.⁶⁷⁶ This line does not appear in Sabaiticus,
which does not mention Jesus’ acclaimed authority.
Episode Carpenter (13) describes Jesus working at carpentry with his father.
Jesus helps the father solve a seemingly impossible situation where he does not
have good material to make a bed for a customer. Jesus acts as a fatherly figure.
In some manuscripts, such as Athens 355, he can help his father, console him,
and issue an order.⁶⁷⁷ An ordinary child would do the opposite: obey and be ad-
vised. Finally, in Second teacher (14.3), Joseph imposes his authority in almost all
the manuscripts by forbidding Jesus’ mother to let Jesus out of the house be-
 Novaković, 49: вьсемоу же Господь азь ѥсмь; Hludov, fol. 201v: ѩко вьсѣмь азь ѥсмь
г[оспо]дь. St Petersburg, fol. 179r: и семоу азь г[оспод]ь есмь. These words of Jesus to the
teacher are not connected to the previous paragraph because the father did not say that Jesus
is God, which this paragraph claims.
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: Vere mag[iste]r. q[u]i[a] q[ua]nta de ore meo p[ro]cedu[n]t vera sunt.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67v: Καθηγητὴς ὢν εὐφυῶς ἐξήχθης καὶ τὸ ὄνομα ᾧ ὀνομάζῃ ἀλλότριος
τυγχάνεις. Ἔξωθεν γὰρ εἰμι ὑμῶν. ἔνδωθεν δὲ ὑμῖν διὰ τὴν σαρκικὴν εὐγένειαν ὑπάρχων. Σὺ
δὲ νομικὸς ὢν τὸν νόμον οὐκ οἶδες.
 Athens 355, fol. 63v: καὶ ὅταν ἴδῃς τὸν σταυρόν μου ὃν εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ μου τότε πιστεύσεις
ὅτι πάντα ὅσα εἶπόν σοι ἀληθῆ εἰσιν; Vienna, fol. 200v: ὅταν ἴδῃς τὸν σταυρόν μ[ου] ὃν εἴπεν σοι
ὁ πατήρ μου τότε πιστεύσει. ὅτι πάντα ὅσα εἶπον σοί ἀληθινά εἰσι.
 Novaković, 50: Егда хоштеши видѣти крьсть мои, ѥже рече отьць мои, истина ѥсть.
Вьсемоу азь ѥсмь Господь и отьць.
 Hludov, fol. 201v-202r: Ег[д]а же оузриши кр[с]та моего. Его же ре[че] ѡ[ть]ць мои.
Тог[д]а разоумѣеши. Ѩко вса елико ти рекохь, истина соуть. И всемоу азь б[ог]ь ѥсмь;
St Petersburg, fol. 179v: Ег[д]а оузриши кр[с]т мои, иже ти ре[че] ѡ[т]ць мои. Тогда вѣрѫ
имеши ѩко въсе елико рекѫ ти истина е[сть]. И се азь блгь есмъ.
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: ut intelligas quia om[n]ia que procedunt de ore meo vera sunt.
 Athens 355, fol. 66r: μὴ λυποῦ ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον θὲς τὰ ξύλα καὶ ἰσάζωμεν αὐτό. ἐποίησε ὁ
Ἰωσὴφ ὡς προσέταξεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς.
cause of a punishment. This scene is absent from Dijon, a representative of the

Lm variant.
To sum up, in Dijon, we see a clear strategy concerning what the relationship
of Jesus and his parents was supposed to tell the readers: Jesus is divine in a
child’s body; his parents understand his nature and support him. They try to pro-
tect him as a child from the rest of the world, but at the same time, they talk to
him as a divine being. Jesus is neither obedient nor rebellious. Their understand-
ing of Jesus’ nature in the rest of the manuscripts I have analyzed is different. In
particular, Jesus confirms on a couple of occasions that his father fails to under-
stand his nature. In manuscripts other than Dijon, the divine nature of Jesus is
less evident to others.
Consequently, they fail to treat him as a divine and approach him as an or-
dinary child: his father sometimes shouts at him and punishes him. In these
manuscripts, Jesus is still divine, but he is also more of an average child because
others fail to understand his nature and act towards him as a child. Comparing
this view to Dijon, where Jesus is understood by his parents as divine, in these
manuscripts, Jesus becomes more human and appears more like an ordinary
child. As I argue below, it could have been part of a more extensive set of
ideas about Jesus’ humanity that emerged first in the medieval East and later
in the West.
Stephen Shoemaker argues that after the defeat of Iconoclasm in Byzantium,
a renewed interest in Jesus’ humanity appeared.⁶⁷⁸ In Shoemaker’s view, the
iconodules, the supporters of icons, increasingly emphasized the humanity of
Christ because they were forced to defend the use of matter to represent the di-
vine.⁶⁷⁹ Ioli Kalavrezou also argues that there was a general effort in the after-
math of Iconoclasm to emphasize Christ’s human nature. It was done, in part,
by stressing Mary’s humanity.⁶⁸⁰ This “humanization” of Christ appeared in
the Western culture only in the twelfth century, when the insistence on Jesus’ hu-
manity was closely linked to the increased veneration of Mary, mainly through
 Stephen Shoemaker, “The Virgin Mary’s Hidden Past: From Ancient Marian Apocrypha to
the Medieval Vitae Virginis,” Marian Studies 60 (2009): 1– 30, 24.
 Stephen Shoemaker, “Mary at the Cross, East and West: Maternal Compassion and Affective
Piety in the Earliest Life of the Virgin and the High Middle Ages,” The Journal of Theological Stud-
ies 62, No. 2 (2011): 570 – 606, 585.
 Ioli Kalavrezou, “Images of the Mother: When the Virgin Mary Became the Meter Theou,”
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990): 165 – 172, 169.
the development of “affective” modes of piety and thanks to the writings of Ber-
nard of Clairvaux and other Cistercian thinkers.⁶⁸¹
It may, at first sight, seem far-fetched to connect the transformation of the
ideas about Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to these more significant
movements, but the idea deserves consideration. Similarly, Shoemaker linked
the development of “affective” modes of piety which appeared at the end of
Iconoclasm in the East (Byzantium), with a similar notion that emerged in the
High Middle Ages (eleventh century) in the West.⁶⁸² Along with these immense
movements, the idea about Jesus’ human and child-like side, which probably
first appeared in Byzantium, could have been transferred to the West along
with the emergence of the Lt variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. In its re-
vised form (Lt), the text of Jesus’ childhood may have been one of the media
of these changes.
Mary Dzon also discusses the increased emphasis on Jesus’ humanity in the
high and late medieval Latin and English sources (both written and visual).⁶⁸³
She notes that in the last few centuries of the Middle Ages, Jesus appeared in
the medieval representations as both a child-God and a gentler Jesus. In her
view, scholars have not yet explored this juxtaposition.⁶⁸⁴ Dzon concludes that
people’s thinking in the high and late Middle Ages about the nature of children
impacted the reception of apocryphal legends that portray the boy Jesus as a real
child who does things that are both child-like and childish.⁶⁸⁵ While the views
about the nature of children may have influenced a variety of sources that
Dzon considered, particularly late medieval examples, I believe that in its initial
phase (twelfth century) and with the outburst of the Cistercian interest in the
human side of Jesus, these representations of Jesus in the West were translated
from Byzantium, which concurred with the appearance of the Lt variant of the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the West.
Moreover, while Jesus becomes more child-like in the manuscripts that I an-
alyzed, a significant gap in understanding occurs within his family, where mainly
Joseph does not understand Jesus’ divine nature and at times acts malevolently
towards Jesus. This distancing of Jesus from Joseph may have been a conse-
quence of Joseph’s general marginalization in the history of Christianity. Patrick
 See Shoemaker, “Mary at the Cross, East and West;” Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Cistercians,
Heresy and Crusade in Occitania, 1145 – 1229: Preaching in the Lord’s Vineyard (York: York Univer-
sity Press, 2001); see also Dzon, The Quest for the Christ Child.
 Shoemaker, “Mary at the Cross, East and West,” 576.
 Dzon, “Boys Will Be Boys,” 179 – 226.
 Dzon, “Boys Will Be Boys,” 180.
 Dzon, “Boys Will Be Boys,” 184.
Geary argues that Joseph remained firmly fixed only within the context of the na-
tivity and childhood narratives of Jesus and Mary.⁶⁸⁶ Boff argues that Joseph re-
mained in obscurity and was ostracized by theologians for fifteen centuries.⁶⁸⁷
The Fathers of the Church did not write homilies on Joseph in either Greek or
Latin.⁶⁸⁸ The first homilies and treatises on him started to appear only in the fif-
teenth century.⁶⁸⁹ Joseph was described in greater detail in Apocrypha than in
mainstream theological discourse. Justin Glessner argues that “in all of his
early (Christian) representations, Joseph appears as a liminal character, in
play and contested as he was, not least because of his complicated parental
and spousal relationships.”⁶⁹⁰ Glessner calls Joseph “a male character who is al-
most and not quite a father and/or husband.”⁶⁹¹ Along with the enhanced de-
scriptions of Jesus’ human and child-like side, Jesus and Joseph gradually
grew apart as the father and the son in this text.
Parents’ punishment and encouragement
The distancing of Joseph from Jesus noted above is particularly visible in this
text through the examples where Joseph punishes Jesus. A significant difference
occurs between the manuscripts containing the Lm variant and the rest of the
corpus. At no point in the manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon does Joseph punish
Jesus. His father completely understands his divine nature, and when concerned,
he is concerned only with how other people react to Jesus. In manuscript Cam-
bridge, containing the Lt variant, and in the other Greek and Slavonic manu-
scripts, the misunderstanding between the father and the son widens, and Jo-
seph punishes Jesus. This argument corroborates my previous conclusion
about the correspondence of the Lt variant in the manuscript Cambridge with
the Byzantine and Slavonic manuscripts examined here, in contrast to the manu-
scripts containing the Lm variant, namely, Paris 1772 and Dijon.
The episode Joseph’s Rebuke (5.2) describes Joseph being irritated by Jesus’
behavior and physically punishing him. Both Cambridge and the Byzantine
 Geary, Women at the Beginning, 61.

 Leonardo Boff, Saint Joseph: The Father of Jesus in a Fatherless Society (Eugene, Oregon:
Cascade Books, 2009), 84.
 Boff, Saint Joseph, 84.
 Boff, Saint Joseph, 84.
 Justin M. Glessner, The Making(s) of an Average Joe: Gender, the Everyday, and the Reception
of Joseph of Nazareth in Early Christian Discourse (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2022), 3.
 Glessner, The Making(s) of an Average Joe, 3.
manuscripts testify to the same method of punishment: Joseph pulls Jesus by the
ear (sometimes in anger).⁶⁹² The scene as described in Cambridge and the Byzan-
tine manuscripts indicates Jesus’ and Joseph’s lousy relationship. Jesus is depict-
ed as a typical child whom his father punishes. In the same episode of Dijon
(29), there is no hint of any aggression of Joseph towards Jesus. Joseph is terrified
because the people of Israel are complaining about Jesus, and he fears their vi-
olence and uproar.⁶⁹³
If we look at the other descriptions of violence towards children in ancient
literature, physical punishment in this text does not come as a surprise. Scholars
agree that violence was common in the ancient world. Horn and Martens argue
that punishment was known and advised in the Jewish and the Greco-Roman
worlds to educate children.⁶⁹⁴ The beating of children by their parents and teach-
ers was common in ancient Greece and Rome, and rabbinic literature provides
ample evidence for a similar state of affairs in Jewish circles.⁶⁹⁵ Bloomer confirms
that Roman law clarifies that teachers and parents were allowed to punish a
child for the sake of correction, but no permanent injury could ensue.⁶⁹⁶ In
Late Antiquity, a father (paterfamilias), who already had a range of possibilities
for punishment, acquired extended rights for his disciplinary authority towards
children for the deeds of “ingratitude, arrogance, and cruelty.”⁶⁹⁷ Children were
forbidden to insult a parent verbally. It pertained even to light offenses.
Christian authors were generally worried about violence unless it was in-
structional. Violence per se was not necessarily harmful, provided the correct
emotional attitude accompanied it.⁶⁹⁸ If instructional, it was viewed as benefi-
cial. Christian authors were worried that petty violence, such as shoving, smack-
 The Latin manuscript Cambridge describes Joseph pulling Jesus by the ear in anger. Cam-
bridge, fol. 79v: Et cu[m] vidisset Ioseph que fecit Ih[esu]s: cum furore app[re]hendit eum p[er]
auriculam. In Byzantine manuscript Athens 355, fol. 63r, Joseph pulls Jesus’ ear: ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ
Ἰωσὴφ ἔτεινεν αὐτοῦ τὸ ὠτίον; Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ ἐπελάβετο τοῦ ὁτί οὐ αὐτοῦ
καὶ ἔτιλεν σφόδρα; Vienna hist.91, fol. 200r: καὶ ἐγερθεὶς Ἰωσήφ, ἐπελάβετο αὐτοῦ τὸ ὠτίον.
καὶ ἔτιλλ[εν] αὐτῷ σφό[δρα].
 Dijon, fol. 11v: Et acc[us]abant eum adv[er]sus ioseph. Ut h[oc] vidit ioseph p[er]t[er]rit[us]
est nimiu[m]. Timens vim p[o]p[u]li sui Isr[ae]l.
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 120.
 Amram Tropper, “The Economics of Jewish Childhood in Late Antiquity,” Hebrew Union
College Annual 76 (2005): 189 – 233, 210.
 Martin W. Bloomer, “Corporal Punishment in the Ancient School,” in A Companion to An-
cient Education, ed. Martin W. Bloomer (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015): 184– 198, 185.
 Julia Hillner, “Family Violence: Punishment and Abuse in the Late Roman Household,” in
Approaches to the Byzantine Family, eds. Leslie Brubaker, and Shaun Tougher (Farnham: Ash-
gate, 2013): 21– 46, 27– 28.
 Hillner, “Family Violence,” 35.
ing, and verbal insults, was not adequately addressed in Roman law.⁶⁹⁹ Casual
violence, such as shouting, swearing, spying, chaining up, striking with the
bare hands, and pulling hair, received particularly negative criticism from Chris-
tian authors.⁷⁰⁰ Hillner sees this insistence on petty violence as a reflection of
actual occurrences within late Roman households. Christian authors must
have had some direct knowledge of the occurrences in their communities.⁷⁰¹
If we look at the same episode of Joseph’s Rebuke (5.2) in the Slavonic manu-
scripts, they describe this scene differently. More precisely, Novaković still com-
plies with the Byzantine manuscripts: Joseph took Jesus by his ear and pulled it
hard. The other children were there with him, playing. ⁷⁰² In Hludov, Joseph gets
very upset at Jesus and takes him by the hair, pulling it hard and tearing it.⁷⁰³
In St Petersburg, Joseph gets very upset at Jesus, takes his ear, and starts to
pull it while Jesus tries to resist.⁷⁰⁴ These examples describe more severe punish-
ments, possibly opening a window into the perceptions and attitudes towards a
corresponding punishment of a child among medieval Slavs. They allow a pos-
sibility to think of them as the windows into the everyday life of medieval Slavs.
Additional research and the attestation of such practices in other contemporary
sources and archeology is needed to establish this evidence’s relevance. For the
moment, we may consider that pulling by the ear might have been replaced in
this Christian environment by pulling by the hair (also including the child’s re-
sistance) so that the audience of this text hear or read about the punishment in
the way they understood it better or even experienced it more commonly. Inter-
estingly, in Robert Bartlett’s study of the symbolic meanings of hair in the Middle
Ages, where he deals with some examples predominantly from Western Latin
sources, there is no mention of any evidence of punishing a child by pulling
its hair. ⁷⁰⁵
A comparative look at this text’s part in the other languages reveals that
pulling by the ear is repeated in the Georgian text.⁷⁰⁶ In the Syriac text, Jesus
 Hillner, “Family Violence,” 32.

 Hillner, “Family Violence,” 32– 33.
 Hillner, “Family Violence,” 33.
 Novaković, 49: Тогда абиѥ видѣвь Иосифь что сьтвори, и ѥть Ісоуса за оухо и протег-
ноу и зѣло. И бѣхоу ини тоу сь ними играюште.
 Hludov, fol. 201r: И разгнѣва се Їѡсїфь на І[соу]са. И еть его за власи и потезаше зѣло
цепено.
 St Petersburg, fol. 178v: и видѣ їѡсифь ѩко сътвори и разгнѣва сѧ ѯѣло. и ѧть его за
оухо и влѣчаше ѡн же ѡтѧѯаше сѧ.
 See Robert Bartlett, “Symbolic Meanings of Hair in the Middle Ages,” Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society 4 (1994): 43 – 60.
 Garitte, “Le fragment géorgien,” 511– 520.
is seized by the hand and pulled hard.⁷⁰⁷ In the Ethiopic text, Jesus is pulled by
the ears and cheeks, while in the Arabic text, Jesus is thrashed (beaten with a
stick or whip, or lunged at wildly) and severely scolded.⁷⁰⁸ This episode had var-
ious contents, possibly according to what was perceived as an appropriate pun-
ishment of children by parents in such situations. In this sense, it is a potential
window into the attitudes and perceptions of their audiences.
We observe that another episode of the Infancy Gospel, which speaks of a dif-
ferent kind of punishment, has been adopted by various groups as a shared cul-
tural element. In the episode Second teacher (14.3), Joseph restricted Jesus’
movements because he had killed the teacher. In this episode, the mother has
the role of a mediator and the guardian of the child. This episode does not dis-
play any significant difference among the manuscripts, implying that the various
areas shared a common cultural understanding of this punishment. The episode
appears in Cambridge, Byzantine, and Slavonic manuscripts, but not in Dijon,
where Joseph fears for Jesus’ life and safety but does not impose any restrictions
on him.⁷⁰⁹
If we now turn to the examples in this text where Jesus is treated positively
and encouraged by his parents, we see that his mother is the one who supports
Jesus in the few episodes in which she appears. The description of Jesus’ mother,
Mary, being proud and optimistic differs little in the manuscripts. In the episode
Water in Cloak (11), the mother sees Jesus’ miracle. She marvels, kisses her son,
gives thanks to God, and cherishes in her heart what she has just witnessed.
Mary’s reaction is similarly described in all the manuscripts, including
Dijon.⁷¹⁰ In Dijon (33), Mary was pleased when Jesus brought water in a cloak
 This expression comes from Peeters’ edition of Vatican Syr. 159, dated to the seventeenth
century. See Peeters, Évangiles apocryphes 2, 304– 308. In the recent publication of the Syriac
text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which Tony Burke edited from four manuscripts, two of
which are dated to the fifth and sixth century, Joseph becomes angry at Jesus and takes hold
of his ear and pulls it hard. See Burke and Landau, New Testament Apocrypha, 62.
 For the translation of the Ethiopic text, see Tony Burke, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas:
Ethiopic,” <http://www.tonyburke.ca/infancy-gospel-of-thomas/the-infancy-gospel-of-thomas-
ethiopic/> Last accessed: 07/08/2021; for the Arabic text, see Noja, “L’Évangile arabe apocryphe
de Thomas.”
 Dijon, fol. 17v: Timens aut[em] ioseph vocavit ad se maria[m] et dix[it] ei. Ve[re] tristis [sum].
 Sabaiticus, fol. 70r: Μαρία δὲ ἰδοῦσα ὃ ἐποίησεν σιμίον ὁ Ἰησοῦς κατεφίλει αὐτὸν λέγουσα.
Κύριε ὁ Θεός μου εὐλόγησον τὸ τέκνον μας; Vienna 91, fol. 202r: ἰδοῦσα δὲ ἡ Μαρία τὸ γεγονὸς
κατεφίλῃ αὐτ[ὸν] καὶ διετήρει ἐν αὐτῇ τὰ μιστή[ρια] ἃ ἔβλεπεν αὐτ[ὸν] ποιοῦντα; Athens 355,
fol. 65v: ἰδοῦσα δὲ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ ἡ ἁγία Θεοτόκος ὅτι ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς σημεῖον κατεφίλησεν
αὐτὸν καὶ εἶπε. Κύριε ἐλέησον τὸν υἱόν μου; Cambridge, fol. 80v: Cumq[ue] vidis[set] m[ate]r mi-
for her, and she wondered and reflected within herself and laid up all these things
in her heart. ⁷¹¹
Mary is pleased with her son Jesus in episode Jerusalem (19) when she listens
to scribes and Pharisees praising Jesus, and she treasures all these things in her
heart. Where this episode is present in the manuscripts, it differs little in con-
tents.⁷¹² It is present in Sabaiticus, Vienna hist.91, Athens 355, and the Slavonic
manuscripts Hludov and Novaković edition. Manuscript Cambridge also con-
tains the section where Mary is pleased with Jesus (19.4– 5).⁷¹³
Carpenter (13) is the only episode where Joseph encourages and supports his
son Jesus. Joseph hugs and kisses the child and gives thanks to God, considering
himself blessed.⁷¹⁴ This scene, which describes a typical parent reaction of being
proud of a child, is present in all the manuscripts except Dijon.
raculum quod fecit Ih[esu]s osculat[a] e[st] eu[m] et dixit. D[omi]ne exaudi me et salva filium
meu[m]; Novaković, 52: Видѣвьши же мати ѥго Мариѩ знамениѩ, ѩже сьтвори Ісоусь и
приѥмьши облобыза и матерскыи и блюдѣше ѥго; Hludov, fol. 203r: и видѣвши
м[а]т[р]и его еже сьтвори ї[соу]с и лоби злего.
 Dijon, fol. 15r-v: At illa videns mirabat[ur]. Et cogitabat int[ra] se et condebat o[mn]ia h[aec]
in corde suo.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 72v: Σὺ εἶ ἡ μήτηρ τοῦ παιδίου τούτου ἡ δὲ εἶπεν ἐγὼ εἰμι εἶπαν δὲ πρὸς
αὐτὴν μακαρία εἶ σύ ὅτι ηὐλόγησεν κύριος Θεὸς τὸν καρπὸν τῆς κοιλίας σου. Τοιαύτην γὰρ
σοφίαν ἐνεστώς καὶ δόξαν ἀρετῆς οὐδὲ εἴδαμεν οὔτε ἠκούσαμέν ποτε… καὶ διετήρει πάντα τὰ
ῥήματα ταῦτα συμβαλοῦσα ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτῆς; Vienna, fol. 204r: σὺ εἶ ἡ μή[τη]ρ τοῦ παιδί
[ου] τούτου ἡ δὲ εἶπ[εν] ἐγὼ εἰμὶ καὶ εἶπον αὐτὴν μακαρί[α] σὺ ἐν γυναιξὶν ὅτι εὐλόγησ[εν] ὁ
Θ[εὸ]ς τ[ὸν] καρπ[ὸν] τῆς κοιλία[ς] σου. Τοιαύτην γὰρ δόξ[αν] καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν οὔτε οἴδαμ[εν]
οὔτε ἠκούσαμ[εν] πόπω[τε]; Athens 355, fol. 68r: Σὺ εἶ μήτηρ τοῦ παιδίου τούτου λέγουσι
πάλιν αὐτῇ μακαρία σὺ ἐν γυναιξὶν ὅτι εὐλόγησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν καρπὸν τῆς κοιλίας σου. Τοιαύτην
χάριν καὶ σοφίαν καὶ δόξαν οὐδέποτε εἴδαμεν ἢ ἠκούσαμν πώποτε…Μαρία πάντα διετήρει ἐν τῇ
καρδίᾳ αὑτῆς ὅσα ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς; Novaković, 55: ты ли ѥси мати отрочета сего? Она же
рече: азь ѥсмь. И рѣше ѥи: благословлѥиьна ты ѥси вь женахь, и благословлень плодь
оутробы твоѥ. Таковыѥ бо славы и таковыѥ дѣли и прѣмоудрости таковыѥ не
видѣхомь… Мати же ѥго сьблюдаше (вьсе) ѥлико твораше величиѩ и слагаше вь срьдьци
своѥмь; Hludov, fol. 205v: Ты ли еси м[а]ти ѡтрочета сего. Ѡна же ре[че] азь ѥсмь. Ѡни
же рекоше бл[а]женна ты еси вь женахь. И бл[а]г[осло]вень пло[д] удѣва твоего. И
г[оспод]ь б[ог]ь бл[а]г[осло]виль те ѥ[сть]. Ѩко таковаго дара б[о]жиа и прѣмоудрости
неслышахомь николиже…Марїа же м[а]ти его блюдаше словеса его вь ср[д]ци своѥмь.
 Cambridge, fol. 81v: Tu es mater istius infanti[s]. Illa aute[m] dixit. Vere ego sum. Et dixer-
unt ad eam. Beata es tu int[er] mulieres q[uonia]m b[e]n[e]dix[it] d[eu]s fructu[m] ventris tui
q[ui]a tale[m] gloriosu[m] i[n]fante[m] et tale donu[m] sapientie dedit tibi quale nu[m]q[ua]m vi-
dimus n[ec] audivimus…Maria aute[m] co[n]servabat omnia in corde suo q[ua]nta fecit Ih[esu]s
signa magna i[n] pop[u]lo sana[n]do infirmos multos.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 70r-v: ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ περιλαβὼν κατεφίλει αὐτὸν λέγων μακάριός εἰμι ἐγὼ ὅτι
τοῦτον παιδίον ἔδωκέν μοι ὁ Θεός; Athens 355, fol. 66r: ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ ἰδὼν ὅτι ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς
σημεῖον περιπλακεὶς ἐφίλησε τὸν Ἰησοῦν λέγων Μακάριός εἰμι ὅτι τοιοῦτον παιδίον δέδωκέ μοι
Jesus’ siblings 183
Throughout the text of Dijon, Jesus’s parents have warm and positive feel-
ings towards him. There is no specific reason for them to encourage Jesus, just
as there is no punishment; his parents fully support him in everything and pro-
tect him. It means that the significant divergence between Dijon as the Lm rep-
resentative and the other manuscripts in the descriptions of Jesus’ encourage-
ment by his parents lies in Jesus’ relationship with his father. They get along
in Dijon, while they become estranged from each other in the rest of the manu-
scripts. Their mutual understanding decreases, punishments ensue, and support
is rare. As for Mary, she is only supportive towards Jesus in Dijon and the rest of
the manuscripts.
These differences may have developed in the text due to the attitudes to-
wards Joseph, who became a neglected figure in the medieval Christian dis-
course. Unlike him, Mary’s record as a mother in this text is impeccable; no neg-
ative description of her appears. In the Middle Ages, Mary has already grown to
prominence as the Mother of God. Therefore, such a description does not come
as a surprise.
Jesus’ siblings
In a few episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus appears together with
his siblings. The episode James’ Snakebite (16.1) depicts Jesus with his brother
James. James is sent (by Joseph) to pick up wood, while Jesus seems to follow
him. A snake then bites James, and Jesus runs to save him. This scene is depicted
similarly in the majority of the manuscripts.⁷¹⁵ If we ask how James is the brother
of Jesus, we find no further explanation in most of these manuscripts.
ὁ Θεός; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 202v: ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ περιλαβ[ὼν] τὸ παιδίον κατεφίλ[ει] αὐτ[ὸν] λ[έγων]
Μακάρι[ός] εἰμι ὅ[τι] τοῦτον τὸν παιδίον μοι ἔδωκην ὁ Θ[εό]ς; Novaković, 52: Иосифь же
приѥмь облобыза, и рече вь себѣ: Благословлѥнь ѥсмь азь, ѩко сико отроче дасть ми
Богь; Hludov, fol. 203v: Їѡсїфь же приѥмь дѣтища и лобзл его. И ре[че] си в себѣ бл[а]жень
ѥсмь азь с тобою. Ѩко таково ѡтроче да[с] ми ѣ г[оспод]ь; St Petersburg, fol. 180r: Їѡсїфь
же приемъ ѡтрочѧ и ѡблобыза е и ре[че] Бл[а]ж[ен]ь есмъ азъ каково ѡтрочѧ да[с] ми
Б[ог]ь; Cambridge, fol. 81r: Ioseph aute[m] cu[m] vidisset q[uo]d fecerat a[m]plexav[it] eu[m]
et dixit. Beatus sum ego q[uo]d talem filiu[m] dedit m[ihi] d[eu]s.
 In Latin manuscript Cambridge, Jesus follows James (Cambridge, fol. 81v: Dixit aute[m] Io-
seph Iacob ad colligenda[m] stipula[m]. et secutus e[st] eum Ih[esu]s). The same scene occurs in
Dijon in episode 41, which has a somewhat different plot. In the Greek manuscripts Athens 355
and Vienna hist.91 (Athens 355, fol. 67r: μεθ’ ἡμέρας δὲ τινας ἔπεμψεν Ἰωσὴφ τὸν Ἰάκωβον συλ-
λέξαι φρύγανα τοῦ φούρνου ἠκολούθει δὲ καὶ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὸν Ἰάκωβον; Vienna hist.91, fol. 203v:
ἔπεψεν τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τ[ὸν] Ἰάκωβον τοῦ δῆσαι ξύλ[α] καὶ ἐνέγκαι εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ. ἠκολού
This question seems to have been both important and highly vexed in the
early Christian discourse. Three views were held among ancient Christian and
contemporary apologists about Jesus’ brothers and sisters: the Helvidian view,
the Epiphanian view, and the Hieronymian view.⁷¹⁶ The Helvidian view meant
that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were children of Joseph and Mary. It natu-
rally contradicted the idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity. The Epiphanian view
held that they were the children of Joseph from a previous marriage. Jesus’
brothers and sisters from Joseph’s previous marriage are rarely mentioned in
Christian literature; one example is the Protevangelium of James. ⁷¹⁷ Both Schröter
and Jenkins suggest that the Protevangelium of James was rejected in the early
church because it supported the idea that the “brothers” of Jesus mentioned
in Mark 6.3 were sons of Joseph from an earlier marriage, rather than Jesus’ cous-
ins⁷¹⁸ as Jerome later preferred to say.⁷¹⁹ The Hieronymian view, originating from
Jerome, presupposed that they were not children of Joseph and Mary but were
cousins of Jesus. Naturally, these views involved other vital questions, such as
the nature of Joseph’s and Mary’s marriage and Mary’s virginity and conception.
By avoiding saying anything further about the sibling relationship between Jesus
and James, except for noting that they were brothers, the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas in the manuscripts analyzed here, in fact, avoided entering this debate.
However, the brotherly connection is evident in manuscript Dijon. In James’
Snakebite (41), James is called Joseph’s first-born son (primogenitum). In episode
Family Meal (42), Dijon mentions Joseph’s children from the previous marriage in
a feast where Joseph comes with his sons James, Joseph, Judah, Simeon, and two
[θει] δὲ τὸ παιδ[ίον] ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς), as well as in the Slavonic manuscripts, Jesus follows his brother
(St Petersburg, fol. 182v: Посемъ посла їѡсифь с[ы]на своего їакѡва. да свѧжеть храстїе и
принесеть въ домь свои. И понемь поиде ѡтрочѧ исъбравшоу же храстїе; Novaković, 54:
Вь дроугы же дьнь посла Иосифь сына своѥго Иѩкова да свезавь дрьва донесеть вь
домь свои. Идоуштоу же ѥмоу и сьбыраюштоу дрьва идѣѩше Ісоусь изь далече по
нѥмь). Hludov does not particularly emphasize this; only when a snake bites James, Jesus
comes closer, by which we can conclude that he was in the distance. In Novaković, Jesus follows
James, somewhat lagging.
 Richard Bauckham, “The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus: An Epiphanian Response to John P.
Meier,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 56, No. 4 (1994): 686 – 700, 687.
 Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,” 59.
 Jenkins argues that Latin Western churches tried to suppress the Protevangelium of James
because they did not like the accounts of Joseph’s previous family history. See Schröter, “The
Formation of the New Testament Canon,” 176; Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 104.
 Elliott, “Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament,” 59.
daughters.⁷²⁰ Mary also comes with Jesus, accompanied by her sister Mary Cleo-
phas, the daughter of Anne. In this episode, Jesus consecrates and blesses them;
he is the one to eat and drink first. The brothers and sisters never eat before he
blesses them. They observe and fear him.⁷²¹
It seems to have been significant, in the context in which the text of Dijon
was written/used, to justify either the existence of the brothers and sisters of
Jesus or Mary’s virginity. In the view of Leonardo Boff, the apocryphal books
that appeared in early Christianity, such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, were
preoccupied with an apologetic justification of the existence of the brothers
and sisters of Jesus, whom these books present as the fruit of Joseph’s first mar-
riage.⁷²² They were also concerned about defending Mary’s virginity.⁷²³ In the
context of the other manuscripts, this vexed question was not relevant, or else
it was possible and preferable to avoid it, and so these manuscripts did.
Jesus and his peers
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas describes Jesus encountering his peers on several
occasions when they meet to play together or accidentally in the street. The way
Jesus plays with other children in some scenes of this text may well correspond
to the ways children played in the past and today. He plays at the ford of a water
stream, makes pools of the water, makes figures out of clay, and plays with other
children on the upper floor of a house. Jesus shows his childlike side by the way
he plays. However, his encounters with other children during play often turn into
 Dijon, fol. 19v: Cu[m] aut[em] veniret ioseph ad co[n]viviu[m] cu[m] filiis suis iacobo et io-
seph et juda et sym[e]o[n]e et duab[us] filiis suis [con]ve[n]iebant et b[eat]a maria cu[m] Ih[es]u.
Et sorore sua maria cleophe q[uam] do[minus] d[eu]s donavit ioachim pat[ri] ei[us] et anne
mat[ri] ei[us]. Et q[uo]d obtullissent maria[m] m[at]rem Ih[es]u d[omi]no. Et h[aec] maria cleophe
vocata est si[mi]li no[m]i[n]e maria. Ad concolat[i]o[n]em p[ar]entu[m]. Another apocryphal text,
The History of Joseph the Carpenter, also describes Joseph as the father of the six children. See
Boff, Saint Joseph, 77.
 Dijon, fol. 19v: Et du[m] [con]ve[n]iret Ih[esu]s s[anc]tificabat et b[e]n[e]dicebat illos. Et ip[s]
e p[ri]or manducare et bib[er]e incipiebat. Nemo eni[m] illor[um] ma[n]ducare vel bibe[re] aude-
bat. Nec sede[re] ad mensa[m] aut panem frange[re]. Don[ec] ip[s]e s[anc]tificans illos pri[us] hoc
fecisset. Et si forte absens fuisset. Exp[ec]tabatur donec hoc fac[er]et. Et q[ua]n[do] ip[s]e nole-
bat ad refectione[m] acced[er]e. Accedebant ioseph et maria et fr[atr]es ei[us] filii ioseph. Hii
siquid[em] tres an[te] oc[u]los suos tanq[uam] lumi[n]aria vita[m] illi[us] h[abe]ntes observabant
et timebant eu[m].
 Boff, Saint Joseph, 18.
 Boff, Saint Joseph, 18.
conflicts with a detrimental outcome. One cannot say that Jesus is the sole cul-
prit who always starts the conflicts. He displays his divine power by punishing
other children, cursing, and killing them, while other children appear to be
threats to his divine authority.
The manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas analyzed here mainly differ
regarding the number of encounters of Jesus with other children and the severity
with which Jesus acts towards other children and vice versa. Jesus’ adverse treat-
ment of other children is a characteristic of all the manuscripts, but it is inten-
sified in some more than the others. The manuscripts Athens 355, Dijon, Cam-
bridge, and possibly Paris 1772 display a more significant number of
encounters (not necessarily negative) of Jesus with other children because they
have the Prologue in Egypt attached to their opening.
The Latin manuscripts Dijon and Paris 1772 also have the expanded episode
Pools (26), which describes a conflict between Jesus and another child. In this
episode, the child is described as a son of the devil who shut the passages of
pools and overthrew what Jesus did. ⁷²⁴ The child is a challenge to Jesus’ divine
power, and he is described in a highly negative manner. At the same time,
Jesus’ dominance is evident. He casts a curse and kills the child, although he
later brings him back to life.
Dijon and Paris 1772 describe Jesus’ terrible deeds at length, but they also
extend the accounts of other children’s terrible deeds towards Jesus. In the epi-
sode Annas’ Son (28), the son took his rod and broke down with great fury the
dams which Jesus made, letting the water run out.⁷²⁵ In Careless Boy (29), the
evil intentions of a child who collides with Jesus are emphasized: Suddenly,
from the opposite direction, a boy running pushed Jesus in the shoulder, wishing
 Paris 1772, fol. 88v: Tunc aut[em] unus ex eis iuvenis filius diaboli animo invido. clausit
eor[um] que aditus op[er]a eiusq[ue] qui ministrabant in lacos. clausit eos atq[ue] evertit
quod op[er]atus fuerat d[omi]n[u]s n[oste]r Ih[esu]s; Dijon, fol. 9v: Tu[n]c un[us] ex ill[is]
infantib[us] fili[us] dyaboli a[n]i[m]o i[n]vidie clausit adit[us] qui ministrabant aquas ad lacos.
Atq[ue] av[er]tit q[uod] op[er]at[us] fu[er]at Ih[esu]s.
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: Nam iteru[m] filius anne sacerdotis te[m]pli qui cu[m] ioseph advenerat
tene[n]s virga[m] in manu sua de populo. et cunctis videntib[us]. Cu[m] furore nimio exclusit
lacos quos Ih[esu]s fecerat manib[us]. suis. et effudit ex eis aquam qua[m] congregaverat
Ih[esu]s de torrente in lacos; Dijon, fol. 10v-11r: Nam it[eru]m fili[us] sac[er]dotis te[m]pli qui
cu[m] ioseph advenit. Tenens virga[m] in manu cu[n]ctis q[ui] aderant videntib[us]; cu[m] furore
nimio c[on]clusit lacos quos fecit Ih[esu]s manib[us] suis. Et effudit aquas ex eis q[ua]s
agregav[er]at de torre[n]te in eis.
to strike him or harm him if he could. ⁷²⁶ This sentence tells us about the child’s
reasoning and the harm that the others do to Jesus, apparently the text’s strategy.
Several other episodes in Dijon also describe children’s cruelty. In episode
Zeno (32), Jesus plays with children on a roof when one child falls and dies.
In Dijon, one of the children pushed another down from the roof to the ground. ⁷²⁷
In most other Greek, Latin, and Slavonic manuscripts, the child himself falls
from the roof. Again, in the episode Water in Cloak (33), it is only in Dijon
that one of the children bumps into Jesus and breaks his pitcher with water.⁷²⁸
In all the other manuscripts, the pitcher breaks accidentally because of the
crowd. While episode Water in Cloak (33) may be understood to insist on describ-
ing the harm that others did to Jesus, when it is considered together with episode
Zeno (32), it leaves the impression that peer violence is more accentuated in
Dijon.
In the rest of the manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, it is not clear
(or explicit) whether Jesus encounters adults or other children in some episodes.
In the episode Sparrows (2.3) of manuscripts Athens 355 and Cambridge, the chil-
dren of the Hebrews slander Jesus to his father.⁷²⁹ In the Slavonic manuscripts
Hludov and St Petersburg, it is unclear whether adult Jews or Jewish children
slander Jesus, but probably these are adults.⁷³⁰ In Sabaiticus, Vienna hist.91, No-
vaković, and Latin manuscript Dijon, an (adult) Jew slanders Jesus.⁷³¹
Also, in episode Annas’ Son (3.1), the son of Annas takes a branch and de-
stroys Jesus’ pools in the Greek manuscripts Sabaiticus and Vienna hist.91, as
well as in the Slavonic manuscripts St Petersburg and Novaković. However, in
Cambridge, a Pharisee destroys the pools, and in Athens 355, it is not the son
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: Et ecce subito ex adverso puer quida[m] et ipse op[er]arius iniq[ui]tatis.
currens inpulit se in humeru[m] Ih[es]u. volens eu[m]. elidere. aut nocere si potuisset.
 Dijon, fol. 14v: [Con]tigit ut un[us] ex infantib[us] impell[er]et aliu[m] de solario in t[er]ram.
Et mortu[us] [est].
 Dijon, fol. 15r: et [con]tigit p[ost]q[uam] hausit aq[uam] et q[ui]da[m] ex infa[n]tib[us] i[m]
pegerit illu[m] et [con]quassavit ydriam sua[m] et fregit illa[m].
 Athens 355, fol. 62r: ἦν δὲ σάββατον ὅτε ταῦτα ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς παίζων μετὰ τῶν παίδων
τῶν Ἑβραίων. ἀπῆλθον δὲ πρὸς Ἰωσὴφ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ λέγοντες αὐτῷ; Cambridge, fol. 79r: Et
abierunt pueri dicentes ad Ioseph p[a]ren[t]i eius.
 Hludov, fol. 200v: Видѣвше же їюдеие и шдьше повѣдаше їѡсїфоу ѡцоу его; St Peters-
burg, fol. 177r: И видѣвше жидове еже творѣше играѫщи ше[д]ше и повѣдашѫ ѡцоу его
Иѡсифоу.
 Novaković, 48: Видѣвь же ѥдинь оть Юдеи ѥже твораше Ісоусь играѥ вь соуботоу; Sa-
baiticus, fol. 66v: Ἰδὼν δέ τίς Ἰουδαῖος τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦν μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων παιδίων ταῦτα
ποιοῦντα; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 199v: Ἰδὼν δὲ τις Ἰουδαῖος ἃ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἐν τῷ σαββάτ[ῳ]
ἀπῆλθεν καὶ ἀπήγγειλε τῷ π[ατ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ Ἰωσὴφ λέγων; Dijon, fol. 10r-v: Cu[m] [er]go vidiss[et]
quida[m] ex iudeis cu[m] infantib[us] h[oc] faciente[m].
of Annas but Annas himself (an adult).⁷³² The Slavonic manuscript Hludov like-
wise states that an adult, not the child, does this to Jesus.⁷³³ The presence of
adults and not children in these scenes toned down Jesus’ lousy behavior to-
wards other children (because these scenes are fewer), making him more of an
ordinary child. In these manuscripts, other children may have also been viewed
as threats to Jesus’ divine power, but the encounters with Jesus, especially det-
rimental encounters, are fewer. Jesus’ aggression is diminished to produce the
effect mentioned above. Elliott notes that sometimes the Pseudo-Matthew ampli-
fies the material found in the the Infancy Gospel of Thomas or alters it, some-
times making Jesus less malevolent.⁷³⁴ This strategy of the various manuscripts
is nevertheless inconsistently carried through.
The episode Careless Boy (4.1), which depicts another encounter of Jesus
with a boy in the street, is interesting because it is presented differently in the
various manuscripts. The Byzantine manuscripts describe Jesus being torn in
the shoulder or struck on the shoulder by another boy.⁷³⁵ However, in the Gb var-
iant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the boy intentionally throws a stone at
Jesus and strikes his shoulder.⁷³⁶ Cambridge describes the same encounter as
the Byzantine manuscripts, where the child strikes Jesus on the shoulder.⁷³⁷
The other traditions diverge; in the Arabic text, a child approaches Jesus from
behind and hits him.⁷³⁸ In the Ethiopic version, the boy strikes Jesus on the
chest.⁷³⁹ In the Irish version, the boy annoys Jesus.⁷⁴⁰
Stephen Davis discusses this episode in the Byzantine manuscript Sabaiticus
and comments on the word ἐρράγη.⁷⁴¹ He argues that earlier scholars “chose
 Cambridge, fol. 79r: Pharisaeus autem q[ui] erat cu[m] Ih[es]u. apprehendit ramum olive. et
cepit derigare fontem que[m] fecit Ih[esu]s; Athens 355, fol. 62r: Ἄννας δὲ γραμματεὺς ἐκεῖ ἦν
μετὰ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ καὶ λαβὼν κλάδον ἐτέας διέτρεψε τοὺς λάκκους καὶ ἐξέχεε τὸ ὕδωρ ἐξ αὐτων
ὃ συνήγαγεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς.
 Hludov, fol. 200v-201r: И се видѣвь, іже бѣ книжникь тоу стое сь Їѡсїфомь. И вьзьмь
вѣхь врьбовь и оудари вь виркови, и истекоше води еже бѣше сьбраль І[соу]сь.
 Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 85.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: καὶ τρέχων ἐκεῖνος ἐρράγη εἰς τὸν ὦμον αὐτοῦ; Vienna hist. 91,
fol. 200r: Εἶτα πάλ[ιν] ἐπορεύετο ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς διὰ τῆς κώμης καὶ παιδίον τρέχοντα διερράγη εἰς
τὸν ὦμον αὐτοῦ; Athens 355, fol. 62v: καὶ δραμὸν ἓν παιδίον ἔδωκε τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐπὶ τὸν ὦμον.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 477.
 Cambridge, fol. 79r: cucurrit de infantib[us] un[us] et p[er]cussit Ih[esu]m in ulnas.
 Noja, “L’Évangile arabe apocryphe de Thomas,” 681– 690.
 See Tony Burke, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Ethiopic.
 Frilingos, “No Child Left Behind,” 41; for the text, see Martin McNamara, Jean-Daniel Kaes-
tli, and Rita Beyers, Apocrypha Hiberniae I: Evangelia infantiae (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 443 –
483.
 Davis, Child Christ, 73.
more muted terms for this action” when translating this word, although it im-
plies physical injury. Davis further argues: “The fact that the boy aimed his
blow at Jesus’ shoulder probably reinforces the association with wrestling in
the ancient context.” Davis describes some examples where boys’ encounters
mimicked the athletes in the arena involved in wrestling and other similar activ-
ities in the context of the Greco-Roman world. In both the Greek East and the
Latin West in the Roman Imperial era, agonistic events were organized for
boys, where they could indulge in racing, wrestling, boxing, and pankration,
thus imitating the roles of adults.⁷⁴² Consequently, Davis sees Jesus’ encounters
with the other boys as social performances of agôn. ⁷⁴³
In the same episode in the Slavonic manuscripts, Novaković describes a
child approaching from behind and jumping on Jesus’ shoulder.⁷⁴⁴ In Hludov
and St Petersburg, a child jumps on Jesus’ shoulder; we are not told from
which side he comes.⁷⁴⁵ This scene of a child attacking another child allowed
for different scenes described in the various manuscripts. These descriptions re-
quire further attestation in other contemporary written sources and archeology if
we wish to ascribe them to the specific environments in which the text was used.
However, they allow the possibility to think further whether they reflect an every-
day-life situation in this cultural area.
Jesus and teachers
The subject of Jesus’ education takes up considerable space in the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas (five episodes). I focus here on some of its aspects. Jesus’ attempts to
attend school usually abruptly end because he argues with teachers and eventu-
ally kills them. Before doing so, Jesus displays his divine wisdom. Particularly in
the First Teacher (6 – 8), he explains at length his nature and place in the world
to the teacher and the gathered crowd. He continues with the issues related to
the letters, the nature of the first element, and what makes a good teacher. In
this section, I focus mainly on Jesus’ relationship with the teachers and investi-
gate whether anything in these depictions may resemble everyday-life situations
in the past.
 Davis, Child Christ, 67.

 Davis, Child Christ, 71.
 Novaković, 48: и ино отроче текь сь зади скочи ѥмоу на рамо.
 Hludov, fol. 201r: ино же ѡтроче текь вьскочи на рамо его; St Petersburg, fol. 178r:
ѡтроче ино скочи на рамо его.
As I have emphasized, he commonly entered into conflicts with teachers in

his attempts to attend school. In most instances, he was physically punished,
and the teachers ended up being cursed and killed. Most of the punishments
that the teachers impose recurred in the various manuscripts. In a few episodes,
Jesus was hit on the head by his teachers. One of these is the episode First teach-
er (6.2 f), where Jesus refuses to do what the teacher expects; consequently, he is
punished. In most of the manuscripts, Jesus is hit in the head (by hand).⁷⁴⁶ This
sentence, invariably transmitted in the manuscripts, implies a shared cultural
understanding of teachers’ usual punishment in the regions in case.⁷⁴⁷ For the
audiences of the various medieval realms analyzed here, it was expected to
read/hear of a child being punished by a teacher in this way. However, Novako-
vić presents episode First Teacher (6.2 f) differently: the teacher pulls Jesus’
ears.⁷⁴⁸ We had previously seen the description of this kind of punishment
when Joseph pulled Jesus’ ear in manuscripts other than Dijon. These two
types of punishment, hitting the head and pulling the ear, obviously were the
standard punishments of children in these areas and this period.
As described in this text, a teacher’s punishment of a child does not come as
a surprise. Scholars have agreed that the use of physical violence was an estab-
lished practice in schools in the past. In his article on corporal punishment in
schools in antiquity, Martin Bloomer argues that striking was a regular prac-
tice.⁷⁴⁹ There existed a cultural rationale for punishment – when words would
not suffice, physical punishment ensued.⁷⁵⁰ Christian Laes confirms that child
 Cambridge, fol. 80r: Doctor autem ille p[er]cussit infante[m] in capite; Sabaiticus, fol. 68r:
Πικρανθεὶς δὲ ὁ καθηγητὴς ἔκρουσεν αὐτὸ εἰς τὴν κεφαλήν; Athens 355, fol. 64r: ὀργισθεὶς οὖν ὁ
καθηγητὴς ἔκρουσεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν κεφαλήν; Hludov, fol. 202r: И прогнѣва се оучитель и оу-
дари его по главѣ.
 In the episode Second Teacher (14.2), we have another scene where Jesus is struck (on the
head) by a teacher. In Sabaiticus and Vienna hist. 91, Jesus is struck in the head (krouô). Sabai-
ticus, fol. 70v: Πικρανθεὶς δὲ ὁ καθηγητὴς ἔκρουσεν αὐτὸ; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 201r: πικρανθεὶς δὲ
ὁ διδάσκαλ[ος] ἔκρουσεν αὐτ[ὸν] εἰς τὴν κεφαλ[ήν]; In Athens 355 he is hit (tuptô). Athens 355,
fol. 66v: ὀργισθεὶς δὲ ὁ διδάσκαλος ἔτυψεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν κεφαλήν; In the three Slavonic manu-
scripts, the teacher gets upset and hits Jesus in the head. Novaković, 53: Тьгда прогнѣва се
дидаскаль ть и оудари Ісоуса вь главоу; Hludov, fol. 203v: разгнѣва се оучитель. И оудари
его по главѣ; St Petersburg, fol. 180r: и прогнѣвасѧ оучите[л] и оудари его по главѣ. In Cam-
bridge, Jesus is hit in the head. Cambridge, fol. 81r: Tunc furore replet[us] magister ei[us] percus-
sit eum in capite; even in Dijon, Jesus is struck. Dijon, fol. 17v: Et ad h[oc] irat[us] mag[iste]r per-
cussit illu[m].
 Novaković, 50: И прогнѣвавь се оучитель и заоуши ѥго.
 Bloomer, “Corporal Punishment in the Ancient School,” 185.
 Bloomer, “Corporal Punishment in the Ancient School,” 186.
beating in the context of education has a long history in ancient literature.⁷⁵¹ Vi-
olence and discipline were an integral part of Roman education at school.⁷⁵² Au-
sonius refers to the rule (ferula), the rod (virgea), and the whip (scutica) as the
teacher’s tools.⁷⁵³ Ville Vuolanto argues that the motif of violence in schooling
in the church fathers’ writings was often linked to religious practices and life
choices. ⁷⁵⁴ Adults in the Roman period would have had horrific recollections
of their schoolmasters and the beatings they inflicted.⁷⁵⁵
In Dijon, Jesus is punished by his teachers but not by his parents. This differ-
ence is significant because the teachers are represented in Dijon as “the others,”
who do not understand Jesus’ divine nature. Unlike the teachers, his family is not
“the others;” they understand and support him. In this manuscript, the teacher’s
punishment appears more brutal than in the other manuscripts. In the episode
First Teacher (31), the teacher seizes his storax-tree rod (virga storatina) and
strikes him on the head.⁷⁵⁶
Why is Jesus punished by rod in this text while (only) hit on the head by
hand in the other versions? Dijon may have attempted to intensify the harm
that others did to Jesus by mentioning the rod to display the brutality of “the oth-
ers” towards Jesus. This kind of punishment with a rod is found in the Old Testa-
ment (Proverbs 13:24), where the rod appears as a disciplinary tool (“Whoever
spares the rod, hates their children”), but it is also found in different other me-
dieval cultural environments.⁷⁵⁷ This scene may be an attempt to depict a typi-
cally Jewish environment in which Jesus’ childhood took place, knowing that
the storax tree (Styrax officinalis) mentioned in the Latin text (virga storatina)
 Christian Laes, “Child Beating in Roman Antiquity: Some Reconsiderations,” in Hoping for
Continuity. Childhood, Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, eds. Katariina Mus-
takallio, Jussi Hanska, Hanna-Leena Sainio, and Ville Vuolanto (Rome: Institutum Romanum
Finlandiae, 2005): 75 – 90, 78.
 Laes, “Child Beating in Roman Antiquity,” 80; see also Stanley Bonner, Education in An-
cient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (New York: Routledge, 2014), 143.
 Laes, “Child Beating in Roman Antiquity,” 81.
 Ville Vuolanto, “Family Relations and the Socialisation of Children in the Autobiographical
Narratives of Late Antiquity,” in Approaches to the Byzantine Family, eds. Leslie Brubaker, and
Shaun Tougher (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013): 47– 74, 54.
 Mary Harlow, and Ray Laurence, Growing up and Growing Old in Ancient Rome: A Life
Course Approach (London: Routledge, 2002), 52.
 Dijon, fol. 17v: Un[de] p[rae]ceptor levi irat[us] apprehendens v[ir]ga[m] storatina[m]. p[er]
cussit eu[m] i[n] capite.
 About rod as a disciplinary tool, see Avner Gil’adi, Children of Islam: Concepts of Childhood
in Medieval Muslim Society (London: Macmillan, 1992), 61.
has been known since biblical times in Israel and is characteristic of dry areas of
the Mediterranean, particularly Asia Minor. This hypothesis is, nevertheless,
challenging to attest with certainty.
If we now turn to the more favorable treatment of Jesus by teachers, we find
in episode Third teacher (15) a scene where Jesus is encouraged by a teacher in
much the same way as children are usually encouraged by teachers today. In the
Latin manuscript Cambridge, in the Byzantine manuscripts Vienna hist.91 and
Athens 355, and Slavonic manuscript St Petersburg, this teacher is a friend of Jo-
seph. He convinces Joseph in a friendly manner to send Jesus to his school. Jo-
seph is concerned about Jesus’ behavior, but he is not skeptical about whether
Jesus could learn something there. When he enters the school, Jesus finds a
book lying on the floor. He takes the book and starts reading, but not really
from the book; instead, led by the Holy Spirit, he expounds on the law to
those who were present and listening. ⁷⁵⁸ Jesus is presented to possess divine
knowledge. However, considering the general setting and the teacher’s behavior
towards Jesus, he is also an average child. When Jesus starts speaking in Sabai-
ticus and Athens 355, the teacher sits near him and listens very carefully, encour-
aging him to say more.⁷⁵⁹ The teacher’s encouragement recurs in Cambridge.⁷⁶⁰
In this way, Jesus resembles an average child who is encouraged by a teacher.
In Dijon, however, we encounter a different situation. The episode Third
Teacher (39) is contextualized in a Jewish setting. The teacher is not a friend
of Joseph but comes from the Jewish community. Joseph and Mary are asked
for the third time to send Jesus to a teacher; they comply because of their fear
of the community. When he enters the school, Jesus takes the book out of the
master’s hand and starts reading, led by the Holy Spirit. When he hears him,
the master himself falls to the ground and adores Jesus.⁷⁶¹ In this episode, he
 Athens 355, fol. 66v: εὗρε βίβλον κειμένην καὶ ἀνοίξας αὐτὴν οὐκ ἀνεγίνωσκεν τὰ ἐν τῇ
βίβλῳ γεγραμμένα ἀλλὰ ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὑτοῦ ἔλεγεν ἐν Πνεύματι ἁγίῳ καὶ ἐδίδασκε τὸν
νόμον αὑτοῦ τοὺς παρόντας καὶ ἀκούοντας.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 71r: ὥστε τὸν καθηγητὴν ἄντικρυς καθιζόμενον ἡδέως πάντα ἠκούει αὐτῷ
καὶ παρεκάλει αὐτὸ ἵνα πλείονα εἴπῃ τὸν δὲ παρεστῶτα ὄχλον ἐκπληττέσθαι ἐν τοῖς ὁσίοις ῥήμα-
σιν αὐτοῦ; Athens 355, fol. 66v-67r: ὥστε καὶ ὁ καθηγητὴς πλησίον αὐτοῦ καθίσας πάνυ ἡδέως
αὐτοῦ ἤκουσεν παρακαλῶν αὐτὸν ἵνα πλείονα εἴπῃ ὄχλος δὲ πολὺς συνεισῆλθε καὶ ἠκροῶντο
πάντες καὶ ἐθαύμαζον ἐπὶ τῇ ἁγίᾳ αὐτοῦ διδασκαλίᾳ.
 Cambridge, fol. 81v: et magist[er] ille iuxta illu[m] sedebat et libent[ur] eum audiebat et
deprecabat[ur] eu[m] ut ampli[us] doceret.
 Dijon, fol. 18r: Cu[m] aut[em] Ih[esu]s int[ro]isset scolam duct[us] sp[irit]u s[anc]to accepit
libru[m] de manu didascali docentis lege[m]. et cu[n]cto p[o]p[u]lo vide[n]te et audiente. cepit
leg[er]e n[on] q[ui]d[em] que sc[ri]pta era[n]t i[n] libro illo. S[ed] in sp[irit]u d[e]i vivi loq[ue]
batur tanq[uam] de fonte vivo torrens aque egred[er]etur. Et fons plen[us] sp[irit]u perman[er]
is presented as a divine being who converts people by his appearance and words.
Interestingly, Jesus here converted a person coming from the Jewish community.
The difference between Dijon and the other manuscripts analyzed here lies
in the descriptions of Jesus. In Dijon, Jesus is divine, while he appears more
human and child-like in the other manuscripts. He is an average child who is
praised and encouraged by his teacher. Nevertheless, in all the manuscripts
(Dijon included), the teachers are “the others” who do not recognize Jesus’
true nature.
Jesus’ education
Education is a subject that takes up considerable space in the Infancy Gospel of

Thomas and provides us with a great deal of information about life at school. I
investigate here whether any information we are given is related generally or spe-
cifically to everyday life in some of the historical contexts of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. In what follows, I will demonstrate that various scribes, copyists, trans-
lators, and rewriters constructed different historical settings in which they
placed Jesus and his school activities, either to describe Jesus as more human
and child-like or for other reasons.
Scholars have already discussed the depiction of education in this text. Horn
and Martens argue that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas “allows us to examine
what second- and third-century Christians would deem reasonable to expect
for boys in a Galilean village” in terms of education, despite the clear rhetorical
function of the text and without making claims about its historicity.⁷⁶² They
argue that “the village picture of the old teacher, the age of learning, learning
the alphabet first, physical punishment in response to an unruly student, and
the reality of village teachers who take disciples to their home all resonate
with what we know of education during this period.”⁷⁶³ While Horn and Martens
focus primarily on what the Infancy Gospel of Thomas reveals about the setting in
Late Antiquity (second-third century CE), my interest is in the reflections of both
the ancient and the medieval settings in which the text was used. More impor-
tantly, I will trace the differences in the descriptions of these features in the
manuscripts.
et. Et ita i[n] v[ir]tute docebat p[o]p[u]l[u]m magnalia dei vivi. Ut et ip[s]e mag[iste]r cad[er]et et
adoraret eu[m]. Cor aut[em] p[o]p[u]li q[ui] sedebat et audiebat talia dici ab eo. V[er]sum e[st]
c[ontra] illu[m].
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 130.
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 131.
I focus here on the following set of questions, first: What does constitute the
idea of “school” in the various manuscripts? Was there such a thing as “school”?
What was “school”? How is it described in the diverse manuscripts? Next, I look
into the appearance and outlook of classrooms. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
also gives some information about the subjects studied in school. Were they dif-
ferent in the various manuscripts? Finally, what were the aims of education ac-
cording to the different manuscripts which contain this text?
What did constitute the idea of “school”? The manuscript Dijon commonly
uses the noun scola (episodes 30, 38). Dijon consistently refers to communally
organized schooling in which the community requires parents to send their chil-
dren to school.⁷⁶⁴
The elders of the people of Israel are said to be in charge of schooling. The
existence of the two teachers, Zachias and Levi, in Dijon implies that they
worked in an organized institution involving many people.⁷⁶⁵ When Jesus was
to start school for the second and the third time, Joseph and Mary were asked
again by the elders of Israel to send him to school. The elders directed him to
different teachers.
However, the way modern scholars see Jewish education looks quite differ-
ent from what is described in Dijon. Betsworth argues that home was the primary
location for learning in the late Second Temple period (first century CE).⁷⁶⁶ Most
of the education was oral, with little emphasis on reading and writing.⁷⁶⁷ The
memorization of the Torah was necessary. In the first century BCE, Pharisees es-
tablished schools.⁷⁶⁸ The curriculum was limited to studying the scriptures in He-
brew, with no opportunity to study Aramaic or koine Greek.⁷⁶⁹ Jewish schools did
not become common until the third century CE.⁷⁷⁰
In his discussion of Josephus’ Contra Apionem, Paul Foster argues that this
work gives insights into Jewish education of the first century.⁷⁷¹ Josephus insists
 Dijon, fol. 17r-v: maria et ioseph rogarent[ur] a p[o]p[u]lo ut Ih[esu]s doc[er]et[ur] litteris in
scola. Q[uod] [et] face[re] non negaveru[n]t [et] s[e]c[un]d[u]m p[rae]ceptu[m] senior[um].
Dux[er]unt eu[m] ad scolas. Cu[m] aut[em] mag[iste]r i[m]p[er]iose d[oce]ret illi.
 Dijon, fol. 13r: It[eru]m mag[iste]r zachias legis doctor dix[it] ad ioseph et maria[m]. Date
m[ihi] pu[eru]m et e[g]o t[ra]dam eu[m] mag[ist]ro levi. Q[ui] doceat eu[m] litt[er]as et erudiat.
 Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 31.
 Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 31.
 Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 32.
 Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 32.
 Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives, 32.
 Paul Foster, “Educating Jesus: The Search for a Plausible Context,” Journal for the Study of
the Historical Jesus 4.1 (2006): 7– 33, 26.
on the “inclusivity of the education for Jewish children.”⁷⁷² In Foster’s view, Jo-
sephus exaggerates when he states that school was mandatory for all Jewish
children.⁷⁷³ Nevertheless, I find this detail interesting and worth further attention
because the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in Dijon also insists on this inclusivity.
Foster also writes that most Jews in the first century remained illiterate.⁷⁷⁴
The schooling described in Dijon, located in the Jewish setting, may have
been imagined or constructed by this text’s authors, translators, or copyists.
They have come up with what they imagined to be the school setting of Jesus
while he was a child in Galilee and Jericho. This description may stand to further
anti-Jewish sentiments by stressing that Jesus’ family felt constant pressures
from the community concerning Jesus’ schooling (I will elaborate on this issue
in the section on community). The community is “the others,” the foes. In this
way, as in manuscript Dijon, the Lm variant fits nicely into a broader set of Ma-
rian writings in this manuscript, characterized by their devotion to Mary and
their anti-Jewish sentiments. We know that Dijon was used in Cistercian educa-
tion.
The community that demands and directs schooling is not mentioned in the
rest of the manuscripts. The Jewish context in which the school was set also dis-
appears. In the other manuscripts, it is usually Joseph who decides to send Jesus
to school. In some manuscripts of the Third teacher (15), the teacher is a friend of
Joseph, who asks him to send Jesus to his school in a friendly manner.
“School” is described in different ways in these manuscripts. Some depict
organized education, while others depict education in private teachers’ houses.
In First teacher (6.2 f), all the Byzantine manuscripts use the words παιδευτήριον
and διδασκαλεῖον for school, implying that the education was institutionally or-
ganized.⁷⁷⁵ Davis argues that the Greek word παιδευτήριον in Late Antiquity had
generic connotations as a place dedicated to instruction where students of differ-
ent levels studied together.⁷⁷⁶ The word implies schools/classrooms offering ed-
ucation at the primary level, but it could also imply more advanced levels of ed-
ucation. The manuscripts Vienna hist.91 and Sabaiticus use the same word,
παιδευτήριον, for an educational institution (school) in Third teacher (15.1).
Manuscript Athens 355 in this episode implies private teaching, but we have
 Foster, “Educating Jesus: The Search for a Plausible Context,” 27

 Foster, “Educating Jesus: The Search for a Plausible Context,” 27.
 Foster, “Educating Jesus: The Search for a Plausible Context,” 27– 28.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 68r; Athens 355, fol. 63v, 64r.
 Davis, Christ Child, 100.
seen that this manuscript uses the word for school earlier.⁷⁷⁷ The secondary lit-
erature attests that such primary education was organized at home and in ele-
mentary schools in Byzantium.⁷⁷⁸ Besides, education was organized in monaster-
ies. It means that schooling as described in the Byzantine manuscripts of the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas was not much different from an accurate picture of By-
zantine education.
Novaković gives the name “school” to the institution of learning, оучи-
лишти, in the episode First teacher (6.2 f).⁷⁷⁹ Manuscript Hludov calls it наказа-
ние, a word that is related to punishment, penalty, but also discipline and cor-
rection. In the same episode, Hludov implies that the child was taken to the
teacher, indicating a private tutoring context.⁷⁸⁰ In Third teacher (15.1), Novako-
vić and St Petersburg use a new word for schooling (казательство/наказател-
ство), which has the same root as the word previously used in Hludov (наказа-
ние).⁷⁸¹ In Novaković, Jesus goes to the sorcery school in the continuation of this
episode. In Third teacher (15.1), Hludov implies private tutoring (кь мнѣ).⁷⁸² How-
ever, Hludov uses the word оучилище somewhat later in 15.1. The inconsistency
of using the words for organized and private tutoring in Hludov probably results
from the transmission process. Thus, the Slavonic manuscripts transferred the
idea of the organized schooling from the Byzantine tradition. Schooling in me-
dieval Bulgaria was mostly organized in churches and monastery schools, but
such “schools” were not many. The education was tied to a specific agenda of
 Athens 355, fol. 66v: Παράδος μοι αὐτόν ἀδελφὲ κἀγὼ μετὰ πολλῆς παρακλήσεως διδάξω
αὐτὸν τὰ γράμματα.
 Nikos Kalogeras, “The Role of Parents and Kin in the Education of Byzantine Children,” in
Hoping for Continuity: Childhood, Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, eds. Ka-
tariina Mustakallio, Jussi Hanska, Hanna-Leena Sainio, and Ville Vuolanto (Rome: Institutum
Romanum Finlandiae 33, 2005): 133 – 143; Timothy S. Miller, The Orphans of Byzantium: Child
Welfare in the Christian Empire (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003);
Niels Gaul, “Rising Elites and Institutionalization – Ēthos/Mores – ‘Debts’ and Drafts. Three Con-
cluding Steps Towards Comparing Networks of Learning in Byzantium and the ‘Latin’ West, c.
1000 – 1200,” in Networks of Learning. Perspectives on Scholars in Byzantine East and Latin
West, c. 1000 – 1200, eds. Sita Steckel, Niels Gaul, and Michael Grünbart (Berlin: LIT, 2015):
235 – 280, 245 – 246.
 Novaković, 50.
 Hludov, fol. 202r: веде его кь оучителю.
 Novaković, 53; St Petersburg, fol. 180v.
 In the Slavonic manuscripts, different words for teacher appear, such as a transcribed
Greek word in Novaković, didaskal (дидаскаль), and a Slavonic word in Hludov and St Peters-
burg, ouchitelj (оучитель).
a monastery, and readings were particularly adapted to a monastic or church set-

ting.⁷⁸³ In general, primary education was haphazardly organized.⁷⁸⁴
Manuscript Cambridge consistently implies private tutoring. In First teacher
(6.2 f), Jesus is taken to the teacher’s home, where other children were taught.⁷⁸⁵
In Third teacher (15), a teacher, Joseph’s friend, comes and asks Joseph to send
Jesus to his private school.⁷⁸⁶ Cambridge implies private teaching in 15.2.⁷⁸⁷ This
manuscript’s focus on private schooling may be due to scribes’ and rewriters’
ideas of what constituted ancient schooling. In reality, teaching was not restrict-
ed exclusively to private schooling in any area at any time. The insistence on pri-
vate schooling in Cambridge is perplexing, mainly since the Byzantine manu-
scripts mostly name the organized schooling, thereby adjusting the wording in
the text to the actual situation in their everyday life. The Lt variant of the
Latin text (as in Cambridge) was, as we know, transmitted from a Greek version.
The Slavonic manuscripts take over some of the terms from the Byzantine tradi-
tion, but their use of terms for private and organized schooling is inconsistent.
As for the other traditions, the Syriac text emphasizes that Jesus was “coaxed
and made to go to school.”⁷⁸⁸
Looking at how the manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas describe
the appearance of the classrooms, we find various pictures. Davis argues that
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas provides only very sparse details about the imag-
ined physical space of the classrooms where Jesus was taken for lessons.⁷⁸⁹ How-
ever, the different manuscripts containing this text allow us to have a view into
several different settings.
Manuscripts Vienna hist.91 and Sabaiticus mention in Third teacher (15.2)
that a book was lying “on the lectern” (ἀναλογείῳ) in the classroom (διδασκα-
λείον).⁷⁹⁰ Davis argues that διδασκαλείον was the most common term for a
school or children’s classroom in antiquity.⁷⁹¹ He argues that a classroom (διδα-
 See Jean W. Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000 – 1500 (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1994), 458 – 475.
 Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 459.
 Cambridge, fol. 80r: Ioseph aute[m] app[re]hendit pueru[m] Ih[esu]m et addux[it] illum in
domo sup[ra]dicti magist[ri]. U[bi] alii pueri doceba[n]t[ur].
 Cambridge, fol. 81r: Post multos aute[m] dies venit alius doctor amicus Ioseph. et dix[it] ad
eum. Trade eum m[ihi] et ego eu[m] cu[m] multa suavitate docebo eum lit[ter]as.
 Cambridge, fol. 81r: Et cum veniss[et] ad domu[m] doctoris.
 See Burke and Landau, New Testament Apocrypha, 64.
 Davis, Christ Child, 99.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 70v.
 Davis, Christ Child, 100; see also Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Educa-
tion in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
σκαλείον) is located within and accessed through a building or complex of rooms

called παιδευτήριον. He presents some archeological examples that give infor-
mation about ancient schools.
In Dijon, we are told nothing about how the classrooms looked. In Third
teacher (39), Jesus takes a book from the teacher’s hand.⁷⁹² In Cambridge, the
school is private, and Jesus arrives at the teacher’s home, finding the book
lying there. ⁷⁹³ In Slavonic Hludov, the book lies at the altar,⁷⁹⁴ while in St Peters-
burg, the book lies at the end of a (monastic) cell.⁷⁹⁵ The word “cell” implies a
monastic setting; the instruction is in a private monastic space. This detail
opens a window onto the schooling contexts, as imagined or known by a scribe
of this Slavonic manuscript. As I argued above, manuscript St Petersburg was
used in the Bulgarian royal context and the royal library, but this word most
probably implies that the most widespread form of education in medieval Bulga-
ria was monastic education.
Additional details about the classrooms appear in episode Third teacher
(15.2). Manuscripts Sabaiticus and Vienna hist.91 imply an open-air type of
school when they say that a great crowd had gathered and stood listening (al-
though the term παιδευτήριον was employed earlier).⁷⁹⁶ Alternatively, one
could imagine a closed-type school where anybody could enter and join classes.
The Slavonic manuscripts Hludov and St Petersburg both describe a crowd that
gathered and listened to Jesus.⁷⁹⁷ Cambridge describes open-air schools/places
where a great crowd gathered to listen to Jesus.⁷⁹⁸ Only Athens 355 implied
that the school was indoor when we read that the crowd entered and listened
to everything. ⁷⁹⁹ Manuscript Athens 355 also used the word διδασκαλείον earlier.
 Dijon, fol. 18r: Cu[m] aut[em] Ih[esu]s int[ro]isset scolam duct[us] sp[irit]u s[anc]to accepit
libru[m] de manu didascali docentis lege[m].
 Cambridge, fol. 81r: Et cum veniss[et] ad domu[m] doctoris. invenit librum in eode[m] loco
iace[n]te[m].
 Hludov, fol. 204r: И обрѣте книгы лежеще вь ѡлтари.
 St Petersburg, fol. 180v: И ѡбрѣте книгы лежѧщѧ на конець келїа.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 71r: τὸν δὲ παρεστῶτα ὄχλον ἐκπληττέσθαι ἐν τοῖς ὁσίοις ῥήμασιν αὐτοῦ;
Vienna hist.91, fol. 203r: καὶ ἐδίδασκεν τὸν νόμον τοὺς παρόντας, καὶ ἀκούοντες αὐ[τοῦ] ἦν
δὲ ὄχλο[ς] πολὺς ἐθαύμαζον ἐν τῇ ὡραιό[τητι] τῆς διδασκαλί[ας] αὐτοῦ.
 Hludov, fol. 204r: People listened and learned the law, many people stood in front (И
оучаше люди прѣстоупниѥ законоу и слышаахоу его. Народь же мнѡгь прѣ[д]стоаше їс[о-
усо]ви); St Petersburg, fol. 180v: Many people came to listen to Jesus (Народ же многь
прише[д] послоушаахѧ ї[соу]са).
 Cambridge, fol. 81v: Om[ne]s v[er]o qui astabant i[bi] dilige[n]t[er] eu[m] audieba[n]t…
Cu[m] collecta fuiss[et] turba multa.
 Athens 355, fol. 67r: ὄχλος δὲ πολὺς συνεισῆλθε καὶ ἠκροῶντο πάντες καὶ ἐθαύμαζον ἐπὶ τῇ
ἁγίᾳ αὐτοῦ διδασκαλίᾳ.
Previous scholarship reveals the existence of both open-air schools and

schools in buildings in antiquity. Horn and Martens confirm that many class ses-
sions were held in open areas. Some schools gathered their pupils inside build-
ings or in rooms inside a building.⁸⁰⁰ Davis lists various “classrooms” used in
antiquity: open-air arcades, porticos, dimly-lit apartments, halls (exedrae), or au-
ditoriums. These manuscripts offer a range of descriptions of classrooms, from
typical Greco-Roman classrooms, open-air classrooms, private classrooms to
the classrooms typical of some of the medieval settings in which this text was
used, such as the classrooms in Bulgarian monasteries.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas also gives some information about the sub-
jects Jesus was to study in school. Unlike the other manuscripts, Dijon describes
a “Jewish” syllabus. In First teacher (30), the Jewish schoolmaster Zachias asks
Mary and Joseph to send him to school to be instructed in the science of
human fear. ⁸⁰¹ Somewhat later, he says that Jesus should be instructed in Jewish
doctrine. ⁸⁰² In First teacher (31), Jesus is given to Levi, who teaches him letters. ⁸⁰³
The Byzantine manuscripts state in First teacher (6.2) that Jesus should be
taught letters and all the knowledge (epistêmê).⁸⁰⁴ Nothing is said about Jewish
learning. In Second teacher (14.1) of manuscripts Vienna hist.91 and Athens
355, the teacher asks Joseph about the syllabus for Jesus, and Joseph suggests
that Jesus should study first the Greek letters and then Hebrew. ⁸⁰⁵ The same state-
ment is repeated in the Slavonic manuscripts.⁸⁰⁶ This section is absent from Sa-
baiticus. Cambridge emphasizes that the child will become learned through
studying literature. ⁸⁰⁷ Later, Joseph suggests that Jesus should be taught first
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 29.
 Dijon, fol. 12r: Tu no[n] vis filium tuu[m] trade[re] ut doceat[ur] sci[enti]am hu[m]ani timo-
ris.
 Dijon, fol. 12r: Ut int[er] illos erudiat[ur] iudaica doct[ri]na.
 Dijon, fol. 13r: Q[ui] doceat eu[m] litt[er]as et erudiat.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67v: ἵνα παιδευθῇ γράμματα. καὶ ἵνα γνώσιν πᾶσαν ἐπιστήμην καὶ μάθῃ στέρ-
γειν ἡλικιώτας; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r-v: καὶ ἐγὼ διδάξω αὐτ[ὸν] μετὰ τῶν γραμμάτων πᾶσαν
ἐπιστήμην; Athens 355, fol. 63r: παράδος μοι αὐτὸν ἵνα μάθῃ γράμματα. καὶ διδάξω αὐτὸν πᾶσαν
ἐπιστήμην ἵνα μὴ ἀνυπότακτον.
 Athens 355, fol. 66r: καὶ λέγει ὁ διδάσκαλος τῷ Ἰωσήφ ποῖα γράμματα θέλεις διδάξω αὐτὸν
πρῶτον λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ τὰ ἑλληνικὰ εἶτα τὰ ἑβραϊκά; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 202v: αὐτ[ὸν] εἶπε
δὲ Ἰωσὴφ πρῶτον τὰ ἑλληνικὰ ἔπειτα ἑβραϊκά.
 Novaković, 52: прѣжде елиньскымь, по томь еврѣискымь; Hludov, fol. 203v: прѣж[д]е
грьчесыимь потомь иевреискои; St Petersburg, fol. 180r: прѣж[д]е елиньскы[м], пото[м] и
еврѣискы[м].
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: trade eum ad docendu[m] litteras. Cu[m] aut[em] doct[us] fuerit in stu-
dio litterarum.
the Gentile letters and then Hebrew letters. ⁸⁰⁸ Thus, what Byzantine manuscripts
call “Greek letters,” Cambridge calls “Gentile letters.”
The earlier work of scholars has shown that this syllabus is quite realistic in
the Greek-speaking contexts in Late Antiquity. Tropper argues that Jewish chil-
dren in the Greek-speaking diaspora studied Greek, and rabbinic sources indi-
cate that some Jewish children in Palestine learned Greek at home.⁸⁰⁹ Foster
notes that Jesus had to learn Greek first, rather than his native language, in
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ⁸¹⁰
Interestingly, when he debates with the teacher in First Teacher (6.3), Jesus
names all the letters from aleph to tau in the manuscript Cambridge, referencing
the Jewish alphabet.⁸¹¹ Foster notes this inconsistency of the Lt variant, where
“Jesus learns Hebrew letters with his first teacher, but on the second attempt
he is asked to study the Greek letters.”⁸¹² Foster concludes: “The tension felt
over the language in which Jesus was initially instructed raises wider historical
questions concerning the context that IGT assumes in its narration of Jesus’
schooling, as well as the nature of elementary education in the Mediterranean
world of the first century CE.”⁸¹³ In my view, it is plausible that the Lt variant,
as in Cambridge, was translated from a Greek text, where the “Hebrew-elements”
had been chiefly eliminated (as is typical in the Greek variants, particularly in
some manuscripts, like Sabaiticus); some remnants of the “Hebrew-elements”
nevertheless remained visible.
In First teacher (6.2), Novaković emphasizes that the child is to be taught lit-
erary studies. The teacher intends to teach Jesus books and all literary rules. ⁸¹⁴ In
episode Third teacher (15.1), Novaković suggests that the child will be taught the
sorcery books. ⁸¹⁵ This line, which does not appear elsewhere, adds information
about the specific knowledge that the Slavonic manuscripts insist on, related
to sorcery, to which I shall return below. In St Petersburg, the teacher emphasizes
the “crafty” aspect of education, suggesting that Jesus should get used to books
and learn to be able to do everything. ⁸¹⁶ Hludov insists on books and all the
 Cambridge, fol. 81r: R[espondit] Ioseph et dix[it]. P[ri]mu[m] doce ei lit[ter]as gentilicas et
postea hebrea[s].
 Tropper, “The Economics of Jewish Childhood in Late Antiquity,” 217.
 Foster, “Educating Jesus: The Search for a Plausible Context,” 25.
 Cambridge, fol. 80r: Et i[n]cipie[n]s v[er]sic[u]l[u]m dixit p[er] lit[er]as ab a usq[ue] t.
 Foster, “Educating Jesus: The Search for a Plausible Context,” 25.
 Foster, “Educating Jesus: The Search for a Plausible Context,” 25.
 Novaković, 49: книгамь и вьсемоу наставлѥнию кьнижьномоу.
 Novaković, 53: наоучю ѥго книгамь и врачебьнымь боуквамь.
 St Petersburg, fol. 178v: да навыкне[т] книгы и въсемоу наоучѧ еже оумѣти емоу.
rules. ⁸¹⁷ In this section, the Slavonic manuscripts hold on to the study of sorcery
and practical matters. Accordingly, while Dijon describes a Jewish education,
and the Byzantine manuscripts and Cambridge describe a general Greco-
Roman education (and Cambridge has some remnants of Jewish education),
the Slavonic manuscripts allow that studying sorcery and “crafty” skills are
also introduced into Jesus’ education.
Finally, let us look at why children were educated, according to the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas. The aims of education are typically profoundly influenced by
society’s core values and principles. In First teacher (30), Dijon notes that rever-
ence is the aim of education. The text stresses that more regard should be given to
the elders of the whole Church of Israel. ⁸¹⁸ The child should learn to have mutual
affection with the children. ⁸¹⁹ These values are constructed according to the gen-
eral Jewish context as described in this text.
Manuscript Athens 355 is relatively brief in First teacher (6.2): Jesus should
not be disobedient (ἀνυπότακτον).⁸²⁰ The community, as constructed in this
manuscript, valued the obedience of children. In this episode, the Arabic version
emphasizes only respect for the elders.⁸²¹ In Cambridge, Jesus’ education is for
his benefit. The teacher says: I will teach him honorably so that he is not unwise. ⁸²²
In Sabaiticus, the core values are: loving one’s peers, honoring the elders,
having a desire for children, and teaching them.⁸²³ In Vienna hist.91, the values
are: greeting the elders, honoring them as forefathers and fathers, loving one’s
peers, fearing and respecting parents, and being loved by one’s children.⁸²⁴
The Slavonic manuscripts mostly resemble Vienna hist.91, emphasizing a
 Hludov, fol. 201v: книгамь и всемоу наставлению.

 Dijon, fol. 12r: Oportebat enim nos pri[us] honorare p[res]b[yte]ros toti[us] eccl[es]ie isr[ae]l.
 Dijon, fol. 12r: et ex infantib[us] mutua[m] h[ab]eat cari[ta]te[m].
 Athens 355, fol. 63r: διδάξω αὐτὸν πᾶσαν ἐπιστήμην ἵνα μὴ ἀνυπότακτον.
 The teacher said to Joseph: “Entrust him to me so that I may teach him to respect elders.”
See Noja, “L’Évangile arabe apocryphe de Thomas,” 681– 690.
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: ego docebo eum honorifice ut non fiat insipie[n]s. Note that in the
fourteenth-century Berne 271, the stress is on wisdom and honesty: I will teach him later honestly
to be wise in his honesty. Berne, fol. 41v: ego postea docebo eum honorifice ut sit sapiens in hon-
estate.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67v: Δεῦρο δὸς αὐτό ἀδελφέ. ἵνα παιδευθῇ γράμματα. καὶ ἵνα γνώσιν πᾶσαν
ἐπιστήμην καὶ μάθῃ στέργειν ἡλικιώτας. καὶ τιμᾶν γῆρας. καὶ αἰδεῖσθαι πρεσβυτέρους. ἵνα καὶ εἰς
τέκνα πόθον κτήσεται ἕξειν ὁμοίως αὐτὰ ἀνταπαιδεύσῃ.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r-v: καὶ ἐγὼ διδάξω αὐτ[ὸν] μετὰ τῶν γραμμάτων πᾶσαν ἐπιστήμην
καὶ προσαγορεύειν πάντες τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους καὶ τιμᾶν αὐτοὺς ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντας τοὺς συνιλι-
κιώτας φοβεῖσθαι καὶ ἐντρεπέσθαι γονεῖς. ὅπως καὶ αὐτῷ τῷ ἰδίον τέκνον, ἀγαπηθήσεται.
range of values from honoring the elders to being loved by one’s children.⁸²⁵
These values were probably constructed according to the contexts described in
the manuscripts. The Slavonic manuscripts most probably adopted the list of
the values from the Byzantine manuscripts. These values may also have been en-
listed as messages to the audience about essential matters to be borne in mind in
children’s education.
Altogether, the subject of education takes up a large portion of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas. Authors, translators, scribes, and rewriters allowed them-
selves the freedom to construct imaginary settings in which Jesus’ education
took place. While in Dijon, we see the construction of a Jewish school setting,
the depictions in the Byzantine manuscripts mainly relate to ancient and late an-
tique Greco-Roman contexts, which very often pertained also to the Byzantine
contexts of education. We do not know when the text of the Lm variant, as we
have it in Dijon, was written, besides the fact that it first appeared in the elev-
enth-century Paris 1772. Nevertheless, we see that this text fits nicely into the
broader set of Marian texts, characterized by their anti-Jewish sentiments, know-
ing that the Jewish educators are described here as repressive towards Jesus’
family.
Interestingly, the anti-Jewish texts also appear in the manuscript Cambridge,
which contains the Lt variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which the anti-
Jewish sentiments were much reduced. I have already argued that the Lt variant
was introduced in the Latin West from Byzantium after it was translated from a
Greek version; thus, the texts in Cambridge and the Byzantine manuscripts de-
scribe similar ancient and late antique Greco-Roman education contexts,
which also resemble Byzantine education. The Slavonic manuscripts either
look to the Byzantine examples or construct their settings according to their
knowledge and experience. Their scribes and rewriters were felt comfortable to
expand these texts with familiar details.
 Novaković, 49: Jesus is to understand elders, forefathers and fathers, to love them and his
peers, to be afraid and ashamed of his parents, and to be cherished by them (да разоумѣѥть вь
старьцехь чьстьно, ѩко прадѣди и отьци, и любити ѥго имамь сь кротостию, ѩкоже и
вьсе сьврьстьникы ѥго, и боѩти се и срамлѩ родитель своихь, ѩко да и тои вьзлюблѥнь
боудеть оть родитель своихь); Hludov, fol. 201v: To listen to the elders, to honor everybody, to
respect and be afraid of the parents, and to be ashamed of them, and to be respected by his own
children (Еже послоушати емоу старце. И почести всакого и родителѥ боѩти се и почи-
тати. И срамлѩти се ихь. Ѩко ктѡ ѡ[т] своихь чедь почтань боудеть); St Petersburg,
fol. 178v: To respect all elders, and love his father with meekness, and all his peers, to be afraid
and ashamed of parents, and to be loved by his own children (Въсѧ старцѧ чьсти и прѣ[д] ды.
А ѡцѧ любити съ кротостїѫ. И въсѧ съвръстникы его. боатисѧ и срамѣтисѧ родителю,
ѩко да ѡ[т] инѣ[х] и ѡ[т] свои[х]ь чьд възлюбень бѫде[ть]).
Jesus’ physical work 203
I have not explored all that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas can tell us about
education. It must be a task for further research. It would be fascinating to ex-
plore the educational and instructional methods that the teachers employ in
the various manuscripts, the age of Jesus when he starts school, and the criteria
for entering school indicated in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
Jesus’ physical work
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas contains descriptions of the physical work that
Jesus undertakes as a child. This work consists of sowing wheat, carrying
water from a well, helping in carpentry, and going to the forest to collect
wood. In episode Water in Cloak (11), Jesus’ mother sends him to fetch water
from a well in a jar. In Harvest (12), Jesus sows with his father. Episode Carpenter
(13) describes Jesus helping his father in carpentry. Finally, in episode James’
snakebite (16), James and Jesus go to the forest to gather wood. If we look at
the differences in the manuscripts, we see that sometimes Jesus is helped by
other people, but at other times he works alone.
In Dijon, in the episode Harvest (34), Jesus sows wheat alone. He is present-
ed as a divine figure: it is why he performs this activity alone. Such a situation
also occurs in the Syriac version.⁸²⁶ In the rest of the manuscripts, Jesus sows
with his father. The difference vis-à-vis Dijon shows the tendency of the rest of
the manuscripts to present Jesus as an average child, helped in this activity by
his father.
In the rest of the episodes, the manuscripts depict Jesus’ physical work in the
same way. We may assume that there is a common cultural understanding of
these children’s activities that are acknowledged if not practiced in the same
way in the various environments in which this text was used. We also know
from earlier scholarship that getting involved in work was a reality for most chil-
dren in the Greco-Roman world.⁸²⁷ Lower-class children in Roman society were
put to work as soon as they were considered capable of acquiring skills and be-
coming productive.⁸²⁸ In Late Antiquity, most children had to go to work, some
even before seven.⁸²⁹ In the Middle Ages, children at the age of seven started ei-
 See Burke and Landau, New Testament Apocrypha, 66.

 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 166.
 Keith R. Bradley, “Child Labor in the Roman World,” Historical Reflections/ Réflexions His-
toriques 12, No. 2 (1985): 311– 330, 326.
 Horn and Martens, “Let the little children come to me,” 25.
ther school or work.⁸³⁰ Indeed, before the eighteenth century, most children in
Western Europe worked; medieval children as young as seven were sent out to
work as servants or apprentices.⁸³¹
The manuscripts additionally tell us Jesus’ age when he took up these vari-
ous activities. How old was Jesus when he was expected to do household work or
work together with his parents and siblings? How old was he when he was ex-
pected to do the work alone?
Jesus is between six and eight in the episode Water in Cloak (11.1) when his
mother sends him to fetch water from a well in a jar. This episode occurs in al-
most all the manuscripts. Episode Carpenter (13.1) appears in all the manu-
scripts, where Jesus helps his father in carpentry. Jesus is eight years old in
the Byzantine manuscripts and Cambridge, while he is ten in the Slavonic manu-
scripts. Finally, in episode James’ snakebite (16.1), James and Jesus go to the
woods to gather sticks. Jesus is between eight and ten years old, while James
is possibly older. He is either sent to do the work by his father or goes by himself
to the woods.
The exact ages of a child who conducts the work: carrying out a small task at
the age of six to eight, involving a child in work together with his parents from
six to ten, and getting involved in work by himself above the age of eight to ten
years need to find their specific attestation in other written and material evi-
dence to be ascribed to the specific environments. The material generally agrees
with what we already know about children involved in the work in the Roman
world, Late Antiquity, and the Middle Ages.
Jesus’ anger and cursing
The text about the childhood of Jesus contains much foul language. The child
Jesus in this text curses, utters terrible words and has bad intentions. What
could be the meaning of such language? Is it expected that Jesus curses as a
child? Jesus’ anger and cursing have been the most significant stumbling stones
in the study of this text and the most important reason why Jesus has been called
an enfant terrible who does not behave in a Christian way since he carries out
 See Joe L. Frost, A History of Children’s Play and Play Environments: Towards a Contempo-
rary Child-Saving Movement (New York: Routledge, 2009), 13.
 See Jackie C. Horne, History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Lit-
erature (New York: Routledge, 2016), 8.
misdeeds.⁸³² Scholars have found it hard to understand these features, and many
have dismissed this text as unworthy of study.⁸³³
In more recent studies, scholars have attempted to find a justification for this
behavior. In accord with his overall argument that Jesus is an adult in a child’s
body, Burke argues that Jesus does whatever adults were expected to do. The
young Jesus curses his opponents because the author believed that the adult
Jesus did the same.⁸³⁴ According to Burke, “Christologically, the Jesus of the In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas had affinities with eschatological prophets in the style of
Elijah who are as likely to curse as they are to bless.”⁸³⁵ Jesus also curses as an
adult in Mark 11:14 (although he curses a fig tree in that passage). Kee and Gero
suggest that Jesus’ curses need to be understood in the larger context of his mira-
cles.⁸³⁶
In Aasgaard’s view, “Jesus emerges as an odd combination of divine and
human elements, an enigmatic figure who behaves in ways seemingly improper
both for a divine character and an honorable human being.”⁸³⁷ “The cursing
should be seen as reflecting IGT’s strongly Christological focus: the gospel
(IGT) aims at demonstrating Jesus’ superiority and power.”⁸³⁸ Davis argues
that cursing was part of the agonistic language of children in the ancient
world.⁸³⁹ It was expected, not surprising. Daniel Eastman connects Jesus’ cursing
to the cursing stories of the ascetics of fourth-century Syria related by Theodoret
of Cyrrhus in the Religious History. ⁸⁴⁰ In the view of Aidan Breen, “the propensity
of the boy Jesus to curse those who even mildly offend him is common in other
religious biographies, including Jewish accounts of the Old Testament prophets.
It was certainly regarded in antiquity as a mark of divine power and an essential
characteristic of sanctity.”⁸⁴¹
All these opinions were formed based on the textual versions on which the
individual scholars worked. Therefore, no consensus has been reached regarding
 Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 68; Burke, De infantia Iesu, IX, n. 6.
 E. g., Cowper and Cullmann. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, IX, n. 7, 8.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 289.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 289.
 Howard Clark Kee, Miracle in the Early Christian World: A Study in Sociohistorical Method
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 281, 286; Gero, “Infancy Gospel,” 61; see also Daniel
Eastman, “Cursing in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” Vigiliae Christianae 69, No. 2 (2015): 186 –
208, 191.
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 86.
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 161.
 Davis, Christ Child, 64– 91.
 Eastman, “Cursing in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 186 – 208.
 Breen, “The Childhood of Jesus,” 1.
Jesus’ cursing. I will not discuss the issue of cursing and bad words per se. In-
stead, I will try to resolve the issue of why Jesus curses and uses bad words in
some manuscripts but not in others. How and in which contexts was such behav-
ior of Jesus acceptable or not acceptable? What does this behavior mean?
In manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon, Jesus curses a boy in the episode Pools
(26). After the boy destroys his pools, Jesus says: You, indeed the son of death and
the work of Satan! You destroy the works which I have wrought. ⁸⁴² In Annas’ Son
(28), Jesus is upset at the son of Annas (or Annas), who destroys his pools. In
Paris 1772 and Dijon, Jesus uses harsher words than in the other manuscripts:
O most wicked seed of iniquity! O son of death! O works of Satan! Verily the son of the
devil! The fruit of your seed shall be without strength, and your roots without moisture
and your branches withered, bearing no fruit!⁸⁴³
Most of the other manuscripts have a more concise curse in Annas’ Son (3.2). In
Vienna hist.91, Jesus says:
(You) wicked, impious, and foolish! What harm did the waters and pools do to you? Look!
Now you too shall dry up like a tree, and you shall never produce leaves nor roots nor
fruit.⁸⁴⁴
In Athens 355, Jesus says:
Sodomite, impious and foolish! What harm did my pools and my waters do to you? Look!
Now you shall dry up like a tree, and you shall not have roots, nor top nor fruit.⁸⁴⁵
The curse is only slightly toned down in these Byzantine manuscripts in compar-
ison to Dijon and Paris 1772. The three Slavonic manuscripts differ in section 3.2
by the random use of different words and expressions, but the meaning is not
different from the Byzantine manuscripts.⁸⁴⁶ The sodomite, mentioned in all
 Paris 1772, fol. 89r: Vere filius mortis. Op[er]a sathane op[er]a que ego op[er]atus sum tu
dissipas.
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: O semen iniquitatis pessimu[m]. filius mortis. Op[er]a sathane. vere fil-
ius diaboli. erit fructus seminis tui sine vigore. radices er[it] aridi rami tui qui non afferent
fructu[m].
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 199v: ἄδικε ἀσεβὴ καὶ ἀνόητε τί ἠδίκησάν σε τὰ ὕδατ[α] καὶ οἱ λάκκοι.
Ἰδοὺ νῦν καὶ σύ, ὡς δένδρον ἀποξηρανθῇς ὅ καὶ οὐ μὴ ἐνέγκῃς φύλλα οὔτε ῥίζαν οὔτε καρπ[όν].
 Athens 355, fol. 62r: Σοδομίτα ἄσεβες καὶ ἀνόητε τί σε ἠδίκησαν οἱ λάκκοι οἱ ἐμοὶ καὶ τὰ ἐμὰ
ὕδατα. Ἰδοὺ νῦν ὡς δένδρον ἀποξηρανθῇς καὶ μὴ ἔχῃς ῥίζαν μήτε κεφαλὴν μήτε καρπόν.
 Novaković, 48: Содомлѩнине нечисты и неразоумьны, како те вьзненавидѣше мои
вирьци и моѥ рѣчице? Нь да исьхиеши ѩко и дрѣво и да не имаши ни листиѩ, ни
three Slavonic manuscripts, appears only in Athens 355. The wording in Cam-
bridge is similar to the rest of the corpus.⁸⁴⁷
A significant shift occurs when we compare Sabaiticus with the manuscripts
presented above. Jesus says in Sabaiticus: Your fruit (shall be) without root and
your shoot dried up like a branch scorched by a strong wind. ⁸⁴⁸ While the curse
is present, the anger and the bad words are absent. Sabaiticus addresses the
son of Annas more calmly.
In the episode Careless Boy (29/4.1), Jesus collides with another child in the
street and curses him. Paris 1772 (Lm) gives the following curse: You shall not go
back safe and sound from the way you went. ⁸⁴⁹ Vienna hist.91 and Athens 355
contain a similar curse: You shall not go your way. ⁸⁵⁰ Jesus is furious (Athens
355) and irritated (Vienna hist.91).
In Novaković, Jesus curses the boy not to come home.⁸⁵¹ In Hludov, Jesus
curses the boy not to come back from where he is going.⁸⁵² In St Petersburg,
he curses the boy not to arrive anywhere along this road.⁸⁵³ The Slavonic manu-
scripts diverge, and St Petersburg mostly resembles the Byzantine manuscripts
Vienna hist.91 and Athens 355.
Manuscript Cambridge has similar lines: End your way like this! ⁸⁵⁴ However,
in Sabaiticus, Jesus utters different words: Cursed be for you your leader. ⁸⁵⁵ This
expression in Sabaiticus is wholly altered, possibly resulting from rewriting.
The text then contains the sections where Jesus gets upset with his father,
Joseph, his teachers, and occasional crowds. In Joseph’s Rebuke (5.3) in manu-
script Athens 355, Jesus is furious and angry with his father because Joseph
has punished him. In Vienna hist.91, he is angry. In Cambridge, Jesus is distur-
плода своѥго; Hludov, fol. 201r: Содомлѩнине, нечтиви и неразоумны. Что вьзобидоше
виркови мои та ихь разкази и се да исьхиеши ѩко тои дрѣво. Да не принесеши плода
ни корѣне. In St Petersburg, fol. 177v: Содомите нечьстиве неразоумне что тѧ ѡбидѣшѫ
мои вирове и воды та и[х] раскази. Се да бѫдеши ѩко и дрѣво соу[х] да не принесеши
ни листїа ни коренїа ни пльда.
 Cambridge, fol. 79r: Sodomite impie et nesciens. Q[ui]d te dampnaver[un]t fontes aque fac-
ture me. Ecce sicut arida fies non h[abe]ns radices nec folia nec fructu[m].
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Ἄριζος ὁ καρπός σου καὶ ξηρὸς ὁ βλαστός σου ὡς κλάδος ἐκκομένος ἐν
πνεύματι τιμίῳ.
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: non revertaris san[us] via tua q[uo] vadis.
 Athens 355, fol. 62v: Οὐκ ἀπελεύσει τὴν ὁδόν σου; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200r: Οὐκ ἀπελεύσει
τὴν ὁδόν σου.
 Novaković, 48: Да не доидеши до дома своѥго.
 Hludov, fol. 201r: Да не вьзвратиши се поздравоу ѩмо же идѣши.
 St Petersburg, fol. 178r: да не доидеши пѫте[м] тѣ[м].
 Cambridge, fol. 79r: Sic p[er]ficias iter tuu[m].
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Ἐπικατάρατός συ ὁ ἡγεμών σου.
bed (turbatus). In the Slavonic manuscripts, Jesus “complained” (вьзнегодо-

вавь/негодова) about what happened. Sabaiticus significantly reduces Jesus’
negative emotions; Jesus expresses understanding for his father. He does not
utter any threats. In the end, he even knuckles under his father.⁸⁵⁶
In First teacher (31/6.3) of Cambridge, Jesus offends the teacher by referring
to laziness: You lazy (slothful)! (Pigritas!). The Slavonic manuscripts do not men-
tion Jesus’ anger, but they contain the offense: Hypocrite! In all three Greek
manuscripts, the child Jesus gets angry and offends the teacher with the word
hypocrite.
The Second teacher (28/14.2) describes the teacher getting upset and hitting
Jesus on the head. In Dijon, Jesus does not curse the teacher, but the teacher nev-
ertheless dies.⁸⁵⁷ In Sabaiticus, Jesus cursed him, and the teacher fell and died. ⁸⁵⁸
The Slavonic manuscripts describe other emotional reactions: Jesus complained
(Novaković, St Petersburg)/got furious (Hludov), cursed the teacher, who became
bedridden and fell. ⁸⁵⁹ Cambridge describes Jesus’ anger.⁸⁶⁰ Athens 355 presents
Jesus’s anger similarly to the Slavonic manuscripts by adding the teacher’s med-
ical condition: Jesus became angry and cursed him. And at once fainting, he fell. ⁸⁶¹
Vienna hist.91 describes the teacher’s medical condition in greater detail: The
child Jesus became angry and cursed him. And at once, he swooned and fell
upon his face. ⁸⁶² We see various actions through which he displays his divine
power and a range of moods that he goes through, from being entirely neutral
to being furious.
Kristi Upson-Saia argued that Thomas’ Infancy Gospel was originally written
by opponents of Christianity who wished to undermine Jesus’ character.⁸⁶³ She
 Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: ᾿Aρκείτω σοι τὸ ζητεῖν με καὶ εὑρίσκειν μὴ πρὸς τούτῳ ἔτι καὶ μωλωπί-
ζειν φυσικὴν ἄγνοιαν ἐπιλαβόμενος καὶ οὐκ εἶδες με σαφῶς τί σοῦ εἰμι. Ἴδε οἶδας μὴ λυπεῖν με.
Σὸς γὰρ ἡμῖν. καὶ πρὸς σε ἐχειρώθην.
 Dijon, fol. 17v: et mox p[os]tq[uam] p[er]cussit illu[m] mortu[us] est.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 70v: Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἔπεσεν ὁ καθηγητὴς καὶ ἀπέθανεν.
 Novaković, 53: Ісоусь же негодовавь проклеть дидаскала того, и абиѥ изнемогь паде
ниць. Hludov, fol. 203v: Ѡтроче же ї[соу]с прогнѣва се, и проклеть его. И падесе изнемоги;
St Petersburg, fol. 180r: Ѡтрочѧ же негодоваи проклѧ[т] его. Тог[д]а тоу изнемогь паде
ниць.
 Cambridge, fol. 81r: Ih[esu]s aut[em] iratus maledix[it] eum. et subito cecidit et mortuus est.
 Athens 355, fol. 66v: ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἀγανακτήσας ἐκατηράσατο αὐτὸν καὶ εὐθέως ἔπεσεν ὁ
διδάσκαλος ὀλιγωρήσας.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 203r: τὸ δὲ παιδίον ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἠγανάκτησε καὶ κατηράσατο αὐτὸν καὶ
εὐθέ[ως] ἐλιποθύμησεν καὶ ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ στόματος.
 Kristi Upson-Saia, “Holy Child or Holy Terror? Understanding Jesus’ Anger in the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas,” Church History 82, No. 1 (2013): 1– 39.
suggests that Christian redactors were later able to regain control of his image by
correcting the embarrassing stories. It is an interesting hypothesis, and it may
indeed be tenable since it accords with the examples presented above. The
image of Jesus as a cursing child is much toned down in Sabaiticus, for example.
Burke also argues that the transmission history of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
testifies to the efforts by scribes to bring the Jesus of the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas into conformity with the Jesus of the NT gospels.⁸⁶⁴
In my view, Jesus’ cursing and anger mainly depend on the image of Jesus
constructed in the individual manuscripts. Where Jesus is presented as a divine
being (as understood by others, at least his parents), cursing and anger are en-
tirely allowable. Cursing and anger are not necessarily divine features per se, but
they belong to a range of activities through which Jesus displays his power. Pu-
nitive miracles here illustrate God’s power and judgment.⁸⁶⁵ In the other manu-
scripts, which tend to give more space to Jesus as an average child, cursing and
anger are used to a lesser extent, possibly because they tend to come closer in
their descriptions of Jesus to canonical gospels, as Burke said. Therefore,
Jesus’ cursing and anger are components of each text’s strategy to describe
Jesus in a particular way.
Jesus’ family and community
An original author of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may have intended to locate
the text about Jesus’ childhood in a specific setting, where a particular commu-
nity would surround him and his parents. If so, what kind of community did he
have in mind? It is, unfortunately, impossible to answer this question. It is more
important to ask how the depictions of the social community in which Jesus and
his family lived differ in the various manuscripts we study here.
Paris 1772 and Dijon describe a Jewish community. The episode Pools (26) de-
picts a gathering of Jews and the dead boy’s parents’ outcry because Jesus killed
the child. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus stay firmly together, but they are nevertheless
concerned about the community’s attitude.⁸⁶⁶ Further on, Jesus’ miracle in the
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 174.

 Eastman, “Cursing in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 191.
 Paris 1772, fol. 89r: Tunc aut[em] sediciosa voce clamabant parentes mortui. Cont[ra] ioseph
et maria[m] dicentes eis filius v[este]r maledix[it] filiu[m] n[ost]r[u]m. et mortuus e[st]. Cu[m]
aut[em] audissent ioseph et maria. statim vener[unt] ad Ih[esu]m p[ro]pt[er] sedicione[m] paren-
tum pueri. Aut adclamationem iudeor[um].
episode Sparrows (27) is reported to the twelve tribes of Israel.⁸⁶⁷ Joseph faces an-
other complaint by the dead child’s parents in Joseph’s Rebuke (29) when the pa-
rents expel them from the town.⁸⁶⁸ Joseph is afraid of the violence and uproar of
the people of Israel. In First teacher (30), the Jewish schoolmaster Zachias speaks
to Joseph rudely and without fear, intimating that Joseph and Mary have more
regard for their son than for the elders of the people of Israel.⁸⁶⁹ In the Second
teacher (38) and Third teacher (39), Mary and Joseph are asked again by the
Jews to send Jesus to school.⁸⁷⁰ They do so, although unwillingly, because
they fear the community and the threats of the elders and priests.
The descriptions of the Jewish community in these manuscripts may reflect
the milieu as imagined or constructed by authors, translators, or rewriters, who
built up the environment where Jesus grew up. The text describes particularly
hostile tensions between Jesus and his family and their fellow Jews and bears
solid anti-Jewish sentiments. It also reflects a society where the community is
closely involved in the upbringing of a child.
As noted earlier, the manuscript Paris 1772 originated from the German Ben-
edictine Abbey, Reichenau, and Dijon originated from the Abbey of Cîteaux, lo-
cated in Saint-Nicolas-lès-Cîteaux, south of Dijon, France. One need not forget
that other manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Lm variant) ap-
pear in more significant numbers, particularly from the thirteenth century. The
tensions towards Jews as reflected in this text may be mirroring the medieval
French and German contexts in which the text was used.⁸⁷¹ We can think of
 Paris 1772, fol. 89v: Cu[m] aut[em] om[ne]s qui aderant ei. vidissent talia signa. et virtutes
ab eo factas fuisse. pharisei repleti sunt stupore magno. Alii laudabant eu[m]. et mirabantur. Alii
vituperabant eu[m]. Et habies ad principes sacerdotum et adprimates phariseor[um]. et
nuntiaver[unt] eis quod Ih[esu]s filius d[i]i. in conspectu totius p[o]p[u]li isr[ae]litici. hec talia
signa et virtutes fecisset et adnunciatu[m] e[st] hoc ad xii trib[us] isr[ae]l[is].
 Dijon, fol. 11v: Et accesseru[n]t p[ar]entes mortui ad ioseph: et dixerunt ei. Tolle Ih[esu]m
illu[m] de loco illo. no[n] eni[m] potest hic h[ab]itare nob[is]cum eo municipio. Aut c[er]te
doce illu[m] b[e]n[e]d[ice]re et n[on] maledicere.
 Dijon, fol. 12r: sed video te et maria[m] plus velle dilige[re] filiu[m] v[est]r[u]m. Q[ua]m
tradito[r]es senior[um] p[o]p[u]li. Oportebat enim nos pri[us] honorare p[res]b[yte]ros toti[us]
eccl[es]ie isr[ae]l.
 Dijon, fol. 17v: It[eru]m t[er]tio rogaveru[n]t iudei mariam et ioseph ut aliu[m] magist[ru]m
blandim[en]tis suis ad Ih[esu]m adduce[re]nt ad discendu[m].
 Many scholarly works describe the tensions between Christians and Jews in the medieval
West. M. Cohen describes relations between Christians and Jews in the medieval West as con-
frontational and violent. K. Stow writes about royal expulsions of the Jews that began at the
end of the thirteenth century in the medieval West. See Kenneth Stow, Alienated Minority: The
Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Mark R.
Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
the Jews described in the text as subjects targeted at the time when these manu-
scripts were copied (eleventh to thirteenth centuries), all the more so if we look
at the historical circumstances of medieval Western Europe (England, France,
Germany), where Jews were under frequent threats. Thus far, many scholarly
studies have pointed to the increased tensions between Christians and Jews in
the medieval West. Some medieval scholars, such as Odo of Cambrai and Gui-
bert of Nogent, wrote treatises against Jews in the twelfth century.⁸⁷² The pres-
ence of anti-Jewish sentiments in these manuscripts, therefore, should not sur-
prise us.
Another link to the anti-Jewish sentiments is the special attachment of the
texts in these two manuscripts to the Virgin Mary.⁸⁷³ I have already pointed
out the cycles of Marian texts appearing in them. On the other hand, the rise
of the Christian cult of Mary was perceived as a threat by Jews.⁸⁷⁴ In Franco-Ger-
man Jewish circles in the Middle Ages, especially from the late twelfth century,
there is an increased awareness of the growing prominence of the figure of the
sity Press, 1994); Anna Sapir–Abulafia, Christians and Jews in Dispute: Disputational Literature
and the Rise of Anti-Judaism in the West (c.1000 – 1150) (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998).
 Anna Sapir–Abulafia, “Christian Imagery of Jews in the Twelfth Century: A Look at Odo of
Cambrai and Guibert of Nogent,” in Christians and Jews in Dispute: Disputational Literature and
the Rise of Anti-Judaism in the West (c.1000 – 1150), ed. Anna Sapir–Abulafia (Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate, 1998): 383 – 391.
 Ephraim Shoham–Steiner mentions in his article the anti-Jewish polemics of the late elev-
enth-century English churchman Gilbert Crispin, based on his actual debate with a Jew in 1092,
where the Virgin Mary, Immaculate Conception, and Virgin Birth appear as the main subjects of
the discussion. Also, Anna Sapir–Abulafia demonstrated through the letters of Odo of Tournai,
bishop of Cambrai (1050 – 1113), that the figure of the Virgin Mary was often cited in anti-Jewish
polemics in the twelfth century. In his early twelfth-century autobiography, Abbot Guibert of No-
gent (c.1055 – 1124) writes that when he was a monk at the Abbey of St. Germer at Fly, he had
given his Tractatus de incarnatione contra iudaeos to a fellow monk who was a recent convert
from Judaism. Israel Yuval pointed out the appearance of the Miracula Sanctae Virginis Mariae
in northern France as an essential piece in what would in a later period develop into a full-
blown attack on Jews and Judaism. Miri Rubin writes that in the Virgin Mary miracula collections
that circulated in Europe from the twelfth century and in writings of members of the Mendicant
orders from the thirteenth century, the Virgin often appears as helping Jews and other former
“infidels” who have just converted to Christianity. See Ephraim Effie Shoham-Steiner, “The Vir-
gin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions to Marian Devotion in the High Middle Ages,” Associa-
tion for Jewish Studies Review 37, No. 1 (2013): 75 – 91, 78; Sapir–Abulafia, “Christian Imagery of
Jews,” 383 – 391; Jay Rubenstein, Guibert of Nogent: Portrait of a Medieval Mind (London: Rout-
ledge, 2002), 39 – 44; Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and
Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2008), 195, n. 129.
 Shoham-Steiner, “The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions,” 77.
Virgin Mary.⁸⁷⁵ The Jews had their responses to the rise of the Christian cult of
Mary.⁸⁷⁶
Mary was continually connected with anti-Jewish sentiments from the
twelfth century and throughout the high and late Middle Ages. By the late thir-
teenth century, she was no longer seen only as a possible link or conduit be-
tween the Jews and Christianity, but her image became more commonly depicted
as the protector of those offended and allegedly victimized by Jews.⁸⁷⁷ By this
time, Mary had become a gatekeeper who prevented the unwanted infiltration
of Jews into Christianity.⁸⁷⁸ Shoham-Steiner argues that the role of the Virgin
Mary as a formidable enemy of the Jews could be seen in theatrical performances
that were staged all over Western Christendom.⁸⁷⁹
The mention of the community of Jews resonates to a greater or lesser degree
in the other manuscripts. They also lack a coherent social community; Jesus’ au-
dience is a sporadic group of people rather than a compact group. In some
manuscripts, Jews mostly disappear, and the other characters replace their pres-
ence.
What Jesus did in Sparrows (27) in the sight of all (in Dijon and Paris 1772),
that is, in front of the Jewish community, was limited in the other manuscripts
either to a small group of Jews or to single Jews (or no Jews at all). In Sparrows
(2.5), manuscripts Cambridge, Vienna hist. 91, Novaković and Hludov mention
Jews.⁸⁸⁰ Manuscript St Petersburg does not name the Jews but says “all.”⁸⁸¹ Ath-
ens 355 refers to the previous “they,” which must be the Jewish children who in-
itially played with Jesus.⁸⁸² Sabaiticus describes a Pharisee who saw the mira-
cle.⁸⁸³
 Shoham-Steiner, “The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions,” 75 – 91; see also Rubin,
Mother of God, 161– 168.
 Shoham-Steiner, “The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions,” 77.
 Shoham-Steiner, “The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions,” 89.
 Shoham-Steiner, “The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions,” 89, n. 35.
 Shoham-Steiner, “The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions,” 90; Merrall Llewelyn
Price, “Remembering the Jews: Theatrical Violence in the N-Town Marian Plays,” Comparative
Drama 41, No. 4 (2007– 8): 439 – 463.
 Cambridge, fol. 79r: Videntes aute[m] Iudei; Vienna hist. 91, fol. 199v: Ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ Ἰου-
δαῖοι; Novaković, 48: И видѣвьше же Июдеиѥ; Hludov, fol. 200v: И видѣвше Їюдеиє.
 St Petersburg, fol. 177r: И видѣвше въси и оужасошѫс.
 Athens 355, fol. 62r: Καὶ ἀπελθὼν ὁ Ἰωσὴφ λέγει τῷ Ἰησοῦ. ἵνα τί οὕτως ἐποίησας ὃ οὐκ
ἔξεστι ποιεῖν ἐν σαββάτῷ. Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς κρωτήσας τὰς χεῖρας λέγει τοῖς στρουθίοις. Ὑπάγετε πε-
τάσατε καὶ μιμνήσκεσθέ μου οἱ ζῴντες. καὶ πετάσαντα τὰ στρουθία ἀπῆλθον κράζοντα. ἀπήγγει-
λαν πᾶσι τὸ σημεῖον ὃ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 66v: Ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ Φαρισαῖος ἐθαύμασεν καὶ ἀπήγγειλεν πᾶσιν τοῖς φίλοις
αὐτοῦ.
In Careless Boy (4), when Jesus cursed the boy who fell and died, we see in
Dijon, the people of Israel, and only people in Sabaiticus and Vienna hist.91.⁸⁸⁴ In
Athens 355, Jews are mentioned as witnesses.⁸⁸⁵ However, in the Slavonic manu-
scripts and Cambridge, it is Jesus’ friends who were the witnesses of the event.⁸⁸⁶
The Jewish schoolmaster Zachias who talked to Joseph and Mary in Dijon is
no longer “a Jewish schoolmaster” in the other manuscripts of First teacher (6).
In the continuation of First Teacher (6.2e), Jews listen to Jesus in manuscripts
Cambridge, Vienna hist. 91, Athens 355, and Slavonic manuscripts.⁸⁸⁷ Sabaiticus,
however, describes the audience as all the people. ⁸⁸⁸ Jews are thus absent from
Sabaiticus in this episode.⁸⁸⁹
In Third teacher (39) of Dijon, we see a massive tension between Joseph and
Mary on the one hand and the Jewish community on the other.⁸⁹⁰ In the other
manuscripts, Joseph sends Jesus to school to be educated by his friend because
his friend asked him, not because Joseph fears the community. The same applies
to the episode Second teacher (38/14), where, in Dijon, Joseph and Mary were
asked by the people that Jesus should be taught the letters in school according
to the commandment of the elders, while in the rest of the manuscripts, Joseph
thought that Jesus should go to school because he was intelligent.⁸⁹¹
 Dijon, fol. 11v: Et acc[us]abant eum adv[er]sus ioseph. Ut h[oc] vidit ioseph p[er]t[er]rit[us]
est nimiu[m]. Timens vim p[o]p[u]li sui Isr[ae]l; Sabaiticus, fol. 67r: Καὶ εὐθὺς ὁ λαὸς ἐβόησαν
ἰδόντες ὅτι ἀπέθανεν.
 Athens 355, fol. 62v: οἱ δὲ Ἰουδαῖοι ἰδόντες τὸ θαῦμα ἀνεβόησαν λέγοντες πόθεν ἦν τὸ παι-
δίον τοῦτο.
 Novaković, 49: И видѣвьше то ини отроци, вьзоупише глаголюште; Hludov, fol. 201r:
Тог[д]а видѣвше дроузи с нимь бывше чюдише се; St Petersburg, fol. 178r: видѣвше же
дроуѯи и рекошѫ; Cambridge, fol. 79r: Et post paucos dies deambulante Ih[es]u cu[m] Ioseph
p[er] villam cucurrit de infantib[us] un[us] et p[er]cussit Ih[esu]m in ulnas. Ih[esu]s aut[em] dixit
ad eum: Sic p[er]ficias iter tuu[m]. Et statim cecidit in t[er]ram et mortuus e[st]. Illi aute[m]
vidente[s] mirabilia. Clamaveru[n]t dice[n]te[s]. Unde e[st] puer iste.
 Cambridge, fol. 79v: Cum audissent Iudei; Athens 355, fol. 63v: ᾿Aκούσαντες δὲ οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι;
Vienna hist. 91, fol. 200v: ᾿Aκούσαντες δὲ οἱ Ἰουδαῖ[οι]; Novaković, 50: Слышавьше же Июдеиѥ
како бесѣдоуѥть и ничесоже не вьзьмогоу отвѣштати и; Hludov, fol. 202r: Слышавше же
їюдеие такови гл[агол]ы и оубоаше се.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 68r: ᾿Aκούσαντες δὲ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἐφιμώθησαν λαλῆσαι μηκέτι δυνηθέντες
πρὸς αὐτόν.
 Jews are not wholly absent from Sabaiticus; they appear a few times.
 Dijon, fol. 17v: It[eru]m t[er]tio rogaveru[n]t iudei mariam et ioseph ut aliu[m] magist[ru]m
blandim[en]tis suis ad Ih[esu]m adduce[re]nt ad discendu[m]. Timentes aut[em] vim p[o]p[u]li
m[aria] et io[seph] et insolentias p[ri]ncipu[m] et sac[er]dotu[m] minas. Dux[er]unt Ih[esu]m
ad scolas.
 Dijon, fol. 17r-v: maria et ioseph rogarent[ur] a p[o]p[u]lo ut Ih[esu]s doc[er]et[ur] litteris in
scola. Q[uod] [et] face[re] non negaveru[n]t [et] s[e]c[un]d[u]m p[rae]ceptu[m] senior[um].
Some of the reworkers of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the manuscripts

explicitly describe Jesus’ childhood in the milieu of his fellow Jews. Other re-
workers try to muffle (to a larger or lesser extent) these Jewish contexts. Stephen
Davis argues that the tensions towards Jews, such as those we see in the Gospel
of John and the Acts of the Apostles, “are more muted” in the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. ⁸⁹² However, he sees these “conflict-laden encounters” in a number of
episodes. He marks the way Jesus called the first teacher a “hypocrite” as a com-
mon trope in Christian anti-Jewish polemics.⁸⁹³ Davis mainly analyzed the Greek
text in manuscript Sabaiticus. In my view, the tensions towards Jews are much
more accentuated in other manuscripts, such as Dijon and Paris 1772, compared
to Sabaiticus, which mentions Jews to the smallest extent among the manu-
scripts analyzed here.
The conclusions similar to Davis’ were heard by some other scholars in con-
nection with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Slavonic manuscripts. Accord-
ing to them, the Slavonic text of the Infancy reveals a special attachment to the
“anti-Jewish” propaganda of the environments where it was used.⁸⁹⁴ In my view,
the Slavonic manuscripts mention Jews, but their presence reflects a faithful
transmission of these texts from Greek. They do not by any means add to the Jew-
ish presence in the texts. The Slavonic manuscripts of the Infancy may have
served as tools in “anti-Jewish” propaganda in their environments.⁸⁹⁵ However,
they were not the most “anti-Jewish” texts in the whole corpus. This conclusion
may redirect the scholarly allegations about the “anti-Jewish” sentiments of the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Slavonic context.
Jews and the “Jewish aspect” are almost absent from Sabaiticus. The reasons
are to be sought in the context of either this manuscript or the Gs variant. Sabai-
ticus was copied in Cyprus in the eleventh century. At least during the Byzantine
rule, which covered part of the history of medieval Cyprus, the Jews were prob-
ably in an unfavorable position since Byzantine emperors often promulgated
laws and edicts against tolerance that targeted Jews and other minorities.⁸⁹⁶
The position of the Jews in Byzantium was not the most favorable one, and
 Davis, Christ Child, 131.

 Davis, Christ Child, 135.
 Krstev, “Мястото на детство Исусово.”
 Krstev, “Мястото на детство Исусово.”
 On the position of the Jews in the Byzantine Empire, see Robert Bonfil, Oded Irshai, Guy
Stroumsa, and Rina Talgam, eds., Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures
(Leiden: Brill, 2012); Averil Cameron, “Jews and Heretics – A Category Error?” In The Ways That
Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, eds. Adam Becker,
and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003): 345 – 360.
Housing 215
they were exposed to negative sentiments and forcible conversions.⁸⁹⁷ Possibly,

reworkers of this text wished to stay away from the delicate Jewish issue and
therefore avoided mentioning Jews.⁸⁹⁸ The absence of Jews and the mitigation
of Jesus’ curses in Sabaiticus shows the reworkers’ intention to change this
text following its new aims.
While the “anti-Jewish” sentiments are clearly expounded in the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas of Dijon and Paris 1772, in the rest of the manuscripts, trans-
lators, copyists, and rewriters lessened the importance of the audience portrayed
in the texts but also of the community, whether Jews or other people. The ten-
sions and hostility of the community, as “the others,” towards Jesus’ family
are to some extent muted in these manuscripts, possibly to avoid the sensitive
Jews-related issues and diminish the general hostilities in the text.
Housing
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas offers some details related to housing as it looked
in the past. It appears that these details are linked to everyday life, but they have
been so far very little studied in connection with the specific periods and terri-
tories.⁸⁹⁹ These details may reflect earlier stages of the text and transfer the
state of the affairs of the period when the text was closer to its original produc-
tion. In that case, they are related to the modes of housing in antiquity, and they
would not reveal much about the environments of their later transmission. Alter-
natively, the housing described in these texts may have been adjusted to the con-
temporary contexts, potentially giving an insight into the state of affairs in the
medieval periods in various regions. I shall now demonstrate that both these op-
tions were present in the various manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
In the Second teacher (38/14.3), Jesus goes back home after killing the second
teacher. Dijon briefly mentions the word home (domus). Joseph orders Jesus’
mother not to let him out of the house after cursing the second teacher in the
 Bonfil, Irshai, Stroumsa, and Talgam, Jews in Byzantium, 877– 880.
 In Byzantine chronicles, Jews appear as crucifiers of Christ and enemies of Orthodox Chris-
tianity. Jews also emerge as perpetrators of violent attacks against Christians, who express them-
selves against the Christian religion. Also, there is a link in Byzantine literature between the Jews
and various groups of heretical Christians. Jews are ascribed a role in encouraging some Byzan-
tine emperors to adopt Iconoclasm. Those who opposed images in Byzantium were often called
“Judaizers.” See Bonfil, Irshai, Stroumsa, and Talgam, Jews in Byzantium, 786, 888.
 See Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus.
rest of the manuscripts. The word house in these manuscripts gives some limited
insight into the different milieus of everyday life.
In Cambridge, the words domus and atrium domi follow ancient and late an-
tique housing. Domus in the ancient tradition refers to the physical housing and
the family that lived in it.⁹⁰⁰ Roman houses commonly had a peristyle behind the
house, which would lead into a garden space.⁹⁰¹ However, Ellis and Wickham
argue that peristyle houses had largely disappeared by the seventh century, at
least in the West.⁹⁰² This type of house continued to exist in Byzantium.⁹⁰³ Re-
writers and adaptors of the Lt variant, as in Cambridge, had in mind ancient
houses, preferably of the Roman type.
Manuscripts Sabaiticus and Athens 355 use the word οἶκος/οἰκία in the same
episode (14.3). As in Latin, these words mean a physical house and the family, a
household as a socio-economic and biological unit.⁹⁰⁴ In Vienna hist. 91, Joseph
says: Do not let him out of the door. ⁹⁰⁵
Hludov and St Petersburg contain the same formulation as the other manu-
scripts: Do not let him out/outside of the house,⁹⁰⁶ where the word дом implies
physical house, but also a family within. Novaković, however, says: Do not let
him out to the courtyard from the house. ⁹⁰⁷ The expression на дворь in Novaković
implies that the house had a courtyard.
Does the phrase in Novaković reflect Slavic medieval housing or Byzantine
housing? It is asserted that medieval Slavic housing was generally basic. Florin
Curta discusses medieval housing in southeastern Europe, arguing that the “typ-
 See Harlow and Laurence, Growing up and growing old, 20.
 Harlow and Laurence, Growing up and growing old, 25.
 Simon Ellis, “Late Antique Housing and the Uses of Residential Buildings: An Overview,” in
Housing in Late Antiquity: From Palaces to Shops, eds. Luke Lavan, Lale Özgenel, Alexander Sar-
antis, Simon Ellis, and Yuri A. Marano (Leiden: Brill, 2007): 1– 22, 13; Chris Wickham, Framing
the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400 – 800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), 648 – 650.
 Lefteris Sigalos, “Housing People in Medieval Greece,” International Journal of Historical
Archeology 7, No. 3 (2003): 195 – 221, 199.
 Sigalos, “Housing People in Medieval Greece,” 195 – 221. Leonora Neville also confirms that
the oikos was the basic unit of society. See Leonora Neville, Authority in Byzantine Provincial So-
ciety, 950 – 1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Simon Ellis, “The Middle By-
zantine House and Family: A Reappraisal,” in Approaches to the Byzantine Family, eds. Leslie
Brubaker, and Shaun Tougher (Burlington: Ashgate 2013): 247– 272.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 203r: Ἰωσὴφ δὲ ἐλυπήθη καὶ παρήγγειλεν τῇ μ[ητ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ ὅπ[ως] ἔξω
τῆς θύρ[ας] μὴ ἀπολύσῃ αὐτὸν.
 Hludov, fol. 203v: Не испоущаи его изь домоу; St Petersburg, fol. 180v: И ре[че] не испо-
ущаи его вънь из дом[оу].
 Novaković, 53: не поуштаи ѥго, жено, на дворь изь домоу.
Housing 217
ical village in southeastern Europe consisted of sunken-floored huts of standard

structure and size with one or two heating facilities. Such buildings are common
throughout the region in the entire medieval period.”⁹⁰⁸
Did Byzantine houses have a courtyard? In his article on houses in medieval
Greece, Sigalos argues that the typical middle Byzantine housing had two
forms.⁹⁰⁹ One form had a courtyard organization, with an enclosed court sur-
rounded by a series of rooms or a high wall, secluding it from the outside
world and resembling an ancient domus with an atrium. The other type consist-
ed of a linear arrangement of the rooms or a single-space structure, with an open
yard or no yard at all.⁹¹⁰ These structures were more characteristic of an urban
settlement.
Sigalos summarizes the argument of Angeliki Laiou about the importance of
a yard within a Byzantine house: “Presence or absence of the yard and the de-
gree of protection it provides to the family may indicate the social and symbolic
role that is attributed to the organization of the domestic structure.”⁹¹¹ Ellis con-
firms the existence of courtyards in the Byzantine houses of Corinth in the ninth-
tenth century.⁹¹²
To what would the courtyard in Novaković relate? This Byzantine (rather
than authentically Slavic) house feature still appears in the Slavonic text rather
than the Greek. It could be a remnant of a Greek text from which Novaković was
translated. It is also possible that a scribe had an idea of what the house of Jesus’
parents should look like (with a courtyard). It implies a particular knowledge of
the cultural context, even if it is not related to the specific cultural setting in
which it appears. This detail reveals that during the transmission from earlier
to later textual forms, the details in this text, such as housing, were easily modi-
fied according to their copyists, translators, and rewriters’ wishes, knowledge,
and experience. It enables us to get at least a glimpse of their attitudes and
views on this matter.
The episode Zeno (9.1) gives another example related to housing. It describes
children playing in a house (sometimes on top of it) together with Jesus. Manu-
script Cambridge uses the words domus/posticus, which present a backdoor,
 Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500 – 1250 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 424.
 Sigalos, “Housing People in Medieval Greece,” 199.
 Sigalos, “Housing People in Medieval Greece,” 199.
 Sigalos, “Housing People in Medieval Greece,” 200; see also Angeliki Laiou, Peasant Soci-
ety in the Later Byzantine Empire: A Social and Demographic Study (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1977).
 Ellis, “The Middle Byzantine House and Family,” 247– 272.
backhouse.⁹¹³ It describes the housing with the back porch, which resembles an-
cient housing. In the same episode Zeno (32) of the Lm, Dijon uses solarium,
which indicates a premise with ample light.
Did medieval housing in Western Europe look like ancient Roman housing?
It is unlikely. Some scholars have argued that the traditional Roman lifestyle
started to decay from the sixth century, together with rich and decorative hous-
ing.⁹¹⁴ The seventh century was particularly characterized by poor housing; this
is known, for example, from Gaul, southern France, Sicily, and Carthage. Chris
Wickham suggests that a cultural change led to the abandonment of villas by
the end of the sixth century.⁹¹⁵ It means that the descriptions in Cambridge prob-
ably refer to the image of ancient housing.
In the same episode, Sabaiticus describes a roof of an upstairs room (δώματι
ὑπερῲῳ) where the children played.⁹¹⁶ The phrase recurs later in Sabaiticus and
Vienna hist. 91.⁹¹⁷ Vienna hist. 91 mentions another phrase for the upper room
(διστέγου κάτω),⁹¹⁸ and Athens 355 mentions the third word for the upper floor
(ἀνώγαιον).⁹¹⁹ Davis connects the upstairs room with an architectural layout of
Greco-Roman schools that can be seen in Potitius’ place in Pompei.⁹²⁰
What is the upper room that appears in the Byzantine manuscripts? In his
article about houses in Byzantium, Charalambos Bouras argues that the villa
of the late Roman and early Byzantine periods was replaced in the Middle
Ages by buildings usually of two storeys, where the living space was confined
to the upper storey.⁹²¹ Bouras discusses the middle Byzantine house in Corinth,
which had an upper floor, retained nearly all its walls, formerly parts of earlier
buildings, and an intervening triple arcade, a tribelon, that invested a large liv-
 The thirteenth-fourteenth-century manuscripts Paris 3014 and Berne 271 use the words
domus/porticus (Paris 3014) and domus/postum (Berne 271). These differences may imply that
the different preferences of scribes, copyists, and translators of this text played the role in refor-
mulation in the different manuscripts. Posticus and porticus differ in their position in the house;
porticus is a porch, a walk covered by a roof supported by columns, a colonnade, usually at the
entrance of a house. Posticus is usually located behind or at the end of the main structure. How-
ever, it could be that scribes or rewriters confused one letter for the other in words porticus and
posticus, or this difference could be intentional.
 Ellis, “The Middle Byzantine House and Family,” 247– 272.
 Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, 475.
 Sabaiticus, fol. 69v: πάλιν δὲ μετὰ ἡμέρας πολλὰς ἔπαιζεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς μετὰ καὶ ἑτὲρων παι-
δίων ἔν τινι δώματι ὑπερῲῳ.
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 202r: δοματίῳ ἐν ὑπερό[ῳ].
 Vienna hist. 91, fol. 202r: διστέγου κάτω.
 Athens 355, fol. 65r: ἀπέμεινε δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς μόνος εἰς τὸ ἀνώγαιον.
 Davis, Christ Child, 103.
 Charalambos Bouras, “Houses in Byzantium,” Deltion 11 (1982– 1983): 1– 26, 5.
Housing 219
ing-room with a certain grandeur. A twelfth-century house has an arch springing

from columns that supported the upper storey wall in the same town. Houses
often contained a courtyard with a well and baking oven, surrounded by
small rooms. Sigalos confirms that the houses in medieval Greece were either
one-storey or two-storey constructions.⁹²²
Another site, in Elis, Peloponnesus, reveals a house that “consisted of three
small rooms and a lean-to that must have been of wooden construction,” pre-
senting the single-storied timber-roofed house.⁹²³ A house in Samos, a two-stor-
ied rectangular building from the ninth–tenth century, was thought to have been
owned by a prominent person.⁹²⁴ The houses in Mistra have a ground floor and
one, or only rarely two, upper floors.⁹²⁵ “The upper floor, invariably covered with
a timber-framed roof, comprises one large room for daytime use, the triclinium.
This room was probably subdivided into smaller rooms by thin walls of reeds
daubed with plaster.”⁹²⁶ The houses in Mistra come from the last centuries of By-
zantium. In conclusion, Bouras estimates that
the commonest type of house comprised a series of rooms arranged around a small court-
yard, without a peristyle but perhaps with an open-fronted roofed space; at least part of the
house was of two storeys. Living rooms were normally on the upper floor, many of the
ground-level spaces being storerooms used for agricultural produce and equipped with
earthenware and constructed storage vessels. Stairways seem to have been internal and
built of timber.⁹²⁷
Earlier scholarship indicates that the upper floor was a common feature of me-
dieval Byzantine houses. The upper room seems to have been related to the
shared living space, such as living rooms. It means that its depiction as a
place where children played in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is not surprising.
Unlike in Byzantium, the houses in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other places
in Italy have no evidence of upper floors, although it has been shown that
these existed in antiquity.⁹²⁸
The same episode in the Slavonic manuscripts describes similar but not
equally detailed structures. In Novaković, it is a high building, a high palace,
 Sigalos, “Housing People in Medieval Greece,” 213.

 Bouras, “Houses in Byzantium,” 13.
 Bouras, “Houses in Byzantium,” 13 – 14.
 Bouras, “Houses in Byzantium,” 17.
 Bouras, “Houses in Byzantium,” 17.
 Bouras, “Houses in Byzantium,” 22.
 Harlow and Laurence, Growing up and growing old, 25.
and covered premises, while in Hludov, it is a high building, a rooftop.⁹²⁹ In any

case, we have learned from Curta that typically Slavonic sunken-floored huts did
not have upper floors. The idea of a house with an upper floor was probably
transferred from Byzantine tradition.
In the Irish version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus played with boys
not on the roof but on a cliff: One of the boys fell over a cliff. He died forthwith. ⁹³⁰
Cliffs are undoubtedly characteristic of the Irish landscape. This part of the text
doubtless allowed for changes in the different manuscripts, thereby opening a
window onto the ideas about the different communities’ housing and everyday
life details.
There are a few other episodes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in single
manuscripts that mention housing. Dijon contains the episode James’ snakebite
(41), which describes the house of Joseph and Mary as a household with a veg-
etable garden attached to it.⁹³¹ James goes into the garden to gather vegetables to
make broth. The word broth (pulmentum) certainly indicates that everyday life
details entered this text, as this meal was known in medieval times in the differ-
ent areas of medieval Europe.⁹³² Further, it seems that both Greek and ancient
Roman houses had gardens. Hortus or ortus is attested in Pompei as an orna-
 Novaković, 51: По дьнехь же инѣхь вьзигра Ісоусь на здани высоцѣ, и ѥдинь оть дѣтеи
еврѣискыхь вьзигра сь Ісоусомь на полатѣ высоцѣ и спаде оть закрылиѩ; Hludov,
fol. 203r: И потомь играаше ѡтро[че] ї[соу]с на единомь здани висоце. И едино ѡт отро-
четь с нимь играаше. Испаде се ѡ[т] двое кровника.
 McNamara et al, Apocrypha Hiberniae I, 443 – 483.
 Dijon, fol. 19r: Post h[aec] abieru[n]t de carpharnaum maria et ioseph in civitate[m] q[uae]
vocat[ur] bethlehem. Et erunt i[n] domo sua. et Ih[esu]s cu[m] ill[is]. Et die q[ua]dam vocavit ad
se ioseph. Filiu[m] suu[m] p[ri]mogenitu[m] jacobu[m] et misit eu[m] in ortu[m] ut collig[er]et
olera ad pulm[en]tariu[m] faciendu[m]. et s[u]bseq[ui]t[us] e[st] Ih[esu]s jacobu[m] fr[atr]em
suu[m] i[n] ortu[m]. et hoc ioseph et maria nescieru[n]t. et du[m] collig[er]et jacob[us] olera:
s[u]bito exivit de foramine vip[er]a et p[er]cussit dext[er]am manu[m] jacobi.
 Simon Varey reports that in medieval and Renaissance Italy, pulmentum could mean al-
most anything eaten with bread – in other words, relish. In the eighth-century Metz, pulmentum
meant two things: either the portion of meat or cheese, to which fish or vegetables could be
added sometimes. In late medieval England, pulmentum was a dish made of cereals, vegetables,
or pulses. In medieval Poland, pulmentum was made of ground millet, resembling modern po-
lenta. See Simon Varey, “Medieval and Renaissance Italy A. The Peninsula,” in Regional Cuisines
of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays, ed. Melitta Weiss Adamson (New York: Routledge, 2002):
85 – 112, 89; Massimo Montanari, Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table (New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 2015), 34; Christopher Michael Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval
England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 191; Maria Dembinska, Food and Drink in Me-
dieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1999), 106.
Housing 221
mented area where people grew fruits and vegetables. It seems that such a tra-
dition was maintained in Byzantium and Western Europe (where the text was
used).⁹³³
Finally, Novaković contains the episode Children Made Swine (012), in which
Jesus turns children into swine. This episode exists only in this Slavonic text and
the Arabic translation. The Arabic version has a more complicated storyline:
Jesus turns children not only into pigs but monkeys and wolves too.⁹³⁴
In the opening of the episode in Novaković, children hide themselves in a
hut (хыжи, cottage). This word reflects Slavonic housing with unique features,
a wooden house on a mountain, possibly also serving as a barn. Interestingly,
the word has an additional meaning in the Slavic context. The followers of the
medieval Bosnian Church called their local gathering places (monasteries) hiže
(хыжи).⁹³⁵ Theologically, the Bosnian Church has been connected by scholars
to various dualist heresies, such as the Bogomils and the Cathars, although
this has been a much-debated question.⁹³⁶ This word in Novaković may have
been directed against the Bosnian Church because Jesus punished the children
who hid themselves in хыжи. If we look at the manuscript in which this text was
contained, the fourteenth-century Codex 637 from Belgrade, which may have
been copied in medieval Serbia, during the reign of Tzar Dušan, who was a
prominent champion of orthodoxy and who rigorously persecuted heretics, the
links are not challenging to make.⁹³⁷
 Tom Turner, Garden History: Philosophy and Design 2000 BC–2000 AD (New York: Spon
Press, 2005), 106; Anthony Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300 – 1500
III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
 See Noja, “L’Évangile arabe apocryphe de Thomas,” 681– 690.
 Ante Škegro, “Bilino Polje primjer jedne historiografske kontroverze” (Bilino Polje: An Ex-
ample of A Historical Controversy), in Fenomen “Krstjani” u srednjovjekovnoj Bosni i Humu, ed.
Ante Škegro (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2005): 351– 370; Ismet Bušatlić, “Semiotika
Bogumilstva i semiotika Islama” (Semiotics of Bogomilism and Semiotics of Islam), Znakovi vre-
mena – Časopis za filozofiju, religiju, znanost i društvenu praksu 26 – 27 (2005): 176 – 189; Ivana
Jurčević, “Srednjovjekovni odnosi crkve prema plemstvu u Bosni, poseban osvrt na obitelj Pav-
lović,” (Medieval Church-Nobility Relations in Bosnia, Special Reference to the Family Pavlović)
Hum 11, No. 15 (2016): 106 – 130.
 See Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to
the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002); Noel Malkolm, Bosnia: A Short History
(New York: New York University Press, 1994); John V. A. Fine, “The Medieval and Ottoman
Roots of Modern Bosnian Society,” in The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina: Their Historic Develop-
ment from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia, ed. Mark Pinson (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1994): 1– 21.
 See Janet Hamilton, Bernard Hamilton, and Yuri Stoyanov, Christian Dualist Heresies in the
Byzantine World, c. 650–c. 1450 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 53.
While this example reveals a detail mainly related to the Slavic world, the
other Slavic terms related to housing were usually transferred from the Greek
texts. The Byzantine manuscripts utilize terms related to their Byzantine housing
at the time. On the other hand, the housing in Cambridge as a representative of
the Lt variant appears to be depicted as a typical Greco-Roman ancient dwelling.
Earlier, we have seen that the examples related to education were also drawn
from the Greco-Roman world in Cambridge. This transfer of knowledge was fa-
cilitated by introducing the Lt variant in Western Europe, the variant previously
translated from a Greek version and inserted into Latin manuscripts. We may as-
sume that rewriters of the Greek version in the case had some knowledge of
Greco-Roman ancient dwelling (to some extent, resembling their own, Byzantine
dwelling). The examples from the Greco-Roman world seem to have been incor-
porated into the descriptions of the subjects that were not of primary theological
concern in this text but were more general, such as education and housing; in
this way, they did not disturb the text’s theology.
Healing and sorcery
In addition to several other healing episodes commonly present in the rest of the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Slavonic manuscripts all contain the episode Blind
Man (013), which describes Jesus’ experience in the sorcery school. This episode
does not appear elsewhere in the corpus analyzed here.
In manuscripts Hludov and St Petersburg, the Blind Man (013.1) opens with
the explanation of why Joseph sent Jesus to such “teachers.” Joseph realized that
the teachers could not teach Jesus anything, and he decided to send him to the
sorcerers instead.⁹³⁸ These sentences may reflect the attitudes of the society
about what would be helpful for children to study. Alternatively, rewriters and
translators may have needed to add this explanation to make the narrative
flow smooth and logical.
In episode 013.1 of Novaković, the introduction reveals how “teaching” was
conducted: The sorcerer started teaching him (Jesus) and showed him sorcery
herbs. ⁹³⁹ A man who was blind in one eye comes to the sorcerer. The description
 Hludov, fol. 204r-v: Ѩко видѣ їѡсїфь ѡ[т] ни единого оучителѩ не наоучи се нь па оу-
чителѥ оучаше и потомь прѣда его врачеви; St Petersburg, fol. 181r: Прѣдаваеть его їѡсїфа
ини единомоу ненавыченѧ ѡнь паче оучаше. И посе[м] врачеви его прѣдаде.
 Novaković, 53: Врачь же начеть оучити ѥго, и показа ѥмоу былиѩ врачебнаѩ.
Healing and sorcery 223
of the disease and its treatment could be a window to the ideas about illness and
the ways medicine was practiced in medieval Bulgaria. Manuscripts Hludov and
St Petersburg stated that ointments healed this disease.
From the ninth to the fifteenth centuries in medieval Bulgaria, medicine was
characterized by the low availability of medical services and widespread disap-
pointment in learned physicians.⁹⁴⁰ As a consequence, people sought alternative
healing practices, such as treatment by self-proclaimed healers. Amudzhieva
and Tsvetkov argue that “the healing practices of mediums, medicine-men,
and magicians, as opposed to officially sanctioned medicine, are a common
theme in Old Bulgarian literature.”⁹⁴¹
Many medieval Bulgarian manuscripts advise on healing.⁹⁴² Svetlana Tson-
kova argues that “these books reflect both the lack of normative religious sanc-
tions and the attempts of the local Christian priests to cope with the daily life
needs and problems of their congregation.”⁹⁴³ All these manuscripts come
from monastic contexts. The famous Bogomil book “Zeleinik,” dated to the
tenth-eleventh century, “contains a medicinal collection of numerous recipes
predominantly to treat diseases of the eye and the skin, nose-bleeding, poison-
ing, and inflamed wounds. It widely prescribes the use of bee honey, various me-
dicinal plants, and animal products.”⁹⁴⁴ The medieval Bulgarian books of pre-
scriptions – Lekovnitsi – contained, among other things, names of ailments,
herbs, and foods that served as a cure.⁹⁴⁵ In light of this information, the descrip-
tion of the disease and its treatment in the Slavonic Infancy Gospel of Thomas
could be understood to depict a medical situation common in the everyday
life of medieval Slavs. The detail related to the healing of eyes with herbal oint-
ment may contribute to the history of medicine in medieval Bulgaria. Regarding
the present book, it may add to our knowledge of everyday life in the past.
 Nadezhda Amudzhieva, and Pavel Tsvetkov, “The Cult of Saints-healers – an Alternative
and Opposition to the Official Medicine in Medieval Bulgaria,” JAHR: Europski časopis za bioe-
tiku 4, No. 1 (2013): 357– 366.
 Amudzhieva and Tsvetkov, “The Cult of Saints-healers,” 362.
 See Svetlana Tsonkova, “Practical Texts in Difficult Situations: Bulgarian Medieval Charms
as Apocrypha and Fachliteratur,” Incantatio 1 (2011): 25 – 35.
 Tsonkova, “Bulgarian Medieval Charms,” 32.
 Jeny Antonova, “Pharmacy in Medieval Bulgaria,” Die Pharmazie – An International Journal
of Pharmaceutical Sciences 62, No. 6 (2007): 467– 469.
 Amudzhieva and Tsvetkov, “The Cult of Saints-healers,” 363.
Theology, non-contested matters, and the humanization of

the child Jesus
In this chapter, I have searched for words and phrases that refer to children, fam-
ily, and everyday life in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in various manuscripts. I
categorized the examples in subsections according to what they appear to de-
scribe. As a text about Jesus’ childhood, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas devotes
some space to describing Jesus’ family: his father Joseph, his mother Mary,
and even his brother James. The question of Jesus’ family was one of the contest-
ed issues in early Christianity. Extensive debates and even councils were organ-
ized to answer the issues related to Jesus’ mother, while the existence of his
brothers and sisters was the subject of some apologetic writings. On the other
hand, his father Joseph got little attention throughout antiquity and the Middle
Ages. Some of these debates are visible in the different texts of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas.
In most versions of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Mary played a minor role,
while the father, Joseph, was the more dominant parent. Some manuscripts,
such as Paris 1772 and Dijon, depict Mary and Joseph together in several scenes,
where otherwise Joseph appears alone. In Dijon, and to a lesser degree in Paris
1772 (because it is unfinished), Jesus’ family is commonly present in his activi-
ties, and it is precisely defined: his mother and father usually appear together,
while his half-brother James, according to these manuscripts a son from Joseph’s
previous marriage, also appears in the text. We additionally learn about all of
Joseph’s children from the previous marriage. In Dijon, the family provides safety
and understanding: Jesus’ parents take attentive care of him. They are perfectly
aware of his divine nature.
Compared to Dijon, which contains the Lm variant of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas, in all the other manuscripts analyzed here – Cambridge (Lt), Byzantine,
and Slavonic manuscripts – the family’s place becomes blurred. The mother no
longer appears so much, and it is no longer clear how James relates to Jesus.
Moreover, Jesus’ relationship with his father worsens. Joseph no longer under-
stands Jesus; he also becomes “the other,” like the other characters who do
not understand Jesus’ divinity. Joseph even physically punishes Jesus.
In Cambridge (Lt), Byzantine, and Slavonic manuscripts, Jesus is “more
human” and more of an average child. It happens because “the others,” includ-
ing the father Joseph, do not understand Jesus’ divine nature and often treat him
as a child. I link this notion of the “humanization of Jesus” in the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas with the broader set of ideas that appeared after Iconoclasm in Byzan-
tium and were consequently transferred to the West in the high Middle Ages.
These ideas emphasize Jesus’ humanity in connection with the increased vener-
Theology, non-contested matters, and the humanization of the child Jesus 225
ation of Mary. The Cistercians were the main propagators of the interest in Jesus’
humanity and Mary’s veneration. Concurrently, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
that we find in the West belongs to manuscripts often produced and used in Cis-
tercian monasteries. In this process, Joseph became “the other,” who misunder-
stood his son. However, the clash between the father and the son also amplifies
Jesus’ human and child-like side.
Eastman argues that there is much in Thomas’ Infancy Gospel that points to
a very human Jesus.⁹⁴⁶ I agree that the opening up of Jesus’ human side indeed
occurs in some manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, where
Jesus appears as a child with many typical children’s features. They are reflected
in how Joseph treats his son, punishes him, and works with him, for example, in
the field. For this reason, Jesus performs physical work with his father in these
manuscripts. In the attempts to make Jesus more child-like, his encounters with
other children, particularly those that put him “in a bad light,” were also re-
duced or muted. His mother, Mary, remains, as always, only positive towards
Jesus.
In manuscripts Paris 1772 and particularly Dijon, the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas develops distinguishing anti-Jewish sentiments. Jesus grows up in a Jewish
community and studies with Jewish teachers, and his family feels constant pres-
sure. The Jewish community may be either imagined or constructed by the au-
thors and mediators of this text, who may have had in mind the community in
which Jesus grew up. The text also describes communally organized schooling
where the community obliges parents to send their children to school. The elders
of the people of Israel were in charge of schooling, which was mandatory for all
children. In manuscript Dijon (and possibly the Lm variant in general), the au-
thors or mediators of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas portrayed a repressive Jewish
milieu.
The Jewish community fades in the rest of the manuscripts of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas. Jews are mentioned only sporadically as a group of people.
In some manuscripts, such as Sabaiticus, Jews are almost absent. This elev-
enth-century manuscript from Cyprus may have avoided Jews in the text because
its authors and mediators wished to stay away from sensitive Jewish issues. If we
look at the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in this manuscript as the sole witness of the
Gs text, we may relate its unique features to the particular historical moment and
place (Cyprus, eleventh century). Nevertheless, even if the sole survivor of this
text type, this manuscript may have once been part of a larger group. If this is
the case, we must see this feature (absence of Jews) as a transmission component
 Eastman, “Cursing in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 195.

in a larger area. I have already noted that Burke assumes another Gs witness in
manuscript Vienna, ÖNB, Philos. gr. 162.⁹⁴⁷
Some Bulgarian scholars argued for the anti-Jewishness of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas in the Slavonic context; such a view may be reconsidered because
these Slavonic texts bear no evidence of any particular and excessive anti-Jew-
ishness.⁹⁴⁸ They only faithfully transmit the contents from the other versions.
Some scholars also argued that these Slavonic manuscripts served as Bogomil
readings since they were, in their view, particularly anti-Jewish.⁹⁴⁹ In my view,
the Slavonic Novaković may have been directed against the followers of the Bos-
nian Church, who were a heretical dualist group in the Balkans, sometimes
linked to Bogomils. The word hiže appearing in this text may have pinpointed
this, as hiže were the gathering places (monasteries) of the adherents of the me-
dieval Bosnian church. In this text, Jesus curses children who hide in hiže.
Apart from the examples above, which reflect different theological views
about Jesus, his family, and their everyday life, some other details in these manu-
scripts give evidence of a transfer of cultural capital to the different milieus of
the medieval world. Some standard cultural features recur in the different
forms of this text. These features have been transferred from the earlier textual
forms to the later ones, usually in an unchanged form, by which they were at
least acknowledged if not adopted and culturally understood in the same way
by people of different realms regardless of period and geographical region. By
seeing them being reiterated, we learn that the readers and listeners of the Infan-
cy Gospel of Thomas in the different medieval cultural realms had information
about them even if we do not know whether they practiced these things in
such ways. Among these features in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, we see that
both parents and teachers punished children by pulling their ears and hitting
them on the head. Restriction of movement is also imposed on children. The In-
fancy Gospel of Thomas confirms our knowledge about children doing physical
work in the past. The different Latin, Byzantine, and Slavonic manuscripts docu-
ment that children were sent by parents to carry out small tasks at the age of six
to eight and were involved in work together with their parents from the age of six
to ten. Children went alone to do work above the age of eight to ten, even if not
sent by parents.
Some manuscripts describe details related to everyday life, not of their envi-
ronment, but some other cultural realm. Here, different translators and rewriters
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 129 – 130.

 Krstev, “Мястото на детство Исусово.”
 E. g., Ivanov, Богомилски книги и легенди.
Theology, non-contested matters, and the humanization of the child Jesus 227
imagined or constructed different environments of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

For example, housing described in the manuscript Cambridge reflects ancient
and late antique housing, preferably of the Roman type. The housing has a
back porch, which resembles ancient housing. The examples in Cambridge relat-
ed to education also arise from the Greco-Roman world, describing private tutor-
ing, how schools looked, and the syllabus studied in school. Translators here
played a distinct role in transferring the Greco-Roman environment to the text
as in manuscript Cambridge. I have already argued that the Lt text was translated
from Greek and inserted in the Latin manuscripts. The knowledge transfer was
made possible because its rewriters had some knowledge of Greco-Roman hous-
ing and education, which continued in the Byzantine context as well. It could be
a plausible explanation of why the Lt manuscript Cambridge focuses mainly on
the Greco-Roman examples in its depiction of housing and education, especially
given that such houses had vanished long ago in its western medieval reality.⁹⁵⁰
Although the differences between Lm and Lt texts are significant, in the
West, these two variants were used interchangeably for several centuries, in
very similar contexts, and surrounded by the similar texts of the Pseudo-Mat-
thew. The manuscript context of the Lt variant in Cambridge points to the contin-
ued practice to copy Marian and anti-Jewish writings next to the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas; simultaneously, the text itself glorified a more human and child-like
image of Jesus. These two Western trends of the high Middle Ages – copying Ma-
rian and anti-Jewish writings and glorifying Jesus’ human side – have merged in
the manuscripts containing the Lt variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas; they
were not necessarily part of a well-coordinated strategy.
Where (if anywhere) do we see real children, family, and everyday life in the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas? The windows onto the ideas and perceptions of every-
day life in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are only small side windows. It is prob-
ably as far as we can get to the medieval child when examining sources of this
kind. When treating subjects that were not so contested, translators and rewriters
inserted their perceptions and attitudes into real-life details. We see these in the
way peers encounter each other in the street, in what children’s classrooms
looked like, in healing methods, and possibly in a few other details. Many of
the depictions of education and housing in the Byzantine manuscripts refer to
contemporary Byzantine realities.
 We find similar descriptions in the thirteenth-fourteenth-century manuscripts Paris 3014

and Berne 271. It is also interesting to note here that both in Cambridge and Paris 3014, the
son of Annas destroys Jesus’ pools not with a willow branch but with an olive branch – the
tree typical of the Mediterranean.
In the Slavonic manuscripts, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas reflects a growing

need of the Bulgarian medieval society to spread the healing practices. In manu-
script St Petersburg, the teacher emphasizes the “crafty” aspect of education,
and Novaković suggests that children should be taught sorcery books. Among
the details about healing revealed in the manuscripts, we read that eyes were
healed with sorcerer’s herbs and ointments. These details concur with what
we find in other contemporary sources from the Slavic realm and the secondary
literature.
Also, in St Petersburg, it is emphasized that schooling was conducted in a
monastic setting (a monastic cell). We know that this manuscript was held at
the medieval Bulgarian court. This detail most probably mirrors the fact that
most typical schools in fourteenth-century Bulgaria were in monasteries.
The subject of peer violence allowed various translators and reworkers of
this text to insert differing descriptions according to their preferences, knowl-
edge, and experience. Further research and attestation of these practices in
other contemporary written sources and archeology are needed to connect
what this text revealed with real-life practices in this particular realm. To my
knowledge, such research has not been conducted thus far. Considering peer vi-
olence in the Slavonic manuscripts, we read that children jumped on each oth-
er’s shoulders during their encounters and everyday interactions. This scene is
described slightly differently in the Slavonic manuscripts compared to the rest
of the corpus, which may suggest that such behavior was particularly familiar
to the Bulgarian scribes. This scene describes Jesus being torn in the shoulder
in the other manuscripts, being hit from behind, being hit in the chest, having
a stone thrown at him, and being annoyed.
Finally, the Slavonic manuscript Hludov, copied in a Serbian medieval mo-
nastic setting, describes the father punishing the child Jesus by pulling his hair
so hard that his hair tears. This is another detail that needs further attestation in
other sources to understand whether this very harsh treatment in Hludov may
reflect common everyday ways of punishing children in this particular realm.
After summarizing my observations in the present chapter, I will now proceed
to my concluding remarks.
Chapter 5
Jesus’ Childhood in East and West
Ancient texts can be studied in numerous ways. I have proposed to study the
anonymous second-century apocryphal narrative about the childhood of Jesus
through an array of methodological tools and interpret it by a set of theoretical
approaches. The overarching framework of this work is New Philology, where
texts are studied in the context and form they were utilized within specific com-
munities. A framework of this kind has proved particularly useful in studying
anonymous texts, where the origin and the original text are unknown and disre-
garded; the focus is on the text’s differences in different environments.
I inquired into manuscripts, texts, and environments of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. Besides New Philology, I built on the research of medieval “miscellany”
manuscripts, which relies on the premise that the presence of some texts may
alter the meaning of other texts in manuscripts. Consequently, the genre of an
individual text in a manuscript depends on the other texts too. I used narratol-
ogy to study the structure and the textual transformations of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas in the manuscripts. Finally, I attempted to discern whether authors,
scribes and copyists, translators, rewriters, or the audiences influenced the
transformations of the particular words and phrases in the text that refer to chil-
dren, family, and everyday life.
It is well known that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is attested in manuscripts
originating from medieval England to Syria and Jerusalem and from medieval
Georgia to the Balkan lands. In depicting the manuscript landscape of the Infan-
cy Gospel of Thomas, I have not attempted to conduct the entire survey because
many parts of the puzzle are missing; such an endeavor would be impossible.
Instead, I aimed to point to at least some of its features based on the material
we have at hand. This puzzle can certainly be filled in with more information
in future research.
Until the late Middle Ages, the manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas were exclusively copied and used in monastic settings. The audience of
this text, its availability, and its influence are mostly related to medieval monas-
teries. This feature, however, involves variety: the manuscripts may have served
as private devotional readings in monasteries, daily communal readings at
meals, and tools in either individual or organized monastic education. We
know that the thirteenth-century manuscript Dijon was used in Cistercian mo-
nastic education. Also, the fifteenth-century manuscript Vienna hist. 91 may
have been employed in Byzantine education in a secular context. In the Slavonic
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110752786-006
230 Chapter 5 Jesus’ Childhood in East and West
context, the manuscripts with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may have been used
at the Bulgarian royal court and monastic liturgy.
Most of the manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are “pri-
mary miscellanies,” which means that this text was planned as part of their con-
tents along with other texts. In several cases, however, this text was part of “sec-
ondary miscellanies,” which usually consist of several libelli bound together at a
later date. The erasure of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, its physical damage, and
notes warning about its apocryphal character are attested in only a few exam-
ples. It shows that the inclusion of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was, for the
most part, a deliberate choice of scribes who copied it in the manuscripts.
In the Byzantine manuscripts, which appear from the eleventh century on-
wards, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was placed together in the manuscripts
with other texts that were regarded as prominent for faith and religious instruc-
tion, usually with a distinct title, but not always. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
had its place among other texts written by renowned authors in the Byzantine,
Slavonic, and Georgian manuscripts. Nevertheless, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
cannot be found in an extensive number of Byzantine manuscripts; it is found in
an even smaller number of Slavonic medieval manuscripts and only one Geor-
gian manuscript. Although fewer manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas have been preserved in these languages than in the medieval Latin
manuscripts, this may tell us something about the text’s popularity. The manu-
script evidence shows that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was not an excessively
popular and widely copied text in Byzantium. Moreover, the evidence from By-
zantium shows that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas did not corroborate Mary’s
widespread saintly cult.
In the West, however, the situation was very different. Scribes were possibly
wary of this text. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Latin manuscripts was
usually copied in combination with other apocryphal texts, either constituting
or being attached to the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
often appears as part of the Pseudo-Matthew without any title and as continuous
text. It may mean that either it was not perceived as a separate text, or it was
necessary to keep it “hidden” within the contents of the Pseudo-Matthew. More-
over, the Pseudo-Matthew, which otherwise consists of various texts about Mary,
her childhood, and sometimes her parents, has introductory letters allegedly
written by Jerome to justify this group of texts in the manuscripts and give it
proper credentials. A guarantee is also provided for the Pseudo-Matthew by as-
cribing it to another prominent author, the apostle Matthew. It was precisely the
kind of justification that this group of texts, including the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas, needed to obtain vast popularity in the medieval West. The Pseudo-Matthew
is preserved in over 200 manuscripts. The destiny of the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
Chapter 5 Jesus’ Childhood in East and West 231
mas in it was similar; it is preserved in approximately 80 manuscripts only in the

Lm variant. In the medieval West, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas may have been
considered apocryphal, “hidden,” almost transgressive literature, but with the
appropriate credentials, it became immensely available, read, and popular.
Moreover, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas widely influenced the popular piety
and visual representations of Jesus in the late Middle Ages in the West.⁹⁵¹
Based on the manuscript contents, I will now summarize my conclusions
about the transmission history in the various languages. The Infancy Gospel of
Thomas was first attested in the fifth- to seventh-century Latin palimpsest,
where its several episodes were copied and combined with two other texts
which had Jesus as their subject. In the two sixth-century Syriac manuscripts,
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was copied together with other texts about Mary.
The contexts in which the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was placed changed signifi-
cantly from Late Antiquity to the eleventh century. In the eleventh-century Latin
tradition, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is copied along with texts about Mary,
resembling the late antique Syriac tradition more than its own late antique
Latin tradition. By the eleventh century in the Latin West, Apocrypha, initially
written in Greek, were translated and further reworked, appropriated, and pro-
vided with guarantees to be copied in manuscripts and bolster the veneration
of Mary. In this way, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas changed its function from
the fifth to the eleventh century in the West, from glorifying Jesus to glorifying
Mary. Only in the late Middle Ages, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appeared as
an independent text in Latin manuscripts.
The Infancy Gospel experienced a genre shift during the medieval period. In-
itially, the text was bound together with other Jesus-related excerpts in the Latin
palimpsest, and within the “Book of Mary” in the Syriac tradition, compilations
related to their subjects of Jesus and Mary. It later occurs among homiletic and
hagiographical texts in Byzantium, Georgia, and the Slavic lands. In the West in
the high Middle Ages, it mainly appeared with other texts about Mary, resem-
bling the late antique Syriac tradition. By the late Middle Ages in the West,
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears aligned with historiographical accounts
and panegyric biographies.
 See Dzon, The Quest for the Christ Child; Leah Sinanoglou, “The Christ Child as Sacrifice: A
Medieval Tradition and the Corpus Christi Plays,” Speculum 48, No. 3 (1973): 491– 509; Mary
Dzon, and Theresa M. Kenney, eds., The Christ Child in Medieval Culture: Alpha es et O! (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2012); Ragusa, “Il manoscritto ambrosiano L. 58,” 5 – 19; Reed, “The
Afterlives,” 422; David R. Cartlidge, and J. Keith Elliott, Art and the Christian Apocrypha (London:
Routledge, 2001), xv; Smith, Art, Identity, and Devotion, 269 – 277.
My textual analysis of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Latin, Byzantine,

and Slavonic manuscripts has shown clear links between the Byzantine and Sla-
vonic manuscripts and the Latin manuscript Cambridge, which contains the Lt
variant. The Lm variant of the Latin text in the manuscripts Dijon and Paris
1772 contains many differences. Much like the surrounding texts that have
Mary as their subject, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in Dijon places emphasis
on Jews as the audience, the harm that “the others” do to Jesus, the trust and
understanding within Jesus’ family, his parents’ acknowledgment of Jesus’ divin-
ity, and the mention of other family members, including Joseph’s children from
the previous marriage and Mary’s sister.
The rest of the analyzed manuscripts insert a varying number of Jesus’ mira-
cle episodes in the text that are not present in manuscripts Paris 1772 and Dijon.
Cambridge, Byzantine, and Slavonic manuscripts, however, all have their specif-
icities. Manuscript Cambridge tones down Jesus’ behavior “in a bad light” and
the harm he does to “the others.” It focuses on the emotions of “the others”
and increases the misunderstanding between Joseph and Jesus. These features
are generally attested in the Byzantine and Slavonic manuscripts, which also
have additional special features.
In Sabaiticus, the anger of “the others” towards Jesus is diminished, as are
Jesus’ cursing and anger. The scenes of emotional tension, fear, and pain, the ref-
erences to Jews and Jesus’ healing miracles (in episodes Dead Baby and Dead
Laborer) are almost absent from this text. The whole sentences of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas are replaced by other sentences. Vienna hist. 91 is among
the manuscripts with the nineteen-episode form, including some new miracle
episodes. The text in Vienna hist. 91 extends the narrative by introducing more
detailed descriptions and features that aid the understanding of the narrative.
The Byzantine manuscript Athens 355 focuses on the characters’ emotional reac-
tions and gives more detailed descriptions of medical conditions.
The Slavonic manuscripts generally emphasize healing and other miracle
episodes. They contain some miracle episodes that are not present in the rest
of the analyzed corpus but are attested, for example, in the Arabic tradition.
The Byzantine Sabaiticus and Slavonic manuscript Hludov have some features
in common with Dijon (Lm).
A significant break occurs in the Latin tradition, where the differences be-
tween the manuscripts containing the two variants, Lm and Lt, seem to be the
biggest. The Lt variant appears in the West from the twelfth century. When we
look into the manuscripts, such as Cambridge, we see that the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas is part of a larger narrative, appearing without a title and following
the chronology of Mary’s life. In this example, the context of the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas has not changed with the textual revisions. The Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas in both Lt and Lm variants usually appears in the manuscripts within a

broader sequence of narratives, which have Mary as their subject, and sometimes
expand to Mary and Jesus. This feature did not change with the emergence of the
Lt variant. The Lt variant was translated from Greek and later inserted in the
manuscripts, continuing to serve the old purposes, although with a significantly
revised text.
The last section of my book has pointed out that during the transmission, the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas served both to transfer old and introduce new theolog-
ical, cultural, and social ideas into various environments. This text had a voice in
the larger transfers of ideas and mentalities that shaped medieval minds in the
East and the West. With the translation of the Lt variant of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas from Greek, important ideas about Jesus as “more human” and “more of
a normal child” were transferred from Byzantium to the West. These ideas
emerged initially in Byzantium after the Iconoclastic crisis. They were developed
in the West from the end of the eleventh century when the Cistercians and other
monastic orders embraced the new mode of piety that cherished Jesus’ humanity
with an increased veneration of Mary.
At the same time in the West, the Lm variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
continued its life in the manuscripts in the same context of the Pseudo-Matthew
with other Marian Apocrypha. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas of Dijon, containing
the Lm variant, highlights the importance of the family, even the extended family
and Jesus’ brothers and sisters from Joseph’ previous marriage, the equality of
Jesus’ parents, the parents’ acknowledgment of Jesus’ divinity, and transparent
anti-Jewish sentiments. These features – especially the increased presence of
Mary and the anti-Jewish sentiments – make it more understandable that this
variant should have been incorporated into the Pseudo-Matthew when we bear
in mind that the surrounding texts likewise had Mary as a subject and Mary
had strong links with anti-Jewish sentiments in the West. The incorporation of
the Lt variant in the Pseudo-Matthew, where Mary almost disappears, Joseph be-
comes less aware of Jesus’ divinity, Jesus becomes more human and a child, and
Jews are left with only a marginal role, would not have made much sense, had it
not been introduced from Byzantium and then only pasted into the context of the
Pseudo-Matthew. In the manuscript Cambridge, some anti-Jewish treatises are
aligned with the Lt variant of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which, in compari-
son to Lm, had significantly reduced anti-Jewish sentiments.
Why would the Jewish presence be toned down in the Byzantine manu-
scripts (particularly Sabaiticus), Cambridge (Lt), and the Slavonic manuscripts?
This remains a subject for future research. In Chapter 4, I have marked in a foot-
note that Jews were ascribed a role in the iconoclastic crisis by encouraging some
Byzantine emperors to adopt Iconoclasm. Consequently, those who opposed im-
ages in Byzantium were often called “Judaizers.”⁹⁵² The avoidance of Jews in the
text may have indicated a need to stay away from these sensitive issues. The Jew-
ish presence diminished in the Byzantine manuscripts, particularly in some,
such as Sabaiticus. Further, Joseph is more marginalized by not understanding
Jesus’ divine nature and punishing the child Jesus more severely. Jesus also mod-
erates his language of cursing while Mary almost disappears. The presentation of
Jesus as a more exemplary character may be explained by the contexts in which
the text was used by being aligned in the manuscripts with other prominent
homiletic and hagiographical texts. The Jews were almost absent, but the
same could be said for Mary. This text was not brought into connection with
the Marian Apocrypha in Byzantium. In the Byzantine tradition, Mary’s cult de-
veloped extensively and through various media, but the Infancy Gospel of Tho-
mas was not one of them.
The Jewish presence is noticeable in the Slavonic manuscripts, but it is not
extensive, although some scholars argue that this text served anti-Jewish propa-
ganda in medieval Bulgaria. In my view, the focus of these manuscripts was dif-
ferent. St Petersburg was a helpful reader for both members of the royal family
and the elites, containing a diversity of materials and constituting a “body and
soul” program. The texts focusing on the “soul” were the introductory Sayings
of the Fathers, while the “body” section contained the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
and the two other prognostic books. The focus of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
was on the healing miracles of Jesus, thus constituting the “medical (body) sec-
tion.”
During the transmission, the sections of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that
describe theologically important and possibly contested questions, such as his
family, mother, father, brothers, and sisters, were transmitted in various ways
that responded to some of these debates. In the sections that were not so theo-
logically contested, such as Jesus’ relationship with his peers, his education, or
the housing as described in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, scribes, translators,
and rewriters allowed themselves more freedom either to fabricate such details
or to describe them in a way they knew from real life. These are the details in
the text where we can distill attitudes and ideas related to actual children, fam-
ily, and everyday life. As I argued, we can observe such details in the descrip-
tions of peer violence, children’s punishments, classrooms’ outlook, healing
methods, and the descriptions of housing. Although these are only small win-
dows onto the perceptions and attitudes towards realities of everyday life,
such details provide a point of departure for further research.
 See Bonfil, Irshai, Stroumsa, Talgam, Jews in Byzantium, 786, 888.
Let me conclude. In earlier studies of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, scholars

have investigated various aspects of the child Jesus, his divinity, child-like fea-
tures, theology, and other text details. In my view, their conclusions largely de-
pend on the specific textual form of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that they had
in front of them. I hope that my study has contributed to providing new perspec-
tives on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas when looking into a variety of manu-
scripts. If this is the case, I will consider my pursuit accomplished.
Appendix
The Edition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in
the Latin, Greek, and Church Slavonic
manuscripts used in this book
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas has been edited numerous times in different lan-
guages. Its long trajectory is almost continual; new editions frequently appear.
After the initial discovery as an object of research in the seventeenth century
and before scholars estimated it negatively in the nineteenth century, the text
was edited from several manuscripts.⁹⁵³ The initial publication of a section of
the Greek Infancy Gospel of Thomas (from the manuscript Vienna, Phil. gr. 162)
was in Peter Lambeck’s catalog of manuscripts from Vienna in 1675.⁹⁵⁴ The edi-
tors naturally first focused on Greek manuscripts at hand. During the seven-
teenth and the eighteenth century, several other Greek manuscripts were edited
in different publications.⁹⁵⁵ By discovering their more significant numbers, schol-
ars gradually realized that the textual forms in these manuscripts differ.
In 1853, Constantin von Tischendorf edited the Greek text of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas from several manuscripts.⁹⁵⁶ His edition became prominent among
the publications of the Christian Apocrypha.⁹⁵⁷ The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in
the second edition of the Evangelia apocrypha became the standard edition, used
even into the twenty-first century.⁹⁵⁸ Tischendorf used some manuscripts belong-
ing to the Ga variant, combining it with a manuscript belonging to the Gb var-
iant, some earlier editions, and Latin translations.⁹⁵⁹ In the same publication,
he edited the Latin text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which I will discuss
later. These editions reigned supreme in scholarship on the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas; some scholars have used them even in recent publications.
Tischendorf did not use any of the manuscripts edited in this book. Of those
manuscripts edited here, Armand Delatte published the Greek manuscript Ath-
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 3; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 46 – 48.

 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 46.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 46 – 52.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 53.
 Tischendorf, Evangelia apocrypha; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 53.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 53 – 54.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 53 – 54.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110752786-007
Appendix 237
ens, Ethnike Bibliotheke, Cod. gr. 355 in 1927.⁹⁶⁰ It was a newly discovered manu-
script containing an unfamiliar version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Gd). As
this manuscript turned out to be the earliest representative of the Gd variant, it is
edited and analyzed in this book. I turned to Delatte’s edition when recovering
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas from the manuscript in Athens (credits to Reidar
Aasgaard and the National Library in Athens for lending the CD copy).
Also, among those manuscripts edited here, the eleventh-century manu-
script Sabaiticus 259 was still not known to a broader audience by the mid-twen-
tieth century. In 1967, when Aurelio de Santos Otero produced his retroversion of
the Greek text, which I will explain later, he did not know of this eleventh-cen-
tury manuscript.⁹⁶¹ Fortunately, it attracted broader attention in recent scholar-
ship. Some of the manuscripts edited here, for example, Vienna, ÖNB, hist. gr. 91,
belonging to the Ga variant, became known only in the second half of the twen-
tieth century. Jacques Noret mentioned it for the first time in 1972.⁹⁶² I included
this manuscript in the edition and analysis because it contains the Ga variant’s
earliest complete (19-episode) form.
After 2000, the most comprehensive contribution to the textual editing is by
Tony Chartrand-Burke, who published an extensive volume in 2010, dedicated
entirely to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, with the editions of four Greek variants,
Ga, Gs, Gd, and Gb.⁹⁶³ This volume stays the most exhaustive study of the Greek
Infancy Gospel of Thomas. I consulted the volume to prepare the editions for this
book, mainly focusing on the Ga, Gd, and Gs variants. The last variant has its
(possibly sole) representative in the manuscript Sabaiticus 259.
Although discovered late, the manuscript Sabaiticus 259 has gotten much at-
tention in current scholarship. Before Burke, in 2009, Reidar Aasgaard contrib-
uted a new edition of this Greek manuscript.⁹⁶⁴ In Burke’s edition of the Gs var-
iant, the manuscript Sabaiticus 259 is prominent, as it is the only complete
manuscript of this type, besides being an early-dated witness. Burke juxtaposed
several other versions for this specific edition, mainly from languages, such as
Syriac, Georgian, Ethiopian, Irish, and two Latin variants Lv and Lm.⁹⁶⁵ The
text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas from the same manuscript is re-edited in
this book (credits to Reidar Aasgaard for borrowing the manuscript copy). It re-
 Delatte, “Évangile de l’enfance de Jacques,” 264– 271; Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 5;
Burke, De infantia Iesu, 81.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 93.
 Noret, “Pour une édition de l’Évangile de l’enfance,” 412.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 293 – 539.
 Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus, 219 – 242.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 297.
238 Appendix
mains one of the earliest manuscripts that preserves a version of the Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas. It is also, according to scholars, an important representative of the
intermediary stage between the early versions and the later Greek manu-
scripts.⁹⁶⁶
Burke used all known Ga manuscripts for his edition of the Ga variant.
Where the episodes correspond in the manuscripts, he edits them with the appa-
ratus criticus. Where they do not match (as in episode First Teacher (6)), he pre-
fers the readings that agree with the Gs variant, the Slavonic version, and the Gd
variant.⁹⁶⁷ He approaches the text with the presupposition that some forms are
more ancient than others. Burke also, among other texts, uses the manuscript
Vienna, ÖNB, hist. gr. 91, edited here. In his edition of the Gd variant, Burke
uses three Greek manuscripts, among which Athens, Ethnike Bibliotheke, Cod.
gr. 355 (as a base text). He also uses several editions of the Greek and Lt texts
and manuscripts of the Latin Lt variant.⁹⁶⁸ My approach in this book differs
from Burke’s, as I recover three texts, the representatives of different versions,
from three manuscripts.
The Slavonic version was studied by a group of scholars from the end of the
nineteenth century. Andrej Popov edited the manuscript Hludov as early as
1872.⁹⁶⁹ This manuscript is again edited here because it is one of the earliest
dated Slavonic manuscripts that contain this text. Also, Stojan Novaković, fortu-
nately, edited the text from manuscript Cod. 637, formerly in the National Library,
Belgrade, Serbia, Collection of P. S. Srećković, before the manuscript vanished in
the Second World War Bombing of Belgrade.⁹⁷⁰ The Novaković’s edition is the
only textual edition we have preserved based on this manuscript’s Infancy Gos-
pel of Thomas. Michail Speranskij later published another Slavonic edition by
combining other manuscripts and editions, namely, the Hludov manuscript, No-
vaković’s edition, and a few sixteenth- and eighteenth-century Slavonic manu-
scripts from Russia and Ukraine.⁹⁷¹ Jacimirskij also published the manuscript
St Petersburg in 1898.⁹⁷² The manuscripts Hludov and St Petersburg are re-edited
in this book, while the Novaković edition is re-typed from the original publica-
tion.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 110 – 111.

 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 294.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 295 – 299.
 Popov, Описание рукописей, 320 – 325.
 Novaković, “Apokrifi jednoga srpskog ćirilskog zbornika,” 36 – 92.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 74– 75; Speranskij, “Славянские апокрифические евангелиа,”
73 – 92; 137– 143; Speranskij, Южнорусские тексты, 186 – 190.
 Jacimirskij, Из славянских рукописей, 93 – 143.
Appendix 239
In their search for the Greek original Vorlage and its connections to the Sla-
vonic translations, scholars endeavored to produce the editions with different or-
ganizing principles. In 1967, Aurelio de Santos Otero attempted to reconstruct the
Greek Vorlage behind the Slavonic version.⁹⁷³ He used the manuscript St Peters-
burg and compared its text with the other known sources – Greek, Latin, Geor-
gian, Syriac, creating a retroversion in Greek to reconstruct an original version
from which the Slavonic translation had been made.⁹⁷⁴
Thomas Rosén’s dissertation, published in 1997, is dedicated entirely to the
Slavonic version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ⁹⁷⁵ He published the Slavonic
material in two separate textual editions: one based on medieval manuscripts
and the other on early modern manuscripts.⁹⁷⁶ For his medieval edition, he
used the manuscript St Petersburg, relying on the results of earlier investigators.
However, where this manuscript had several episodes absent, Rosén replaced the
missing episodes with the corresponding text from the manuscript Hludov,
known to him only through quotations by earlier scholars.⁹⁷⁷ In this book, I
edit the Infancy Gospel of Thomas from Hludov and St Petersburg manuscripts
because they are among the earliest manuscripts of the Slavonic tradition. Be-
sides, I use the Novaković edition, which preserves the textual version from
manuscript Cod. 637.⁹⁷⁸
Although attested in the highest number of manuscripts, the Latin tradition
of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has been generally overlooked in scholarly over-
views and editions. It can be ascribed to two facts. First, the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas in this tradition was combined with a group of other texts in the Gospel
of Pseudo-Matthew. Scholars define the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew to contain the
Latin Protevangelium of James, the Prologue in Egypt, and sometimes the pars
altera, which refers to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. ⁹⁷⁹ However, a glance at
the manuscripts shows that the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew was quite an unstable
group of texts.⁹⁸⁰ Also, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was not the original seg-
ment of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, as some scholars initially believed.⁹⁸¹ Gij-
 Santos Otero, Das kirchenslawische Evangelium.

 Other scholars, such as Lunt, Schütz, Grabar, Aitzetmüller, van Esbroeck, Ménard, Gero,
heavily criticized his work. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 92, n. 1, 95; Aasgaard, The Childhood
of Jesus, 6.
 Rosén, The Slavonic Translation.
 Rosén, The Slavonic Translation, 48 – 77; 78 – 97; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 109.
 Rosén, The Slavonic Translation, 46; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 109.
 Novaković, “Apokrifi jednoga srpskog ćirilskog zbornika,” 36 – 92.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146; Beyers, “Introduction générale,” 13.
 See Gijsel and Beyers, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146 – 147.
240 Appendix
sel demonstrated it by describing the entire body of the manuscripts containing

the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. Studying the Latin Infancy Gospel of Thomas
would have to include the intricacies around the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew
and other texts with which the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was bound, which
was one of the reasons for little interest in the text.
Second, the number of manuscripts in which the Latin Infancy Gospel of
Thomas appears is vast and, more importantly, very little studied thus far,
which makes research arduous. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew appeared in a
vast number of manuscripts known today.⁹⁸² It has not been clear how many
manuscripts from this number containing the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew have
a version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
When it comes to the Latin editions: as early as 1760, Johann Rudolf Sinner
edited the Latin manuscript Berne, Burgerbibliothek, 271 (Lt).⁹⁸³ This manuscript
is occasionally used in this book. Tischendorf published the palimpsest Vienna,
ÖNB, lat. 563 (Lv) along with the Greek text mentioned above.⁹⁸⁴ When it comes
to the same palimpsest Vienna 563, the earliest preserved (palimpsest) witness of
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Guy Philippart published the article about this
early Latin witness in 1972.⁹⁸⁵
Going back to Tischendorf’s edition, he also edited the early Latin variant,
Lm, and the later Latin variant, Lt, from the manuscripts Vat. lat. 4578, Florence,
Laurenziana, Gaddi 208, and Paris, BnF, lat. 1652.⁹⁸⁶ In the edition of this book, I
used two earliest dated representatives of the Lm variant, Paris 1772 and Dijon,
and the earliest representative of the Lt variant, Cambridge, listed below, which
are here edited for the first time. Jan Gijsel and Rita Beyers did not include the
edition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in their collation of the Gospel of Pseudo-
Matthew. ⁹⁸⁷
As for the editorial strategy, I recover all the texts precisely as they appear in
the manuscripts. This approach complies with New Philology, and it generates
my interest in investigating the manuscripts in connection to the settings in
which they were used. I have thus not paid attention to any possible grammat-
ical or stylistic mistakes made by scribes. I have left gaps enclosed by square
 See Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 262; Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 105; Elliott, “Mary in the
Apocryphal New Testament,” 60; Burke, De infantia Iesu, 146.
 Sinner, Catalogus Codicum Mss. Bibliothecae Bernensis, 246– 258.
 Tischendorf, Evangelia apocrypha, xliv–xlvi; see also Burke, De infantia Iesu, 53 – 54, 96,
145.
 Philippart, “Fragments palimpsestes,” 391– 411.
 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 147.
 Gijsel and Beyers, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium.
Appendix 241
brackets where the text was complicated to read or where the lacunae emerge.
The abbreviations appearing in the manuscripts are added in the edition. I
use square brackets to mark my inserted decoding of the abbreviations. The Ap-
pendix section contains the following manuscripts:
Latin manuscript Paris, BnF, lat. 1772

Latin manuscript Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale 38 (20)
Latin manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 288
Greek manuscript Jerusalem, Library of the Patriarchate, Codex Sabaiticus 259
Greek manuscript Athens, Ethnike Bibliotheke, Cod. Atheniensis gr. 355
Greek manuscript Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. hist. gr. 91
Slavonic manuscript Cod. 637, National Library, Belgrade, Serbia, Collection of
P.S. Srećković (edition by Novaković, “Apokrifi jednoga srpskog ćirilskog zborni-
ka,” 36 – 92)
Slavonic manuscript Moscow, Russian State Historical Museum, Collection of A.
I. Hludov, Cod. 162
Slavonic manuscript St Petersburg, Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
13.3.17
Latin manuscript Paris, BnF lat. 1772, fol. 88v-90r
De infantia d[omi]ni n[ost]ri I[hes]u Chr[ist]i; Incipit infancia d[omi]ni n[ost]ri

I[hes]u Chr[ist]i. Post qua[m] reversus est in Galilea de Egipto.
Cum aut[em] esset Ih[esu]s in galilea post regressionem sua[m] de egypto.
factum est aut[em] cu[m] eu[m] Ih[esu]s ia[m] inchoante quinto anno etatis
sue. Una aut[em] die sabbati. ipse Ih[esu]s cu[m] infantib[us] ludebat ad torren-
tem iordanis alueu[m]. Cu[m] [er]go sederet Ih[esu]s. fecitq[ue]; ipse sibi de luto
septe[m] lacos. in quib[us] singulis eor[um] fecit arati unculas ducati. P[er] quas
de torrente ad suu[m] imperiu[m] in eas ducebat aquas in lacos. et iterum reduc-
ebat. Tunc aut[em] unus ex eis iuvenis filius diaboli animo invido. clausit
eor[um] que aditus op[er]a eiusq[ue] qui ministrabant in lacos. clausit eos
atq[ue] evertit quod op[er]atus fuerat d[omi]n[u]s n[oste]r Ih[esu]s Chr[istu]s.
Tunc dix[it] ei Ih[esu]s. Vere filius mortis. Op[er]a sathane op[er]a que ego
op[er]atus sum tu dissipas. et statim q[ui] hoc fecerat. mortuus est. Tunc
aut[em] sediciosa voce clamabant parentes mortui. Cont[ra] ioseph et maria[m]
dicentes eis filius v[este]r maledix[it] filiu[m] n[ost]r[u]m. et mortuus e[st].
Cu[m] aut[em] audissent ioseph et maria. statim vener[unt] ad Ih[esu]m p[ro]
pt[er] sedicione[m] parentum pueri. Aut adclamationem iudeor[um]. Cepit
eni[m] ioseph marie dicere. quod ille non audebat illi dicere. Mone eni[m] tu
242 Appendix
eu[m]. et dic ei. Quare excitasti nobis hodium populi. et sustinent[ur] molestias
homin[ib]us cu[m] venisset ad eu[m] maria mat[er] sua. rogabat eu[m] dicens ei.
D[omi]ne n[oste]r. quid faciendo iste fecit. ut moreretur at ille dix[it] ei. Dign[us]
eni[m] erat mortis. qui dissipavit op[er]a que ego op[er]or. Rogabat aut[em] eu[m]
mat[er] sua. dicens ad eu[m]. Noli d[omi]ne n[oste]r quia homines insurgunt in
nos. At ille nolens matre[m] sua[m] contristari pede[m] suu[m] dextru[m] p[er]cu-
ciens innates ei[us]. Dix[it] ad eu[m]. Exurge filius pestilentie iniquitatis. non
eni[m] tu dignus es ut intres in requie[m] patris mei. qui dissipas op[er]a que
ego op[er]or. Tunc aut[em] qui erat mortuus. Resurrex[it]. Et habu[n]t[ur]. De
aqua et de passerib[us]. Ih[esu]s v[er]o iteru[m] ad suu[m] imperiu[m] p[er] aque-
ductus. Aqua[m] ducebat in lacos. Tunc Ih[esu]s videntib[us] cunctis lutu[m] su-
mens de lacis quos fecerat ipse Ih[esu]s. exiens fecit passeres Xii. erat aut[em]
quando hec fecit Ih[esu]s sabatu[m]. et infantes cu[m] eo erant plurimi. Cu[m]
aut[em] vidissent eu[m] quidam de iudeis cu[m] infantib[us] hoc faciente[m].
dix[it] videns ad ioseph. Non eni[m] vides ioseph infante[m] Ih[esu]m qui in sa-
bato hec talia de luto facit. Passeres quos ei n[on] licet facere. hoc audito ioseph.
arguebat Ih[esu]m infantem. et dix[it] ei. Quare hec talia in sabbato facis. que
nobis non licet facere. Ih[esu]s aut[em] audiens hec a ioseph. percussit
manu[m] in manu sua. et passeribus suis voce magna dix[it]. Volate. et ad
vocem imperii sui fec[it] eas volare. Tunc stantib[us] om[n]ib[us]. Illis. et
videntib[us] et audientib[us]; dix[it] avib[us]; Ite volate p[er] universum
mundu[m] et locu[m]. Cantate et gaudete et exultate. et vivite et memores mi es-
tote. Cu[m] aut[em] om[ne]s qui aderant ei. vidissent talia signa. et virtutes ab eo
factas fuisse. pharisei repleti sunt stupore magno. Alii laudabant eu[m]. et mir-
abantur. Alii vituperabant eu[m]. Et habies ad principes sacerdotum et adpri-
mates phariseor[um]. et nuntiaver[unt] eis quod Ih[esu]s filius d[i]i. in conspectu
totius p[o]p[u]li isr[ae]litici. hec talia signa et virtutes fecisset et adnunciatu[m]
e[st] hoc ad xii trib[us] isr[ae]l[is].
Caput vii. De lacis
Nam iteru[m] filius anne sacerdotis te[m]pli qui cu[m] ioseph advenerat
tene[n]s virga[m] in manu sua de populo. et cunctis videntib[us]. Cu[m] furore
nimio exclusit lacos quos Ih[esu]s fecerat manib[us]. suis. et effudit ex eis
aquam qua[m] congregaverat Ih[esu]s de torrente in lacos. Nam et ipsum aque
ductu[m] unde introiebat aqua clausit atq[ue] iteru[m] evertit. Cu[m] aut[em]
hoc vidisset Ih[esu]s d[omi]n[u]s n[oste]r fieri. Dix[it] ad pueru[m] illu[m] qui dis-
sipavit lacos suos. O semen iniquitatis pessimu[m]. filius mortis. Op[er]a sathane.
vere filius diaboli. erit fructus seminis tui sine vigore. radices er[it] aridi rami tui
qui non afferent fructu[m]. Hoc dicto a Ih[esu]m. cunctis videntib[us] et
audientib[us] subito arefactus est puer qui hoc fecerat. et mortuus e[st]. Et
mox tenuit Ih[esu]m ioseph. et ibat cu[m] eo ad domu[m] sua[m] et matre[m]
Appendix 243
cu[m] eo. Et ecce subito ex adverso puer quida[m] et ipse op[er]arius iniq[ui]tatis.
currens inpulit se in humeru[m] Ih[es]u. volens eu[m]. elidere. aut nocere si po-
tuisset. Dix[it] aut[em] ei Ih[esu]s. non revertaris san[us] via tua q[uo] vadis. Et
statim corruit. et mortuus e[st]. et exclamaverunt parentes pueri qui mortuus
fuit. qui et viderant q[uod] factu[m] fuisset dicentes. Unde natus e[st] iste infans.
ut omne verbum quod dixerit manifestum e[st]. Ut antequa[m] dicat ad
impletu[m] e[st]. Et accesser[unt] parentes pueri qui mortuus erat ad ioseph. et
dixer[unt] ei. Tolite istu[m] Ih[esu]m de loco isto. non eni[m] potest hic habitare
nobiscu[m] in municipio hoc. aut certe docere
Latin manuscript Dijon, Bibl. Mun. 38 (20), fol. 9v-20r
Et f[ac]t[u]m [est] p[os]t regressu[m] ih[es]u de egypto [cum] e[ss]et i[n] galilea
ia[m] inchoante q[ui]nto anno etatis ei[us] una die sabb[at]i cu[m] infantib[us]
ludebat ad iordanis alueum. Cu[m] [er]go sedet Ih[esu]s fecit sibi de luto. Vii.
lacos. quib[us] sing[u]lis fecit aratiunculas ducari p[er] q[ua]s de torre[n]te ad
suu[m] i[m]p[er]ium aq[ua]s ducebat ad lacos et it[eru]m reducebat. Tu[n]c
un[us] ex ill[is] infantib[us] fili[us] dyaboli a[n]i[m]o i[n]vidie clausit adit[us]
qui ministrabant aquas ad lacos. Atq[ue] av[er]tit q[uod] op[er]at[us] fu[er]at
Ih[esu]s. Tu[n]c dix[it] illi Ih[esu]s. Fili mortis. fili sathane. ve tibi q[uia] op[er]
a que ego op[er]at[us] su[m] tu dissipas. Et stati[m] qui hoc fec[er]at mortu[us]
[est]. Q[uan]do audientes p[ar]entes illi[us] mortui: sedit[i]osa morte
clamaba[n]t contra ioseph et maria[m] dice[n]tes eis. Fili[us] v[este]r maledix[it]
filio n[ost]ro: Et mortu[us] [est]. Cu[m] aut[em] hoc audisse[n]t ioseph et m[ari]a:
vener[un]t ad Ih[esu]m p[ro]p[ter] sedit[i]onem pueri et p[ar]entu[m] ei[us] et
adclamat[i]one[m] iud[ae]or[um]. Dix[it] a ioseph m[ari]e sec[re]to. Ego n[on]
audeo illi d[ice]re. Tu v[er]o mone eu[m] et dic. Q[ua]re excitasti nob[is]
odiu[m] p[o]p[u]li et sustinem[us] molestias amicor[um] p[ro]p[ter] te. Et cu[m]
veniss[et] mater ei[us] ad Ih[esu]m. rogabat eu[m] dice[n]s D[omi]ne mi quid fa-
ciendo m[et]uit puer iste ut moreret[ur]. At ille dixit dingu[s] erat morte. quia dis-
sipavit op[er]a que op[er]at[us] fueram. Rogabat [er]go eu[m] ma[ter] dice[n]s.
Noli d[omi]ne mi quia insurgu[n]t o[mne]s i[n] nos. At ille nolle[n]s m[at]rem
sua[m] c[on]t[ri]stari pede suo dext[r]o p[er]cuciens nates […] mortui dix[it] ad
illu[m]. Ex[ur]ge fili i[n]iq[ui]tatis n[on] eni[m] ding[us] es ut intres i[n] req[ui]
em p[at]ris mei q[uia] dissipasti op[er]a que ego fuera[m] op[er]at[us]. Stati[m]
q[ui] erat mortu[us] surrexit et abiit. Ih[esu]s v[er]o ad suu[m] i[m]p[er]iu[m]
p[er] aq[ae] ductu[m] aq[uae] ducebat ad lacos.
T[u]m aut[em] videntibus cu[n]ctis su[m]psit Ih[esu]s lutu[m] de lacis quos
fec[er]at: et ex eo fecit passeres. xii. Erat aut[em] sabb[atu]m q[ua]n[do] h[aec]
244 Appendix
fecit Ih[esu]s. Et infantes pl[ur]imi cu[m] illo era[n]t. Cu[m] [er]go vidiss[et]
quida[m] ex iudeis cu[m] infantib[us] h[oc] faciente[m]. Dix[it] ad ioseph non
e[nim] vides infante[m] tuu[m] Ih[esu]m in sabb[at]o op[er]ari q[ue] illi face[re]
n[on] licet. Hoc audito ioseph arguebat eu[m] dice[n]s. Q[ua]re in sabb[at]o
talia factus quod nob[is] n[on] lic[et]. Ih[esu]s aut[em] audiens a ioseph p[er]cus-
sit manu[m] ad manu[m]. Et passerib[us] dix[it]. Volate et ad voce[m] i[m]p[er]ii
ei[us] cep[er]unt volare. Et stantib[us] o[mn]ib[us] illis et vide[n]tib[us] et
audientib[us] dix[it] avib[us]. Ite. volate p[er] omne[m] mu[n]du[m]. Et vivite. Vi-
dentes v[er]o q[ui] adera[n]t talia signa repleti su[n]t stupore magno. Et alii lau-
dabant et admirabant[ur] eu[m]. Alii vitup[er]abant. Et abieru[n]t quidam ad p[ri]
ncipes sac[er]dotu[m] et phariseor[um] et anu[n]tiaveru[n]t eis q[uod] Ih[esu]s
fili[us] ioseph i[n] c[on]sp[e]ctu toti[us] pop[u]li isr[ae]l[ici] signa magna et
v[ir]tutes fecisset. Et anu[n]ciatu[m] e[st] hoc ad. Xii. Trib[us] isr[ae]l[icis].
Nam it[eru]m fili[us] sac[er]dotis te[m]pli qui cu[m] ioseph advenit. Tenens
virga[m] in manu cu[n]ctis q[ui] aderant videntib[us]; cu[m] furore nimio c[on]
clusit lacos quos fecit Ih[esu]s manib[us] suis. Et effudit aquas ex eis q[ua]s
agregav[er]at de torre[n]te in eis. Nam et ip[su]m aque ductu[m] p[er] q[uem] ret-
roibat aq[ua] clausit. Et p[os]tea ev[er]tit. Cumq[ue] hoc vidisset Ih[esu]s dix[it]
ad illu[m] q[ui] dissipav[er]it lacos. O semen iniq[ui]tatis pessimu[m]. O fili mor-
tis op[er]a sathane. Vere erit fruct[us] semi[ni]s tui s[i]n[e] vigore. Et radices ei[us]
v[e]l tui s[i]n[e] humore. Et rami tui aridi n[on] afferentes fructu[m]. Mox vide[n]
tib[us] cu[n]ctis arefact[us] e[st] puer et mortu[us] [est]. Deinde tenuit io[seph]
Ih[esu]m. et ibat cu[m] eo ad domu[m] sua[m] et m[at]r[em] ei[us] cu[m] illo.
Et ecce s[u]bito q[ui]dam puer ex adv[er]so. Et ip[s]e puer iniq[ui]tatis c[ur]
rens impulit se s[upe]r humeru[m] Ih[es]u. Volens illu[m] illide[re] aut noce[re]
si posse. Dix[it] aut[em] illi Ih[esu]s. No[n] rev[er]taris san[us] de via tua q[ua]
vadis. Et stati[m] corruit et mortu[us] [est]. Et exclamav[er]unt p[ar]entes mortui
qui audiera[n]t et viderant. Q[uo]d f[ac]t[u]m fu[er]at d[ice]ntes. Un[de] nat[us]
est hic infans manifestu[m] [est]. Q[uo]d om[n]e v[er]bu[m] q[uo]d dic[it] v[er]
um est. Et freq[ue]nter an[te]q[uam] dicat adi[m]plet[ur]. Et accesseru[n]t p[ar]
entes mortui ad ioseph: et dixerunt ei. Tolle Ih[esu]m illu[m] de loco illo. no[n]
eni[m] potest hic h[ab]itare nob[is]cum eo municipio. Aut c[er]te doce illu[m]
b[e]n[e]d[ice]re et n[on] maledicere. Accedens aut[em] ioseph ad Ih[esu]m: mon-
ebat eu[m] dice[n]s. Ut q[ui]d talia facis? Iam m[u]lti dolentes contra te su[n]t. Et
p[ro]p[ter] te h[abe]nt nos odio: et p[ro]p[ter] te molestias sustinem[us]. Respon-
dens Ih[esu]s dixit ad ioseph. Nullus fili[us] sapiens est nisi que[m] p[ate]r suus
s[e]c[un]d[u]m sci[enti]am hui[us] t[em]p[or]is erudierit. Et p[at]ris sui sapi[enti]a
nemini nocet. N[ec] male agentib[us]. Tu[n]c cong[re]gati su[n]t om[ne]s adv[er]
sus Ih[esu]m. Et acc[us]abant eum adv[er]sus ioseph. Ut h[oc] vidit ioseph
p[er]t[er]rit[us] est nimiu[m]. Timens vim p[o]p[u]li sui Isr[ae]l. Eade[m] hora
Appendix 245
Ih[esu]s app[re]hendit mortuu[m] infante[m] ab aure et suspendit eu[m] a t[er]

ram in co[n]sp[ec]tu omn[ium] ut vid[er]ent Ih[esu]m loq[ue]nte[m] cu[m] eo
tanq[uam] p[at]rem cu[m] filio suo. Et rev[er]sus [est]. Sp[iritu]s ei[us] in ip[su]
m. Et revixit et amirati su[n]t univ[er]si.
Magister aut[em] quidam videns no[m]i[n]e zachias audivit Ih[esu]m talia
v[er]ba loq[ue]nte[m] cum eo. Et eo q[ui]d erat insup[er]abilis sapi[enti]e v[ir]
tutis. F[ac]tus est dolens. Et cepit indisciplinate et stulte et s[i]n[e] timore
loq[ui] contra ioseph. Dicebat enim adv[er]sus ioseph. Tu no[n] vis filium
tuu[m] trade[re] ut doceat[ur] sci[enti]am hu[m]ani timoris. sed video te et
maria[m] plus velle dilige[re] filiu[m] v[est]r[u]m. Q[ua]m tradito[r]es senior[um]
p[o]p[u]li. Oportebat enim nos pri[us] honorare p[res]b[yte]ros toti[us] eccl[es]ie
isr[ae]l: ut et ex infantib[us] mutua[m] h[ab]eat cari[ta]te[m]. Ut int[er] illos
erudiat[ur] iudaica doct[ri]na. Cui e contra ioseph dix[it]: q[ui]s est q[ui] possit
ho[c] i[n]fante[m] tene[re] et doce[re]. Et si potes tene[re] et doce[re] eum. nos
mi[ni]me p[ro]hibem[us] doc[er]i eu[m] a te que ab ho[min]ibus dicu[n]t[ur]. Au-
diens aut[em] Ih[esu]s que zachias dix[er]at r[espon]d[i]t ei et dix[it]: Preceptor
legis q[ui]d parvulu[m] an[te] dixisti: et o[mn]ia que no[m]i[n]asti op[or]tet ob-
servare ho[m]i[n]em tui filem. Hominu[m] institutor[um] ex[tra]neus ego sum a
filus v[est]ris. Pa[ren]t[e]m carnale[m] no[n] h[ab]eo. Tu quide[m] legem legis.
Et instruct[us] in lege p[er]manes. Ego au[tem] lege[m] tua[m] sum. Sed cu[m]
putes me no[n] h[ab]ere doct[ri]nam tu doct[ri]na erudit[us] es a me. Qu[oqu]e
nemo ali[us] doce[re] pot[est] n[ec] hic qu[oqu]e tu no[m]i[n]asti. Ip[s]e enim
pot[est] qui dign[us] est. Ego aut[em] cu[m] exaltatus fuero a t[er]ra. cessare
facia[m] omne[m] genealogia[m] et […] v[est]ri me[n]t[i]one[m]. Tu q[ua]n[do]
natus es ignoras. Ego aut[em] scio solus q[ua]n[do] nati estis. Et q[ua]nto t[em]
p[ore] vita v[est]ra erit in terra. Tu[n]c om[ne]s q[ui] audier[un]t v[er]ba h[aec]
panefacti obstupueru[n]t et clamaveru[n]t d[ice]ntes. a. a. a. Hoc mire magnu[m]
et admirabile[m] sacram[en]tu[m]. Nu[m]q[uam] audivim[us] hui[us] v[er]ba
n[um]q[uam] ab aliq[uo] alio auditu[m] e[st]. N[ec] a sac[er]dotib[us] n[ec] a
ph[ar]iseis. N[ec] a g[ra]maticis d[i]c[tu]m e[st] tale v[e]l auditu[m] aliq[ua]
n[do]. Nos scim[us] hu[n]c unde nat[us] [est]. Et vix [est] adhuc annor[um]
sex. Un[de] h[aec] v[er]ba loq[ui]t[ur]. R[espo]nderu[n]t ph[ar]isei. Nos nu[m]
q[uam] audivim[us] talia v[er]ba in tali infantia. R[espo]ndens Ih[esu]s dix[it]
eis in h[oc] vos admirami[ni]. Q[uia] talia v[er]ba ab infante d[icu]n[tu]r q[ua]re
[er]go n[on] c[re]ditis m[ihi] in hiis q[uae] loquut[us] sum vobis: Et dixi vobis.
Scio q[ua]n[do] nati estis. Quo om[ne]s mirami[ni]. Ampliora audietis et dicam
vob[is] ut magi[s] miremi[ni]. Abraham que[m] vos dicitis pat[re]m v[est]r[u]m
ego vidi et me vidit. Et cu[m] eo loquut[us] fui. Et audientes hoc obmutueru[n]
t. N[ec] q[ui]sq[uam] eor[um] audebat loq[ui]. Q[ui] dix[it] eis Ih[esu]s. Fui
int[er] vos ex infantib[us] a n[on] cognovistis me. Loquut[us] su[m] vob[is]
246 Appendix
q[uas]i cu[m] p[ru]dentib[us] et n[on] intellexistis me. Q[uia] mi[n]ores me estis et

modice fidei. It[eru]m mag[iste]r zachias legis doctor dix[it] ad ioseph et
maria[m]. Date m[ihi] pu[eru]m et e[g]o t[ra]dam eu[m] mag[ist]ro levi. Q[ui] do-
ceat eu[m] litt[er]as et erudiat. Tu[n]c ioseph et m[ari]a blandientes Ih[esu]m
dux[er]unt eu[m] in scolam. Ut doce[re]t[ur] litt[er]as a sene levi. Quo cu[m]
int[ro]isset tacebat. et mag[iste]r levi una[m] l[itte]ram dicebat ad Ih[esu]m. Et in-
cipiens a p[rim]a l[itte]ra alpha. Dicebat ei. R[espo]nde. Ih[esu]s v[er]o tacebat et
n[on] r[espo]ndebat. Un[de] p[rae]ceptor levi irat[us] apprehendens v[ir]ga[m]
storatina[m]. p[er]cussit eu[m] i[n] capite. Ih[esu]s au[tem] dix[it] ad
didascalu[m] levi. Ut q[ui]d me p[er]cutis. In v[er]itate scias q[uia] ip[s]e q[ui]
p[er]cutit[ur] mag[is] docet p[er]cutiente[m] se. Q[ua]m ab eo doceat[ur]. Sed hi
om[ne]s ceci su[n]t qui dicu[n]t et audiunt q[uas]i es sonans aut ci[m]balum
ti[n]niens. In quib[us] no[n] est sensus aut int[e]ll[e]ctus ip[s]or[um] que int[e]
lligunt[ur] p[er] sonu[m] eor[um]. Et s[u]biu[n]gens Ih[esu]s dix[it] zachie.
Om[n]is l[itte]ra ab alpha usq[ue] ad thau: dispo[s]it[i]one disc[er]nit[ur]. Dic
[er]go p[ri]mu[m] q[uid] sit thau: Et eo dica[m] t[ibi] q[uid] sit alpha. Et it[eru]
m dix[it] Ih[esu]s ad eos qui no[n] noveru[n]t alpha: quo[modo] d[ice]re possunt
thau. Ypoc[ri]te. Dicite m[ihi] p[ri]mu[m] q[uid] sit alpha: et tu[n]c e[g]o vobis cre-
dam cu[m] dicetis betha. Et cepit Ih[esu]s sing[u]laru[m] litt[er]ar[um] no[m]i[n]a
int[er]rogare: et dicebat. Dic m[ihi] mag[iste]r legis p[ri]ma l[itte]ra t[ri]angulos
multos q[ua]re h[ab]eat gradratos. subacutos. mediatos obductos. p[ro]ductos.
Er[ec]tos. Stractos. curvifactos. Cu[m] aut[em] hoc audisset stupefactus est ad
tanta[m] dispo[s]it[i]one[m] nominu[m] l[itte]rar[um]. Tu[n]c cepit cu[n]ctis
audientib[us] clamare et d[ice]re. N[on] d[ebet] iste s[upe]r t[er]ram viv[er]e:
imo in magna cruce d[ebet] appendi. Na[m] pot[est] igne[m] extinguere: et alia
delude[re] torm[en]ta. Ego puto q[uod] an[te] cathaclismu[m] hic fu[er]it
nat[us]. Quis eni[m] vent[us] illu[m] portavit. Aut que m[ate]r illu[m] genuit.
Aut que ub[er]a illum lactav[er]unt. Fugiam an[te] illu[m] non enim valeo
sustine[re] v[er]bu[m] ex ore ei[us]. Sed cor meu[m] stupescit v[er]ba audire
talia. Nullu[m] enim hominu[m] puto ei[us] consequi v[er]bu[m] n[isi] fu[er]it
d[eu]s cu[m] illo. Nam e[g]o ip[s]e infelix t[ra]didi me huic in derisum. Cu[m]
e[rg]o ip[s]e putare[m] me habe[re] discip[u]l[u]m. Ignorans eu[m] meu[m] i[n]
veni mag[ist]r[u]m. Q[ui]d dicam. No[n] valeo sustine[re] v[er]ba pu[er]i
hui[us]. De hoc iam municipio fugiam: q[uia] illu[m] inte[n]d[er]e n[on] valeo.
Ab infante senex vict[us] su[m]. Q[uia] neq[ue] initiu[m] de quib[us] ip[s]e affir-
mat invenire possu[m] neq[ue] fine[m]. Difficile eni[m] [est]. I[n]itiu[m] cause
ip[s]i[us] rep[er]ire. Certe dico vobis n[ec] me[n]tior. Q[uia] an[te] oc[u]los quod
meos op[er]at[i]o hui[us] pu[er]i et senia sermonis ei[us] et i[n]tent[i]o[n]is
exit[us] nich[il] ex ho[min]ib[us] commune videt[ur] h[abe]re. Hic ego nescio
aut videns aut d[eu]s sit aut c[er]te a[n]g[e]l[u]s di sit: qui loq[ui] cu[m] eo.
Appendix 247
Un[de] sit. Un[de] ven[er]it aut q[ui]d futur[us] sit nescio. Tu[n]c Ih[esu]s leto
vultu s[u]bridens de eo dix[it] cu[m] imp[er]io cu[n]ctis filiis astantib[us] et
audientib[us]. Fructificent[ur] infructuosi et videa[n]t ceci. Et claudi recte
ambule[n]t. et paup[er]es fruant[ur] bonis. Et revivisca[n]t mortui ut re
integ[rat]o statu uniquiq[ue] reutant[ur] et p[er]manea[n]t i[n] eo qui est. radix
vite et dulcedinis p[er]petue. Et cu[m] h[oc] infans Ih[esu]s dixisset. [Con]tinuo
restituti s[un]t om[ne]s qui s[u]b malis decid[er]ant i[n]firmitatib[us]. Et ampli[us]
n[on] aussi enim d[ice]re aliq[uid] v[e]l audire ab eo.
Post hec abieru[n]t inde ioseph and maria cu[m] Ih[es]u in civitate Nazareth.
Erat i[bi] Ih[esu]s cu[m] p[ar]entibus suisq[ue]. Cu[m] e[ss]ent ibi una sabb[at]i
du[m] Ih[esu]s cu[m] infantib[us] lude[re]t i[n] solario cui[us]da[m] domus.
[Con]tigit ut un[us] ex infantib[us] impell[er]et aliu[m] de solario in t[er]ram.
Et mortu[us] [est]. Et cu[m] hoc vidisse[n]t p[ar]entes mortui clamav[er]unt contra
maria[m] et ioseph d[ice]ntes fili[us] v[este]r filium n[ost]r[u]m misit de solario in
t[er]ra[m]. Et mortu[us] [est]. Ih[esu]s v[er]o tacebat: et nich[il] r[espo]ndebat.
Veneru[n]t aut[em] ioseph et maria ad Ih[esu]m. Rogabat eu[m] m[ate]r sua di-
cens. D[omi]ne mi dic m[ihi] si tu misisti istu[m] in t[er]ram. Et stati[m] Ih[esu]
s desce[n]dit de solario: et vocavit p[er] nom[en] suu[m] Zeno. Et r[espo]ndit ei
bene. Et ait illi Ih[esu]s. Nu[m] ego p[rae]cipitavi te in t[er]ram de solario. At
ille dix[it]. No[n] d[omi]ne. Et mirati su[n]t p[ar]entes pu[er]i qui fu[er]at mor-
tuus: et honoraba[n]t Ih[esu]m s[upe]r signo illo facto.
Abieru[n]t inde maria et io[seph] cu[m] Ih[es]u. i[n] iherico: et erat
annor[um] sex. et misit illu[m] m[ate]r sua cu[m] ydria ad fonte[m] haurire
aqu[am]. et [con]tigit p[ost]q[uam] hausit aq[uam] et q[ui]da[m] ex infa[n]
tib[us] i[m]pegerit illu[m] et [con]quassavit ydriam sua[m] et fregit illa[m]. At
ille expandit pallium suu[m] q[uo] i[n]duebat[ur] et suscepit i[n] pallio t[antu]
m aq[uae] q[ua]ntu[m] erat i[n] yd[ri]a et portavit ea[m] m[at]ri sue. At illa videns
mirabat[ur]. Et cogitabat int[ra] se et condebat o[mn]ia h[aec] in corde suo. De
tri[ti]co q[uo]d æseminavit. It[er]um q[ua]dam die exivit Ih[esu]s i[n] agrum et
tulit paru[m] tritici de horreo m[at]ris sue et semi[n]avit illud ip[s]e. et natu[m]
crevit et m[u]ltiplicatu[m] e[st] nimis. et f[ac]t[u]m [est]. dein[de] ut illud ip[s]e
met[er]et et collig[er]et fruct[us] ex eo centu[m] choros t[ri]tici donavit q[ui] in-
imicis suis. […] Est via quae te[n]dit de iherico et exit ad Jordane[m] fluviu[m]
ubi transieru[n]t filii isr[ae]l ubi archa testam[en]ti d[icitu]r resedisse. Et erat
Ih[esu]s annor[um] [oc]to et exivit de iherico et ibat ad iordane[m]. Et erat
secus via[m] cripta p[ro]pe iordanis rippa[m] u[bi] leena q[ua]dam catulos
suos nutriebat. Et n[u]ll[u]s audebat p[er] via[m] illa[m] secur[us] ambulare. Ven-
iens a[c] Ih[esu]s de iherico et cognoscens q[uod] i[n] cripta illa leena filios gn[er]
asset. Cu[n]ctis videntib[us] in illa[m] int[ro]ivit. At u[bi] videru[n]t leones Ih[esu]
m. accurreru[n]t ei obviam et adorav[er]unt illu[m]. Sedebat q[ui] Ih[esu]s in
248 Appendix
cav[er]na. Catuli aut[em] leonu[m] dicurrebant an[te] et circa pedes ei[us] blan-
dientes et ludentes cu[m] eo. Leones v[er]o demisso capite a longe stabant et
adorabant eu[m]. Et caudis suis blandiebant[ur] an[te] illu[m]. Popul[u]s
aute[m] de longe stabat [et] n[on] vide[n]tes Ih[esu]m diceba[n]t hic n[isi] g[ra]
via fecisset p[e]cc[at]a aut p[ar]entes ei[us]. No[n] se ultro leonib[us] obtulisset.
[Et] cu[m] p[o]p[u]l[u]s intra se h[aec] cogitaret et merori nimio p[ro[p[e] Ih[esu]m
s[u]biac[er]et. Ecce s[u]bito i[n] [con]sp[ec]tu p[o]p[u]li exivit Ih[esu]s de cripta.
Et leones an[te]cedebant illu1[m]. Et catuli leonu[m] an[te] pedes ei[us]
ludeba[n]t int[er] se. Parentes a[c] ei[us] staba[n]t de lo[n]ge demisso capite et
observaba[n]t parit[er]. Et p[o]p[u]l[u]s p[rop]e leones longi[us] stabat. No[n]
eni[m] [con]iung[er]e eis se audebat. Tu[n]c Ih[esu]s cepit se [con]iung[er]e ad
p[o]p[u]l[u]m: et ait illis. Qu[an]to meliores nobis su[n]t bestie que suu[m]
agnoscu[n]t d[omi]n[u]m et gl[or]ificant. Et vos ho[m]i[n]es q[ui] ad yma[gi]
ne[m] dei et si[mi]litudine[m] f[ac]ti estis: ignoratis eu[m]. Bestie agnoscu[n]t
me. Et mansuescu[n]t. Ho[m]i[n]es vident me. Et n[on] cognoscu[n]t. Post h[ae]
c Ih[esu]s t[ra]nsivit jordane[m] cu[m] leonib[us] cu[n]ctis vide[n]tibus. et
aq[ua] jordanis an[te] eos divisa [est]. Ad dext[r]am et ad sinistra[m] et dix[it]
leonib[us] ita ut om[ne]s audire[n]t. Ite i[n] pace ut nemine[m] ledatis. S[ed]
n[ec] ho[m]i[n]es vob[is] nocea[n]t don[ec] rev[er]tami[ni] ad locu[m] v[est]r[u]
m un[de] existis. At illi vale facie[n]tes n[on] voce s[ed] corp[or]e: Abieru[n]t
ad loca sua. Ih[esu]s a[c] rev[er]sus [est] ad m[at]rem sua[m]. De ligno q[uod]
elongavit. Cum aut[em] e[ss]et ioseph faber lignari[us]. Nich[il] q[uod] ex ligno
op[er]aret[ur] n[isi] iuga boum et aratra t[er]re v[er]soria et culture apta ligneos-
que lectos. [con]tigit ut q[ui]da[m] iuvenis ad faciend[um] q[ua]da[m] lectu[m]
cubitor[um] sex illi admi[ni]straret. Et iussit illi puero incid[er]e lignu[m] ferra
ferrea s[e]c[un]d[u]m m[en]sura[m] q[uam] pro mi[ser]at. Qui n[on] servavit
t[er]minatu[m] sibi modu[m]. S[ed] fecit unu[m] lignu[m] brevi[us] q[uam]
alt[er]um. Et cepit ioseph estuando cogitare q[uid] face[re]t s[upe]r h[oc]. Et ut
vidit Ih[esu]s illu[m] sic estuante[m] cogitare. Cui gestus rei i[m]possibilis erat.
[Con]solatoria voce alloqui[tur] eu[m] dicens. Veni teneam[us] capita sing[u]
lor[um] lignor[um] et [con]iu[n]gam[us] ea caput ad caput. et coeq[ue]m[us] ea
ad se. Et traham[us] ad paritate[m]. Pot[er]im[us] enim ea eq[ua]lia face[re].
Tu[n]c ioseph obte[m]p[er]avit iubenti sciebat eni[m] q[uod] poss[et] face[re]
q[ui]d vellet. Et app[re]hendente ioseph capita lignor[um] iu[n]xit illa ad p[ar]
ietem iux[ta] se. [et] tenuit Ih[esu]s capita lignor[um] et traxit ad se brevi[us]
lignu[m] et coeq[ua]vit ill[u]d ligno lo[n]giori. Et dix[it] ad ioseph. vade op[er]
are et fac q[uo]d faciebas. Et fecit ioseph q[uo]d p[ro]miserat. De illo qui percus-
sit eum et mortuus est. F[ac]t[u]m [est] s[e]c[un]d]o ut maria et ioseph
rogarent[ur] a p[o]p[u]lo ut Ih[esu]s doc[er]et[ur] litteris in scola. Q[uod] [et]
face[re] non negaveru[n]t [et] s[e]c[un]d[u]m p[rae]ceptu[m] senior[um]. Dux[er]
Appendix 249
unt eu[m] ad scolas. Cu[m] aut[em] mag[iste]r i[m]p[er]iose d[oce]ret illi. Dic
alpha. Ih[esu]s dix[it] ei. Dic m[ihi] tu p[ri]us q[ui]d sit alpha. Et e[g]o dica[m]
t[ibi] q[ui]d sit betha. Et ad h[oc] irat[us] mag[iste]r percussit illu[m]. et mox
p[os]tq[uam] p[er]cussit illu[m] mortu[us] est. Et Ih[esu]s rev[er]sus [est] ad
m[at]rem sua[m] i[n] domo. Timens aut[em] ioseph vocavit ad se maria[m] et
dix[it] ei. Ve[re] tristis [sum]. A[n]i[m]a m[e]a usq[ue] ad morte[m] p[ro]p[ter]
pu[er]um istu[m]. Pot[est] fi[eri] ut aliq[ua]n[do] aliq[ui]s duct[us] malitia p[er]
cutiat illu[m]. Et moriat[ur]. Maria aut[em] dix[it] illi. Vir dei noli time[re] n[ec]
crede[re] q[uo]d h[oc] fi[eri] possit. immo sec[ur]e crede q[uo]d q[ui] eu[m] missit
int[er] ho[m]i[n]es nasci: ip[s]e eu[m] ab ho[min]ib[us] malignantib[us] [con]ser-
vabit. et in suo no[m]i[n]e custodiet illu[m] a malo. It[eru]m t[er]tio rogaveru[n]t
iudei mariam et ioseph ut aliu[m] magist[ru]m blandim[en]tis suis ad Ih[esu]m
adduce[re]nt ad discendu[m]. Timentes aut[em] vim p[o]p[u]li m[aria] et io[seph]
et insolentias p[ri]ncipu[m] et sac[er]dotu[m] minas. Dux[er]unt Ih[esu]m ad sco-
las. Scientes n[ihil] ab ho[m]i[n]e illu[m] disc[er]e posse. Qui ex solo d[e]o p[er]
f[ec]tam h[abe]ret s[cien]tiam. Cu[m] aut[em] Ih[esu]s int[ro]isset scolam duct[us]
sp[irit]u s[anc]to accepit libru[m] de manu didascali docentis lege[m]. et cu[n]cto
p[o]p[u]lo vide[n]te et audiente. cepit leg[er]e n[on] q[ui]d[em] que sc[ri]pta
era[n]t i[n] libro illo. S[ed] in sp[irit]u d[e]i vivi loq[ue]batur tanq[uam] de
fonte vivo torrens aque egred[er]etur. Et fons plen[us] sp[irit]u perman[er]et. Et
ita i[n] v[ir]tute docebat p[o]p[u]l[u]m magnalia dei vivi. Ut et ip[s]e mag[iste]r
cad[er]et et adoraret eu[m]. Cor aut[em] p[o]p[u]li q[ui] sedebat et audiebat
talia dici ab eo. V[er]sum e[st] c[ontra] illu[m]. Q[uo]d cu[m] audiret ioseph
c[ur]rendo venit ad Ih[esu]m. timens ne et ip[s]e didascalus moreret[ur]. Quo
viso mag[iste]r dix[it] illi. Tu m[ihi] n[on] dedisti discip[u]l[u]m s[ed] mag[ist]
r[u]m. et q[ui]s pot[est] v[er]ba ei[us] sustin[er]e. Tu[n]c adi[m]pletu[m] est
q[uo]d d[i]c[tu]m e[st] p[er] psalmista[m]. flum[en] d[e]i repletu[m] [est] aq[ui]s
p[ar]asti ci[bum] il[lorum] q[uem] i[ta] [est] p[raeparatio] ei[us] et p[os]t h[aec]
inde migravit m[aria] et io[seph] cu[m] Ih[es]u. et veneru[n]t i[n] capharnaum
maritimam p[ro]p[ter] malicia[m] ho[m]i[nu]m sibi adv[er]santiu[m]. et cum
h[ab]itaret Ih[esu]s capharnaum: erat in civitate q[ui]da[m] dives homo no[m]
i[n]e ioseph: qui infirmitate sua deficiens mortu[us] e[st]. Et mortu[us] in grabato
iacebat. [Cu[m] aut[em] Ih[esu]s audisset i[n] civitate plorantes et ululantes
s[upe]r mortuu[m]. dixit ad ioseph. Q[ua]re huic qui tuo no[m]i[n]e vocat[ur]
n[on] p[rae]stas b[e]n[e]ficiu[m] gr[atia]e. Cui ioseph r[espo]ndit. Q[ua]e [est] po-
testas m[ihi] aut facultas p[rae]sta[n]di ei b[e]n[e]ficiu[m]. Cui Ih[esu]s dix[it].
Tolle sudariu[m] q[uo]d est s[upe]r caput tuu[m] et vade et pone illud s[upe]r fa-
ciem mortui. et dices. Saluet te Ih[esu]s. et mox saluat[us] erit et resurget defunc-
tus de grabato suo. Quo audito ioseph statim ad i[m]p[er]ium Ih[es]u c[ur]rens
int[ra]vit domu[m] defu[n]cti et sudariu[m] q[uod] h[ab]ebat sup[er] caput
250 Appendix
suu[m] posuit s[upe]r faciem ei[us] q[ui] iacebat in grabato. Et stati[m] surrexit
mortuus de lectulo suo. Et q[uae]rebat q[ui]s e[ss]et Ih[esu]s q[ui] dix[er]at. Sal-
uet te Ih[esu]s. De mor[te]m serpe[n]tis. Post h[aec] abieru[n]t de carpharnaum
maria et ioseph in civitate[m] q[uae] vocat[ur] bethlehem. Et erunt i[n] domo
sua. et Ih[esu]s cu[m] ill[is]. Et die q[ua]dam vocavit ad se ioseph. Filiu[m]
suu[m] p[ri]mogenitu[m] jacobu[m] et misit eu[m] in ortu[m] ut collig[er]et
olera ad pulm[en]tariu[m] faciendu[m]. et s[u]bseq[ui]t[us] e[st] Ih[esu]s
jacobu[m] fr[atr]em suu[m] i[n] ortu[m]. et hoc ioseph et maria nescieru[n]t. et
du[m] collig[er]et jacob[us] olera: s[u]bito exivit de foramine vip[er]a et p[er]cus-
sit dext[er]am manu[m] jacobi. Et ip[s]e p[rae] dolore nimio cepit clamare. Et iam
deficiens dicebat cu[m] vocis amaritudine. Heu heu: vip[er]a pessima percussit
manu[m] mea[m]. Ih[esu]s v[er]o ex adv[er]so stans a vocis amaritudine
cuc[ur]rit ad iacobu[m]. Et tenuit manu[m] ei[us] et n[ihil] aliud fecit s[ed]
t[antu]m sufflavit i[n] manu[m] illi[us] et refrig[er]avit ea[m] et stati[m] sanat[us]
[est] iacob[us]. Ioseph aut[em] et m[aria] ignoraba[n]t q[uod] f[a]c[tu]m fu[er]at.
S[ed] ad clamore[m] iacobi et ad i[m]p[er]ium Ih[es]u cuc[ur]reru[n]t i[n] ortu[m]
et inveneru[n]t serpente[m] iam mortuu[m]. et iacobum sanatu[m]. Cu[m] aut[em]
veniret ioseph ad co[n]viviu[m] cu[m] filiis suis iacobo et ioseph et juda et sym[e]
o[n]e et duab[us] filiis suis [con]ve[n]iebant et b[eat]a maria cu[m] Ih[es]u. Et so-
rore sua maria cleophe q[uam] do[minus] d[eu]s donavit ioachim pat[ri] ei[us] et
anne mat[ri] ei[us]. Et q[uo]d obtullissent maria[m] m[at]rem Ih[es]u d[omi]no. Et
h[aec] maria cleophe vocata est si[mi]li no[m]i[n]e maria. Ad concolat[i]o[n]em
p[ar]entu[m]. Et du[m] [con]ve[n]iret Ih[esu]s s[anc]tificabat et b[e]n[e]dicebat
illos. Et ip[s]e p[ri]or manducare et bib[er]e incipiebat. Nemo eni[m] illor[um]
ma[n]ducare vel bibe[re] audebat. Nec sede[re] ad mensa[m] aut panem
frange[re]. Don[ec] ip[s]e s[anc]tificans illos pri[us] hoc fecisset. Et si forte absens
fuisset. Exp[ec]tabatur donec hoc fac[er]et. Et q[ua]n[do] ip[s]e nolebat ad
refectione[m] acced[er]e. Accedebant ioseph et maria et fr[atr]es ei[us] filii io-
seph. Hii siquid[em] tres an[te] oc[u]los suos tanq[uam] lumi[n]aria vita[m]
illi[us] h[abe]ntes observabant et timebant eu[m]. et q[ua]n[do] Ih[esu]s dormie-
bat sive in die sive in nocte. Claritas dei magna resplendebat sup[er] illum. Ad
q[uos] nos p[er] duce[m] dignet[ur] am[en]. Explicit de infantia salvatoris.
Latin manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 288, fol. 79r-82r
Gloriosum est enarrare Thoma[m] Ismaelitam et ap[osto]los d[omi]ni. Intelligite

[er]go omnes f[rat]res carissimi sig[n]a que fecit Ih[esu]s. q[ua]ndo fuit i[n] civi-
tate nazareth quod est primo capitulo. Cum autem e[ss]et Ih[esu]s .v. annor[um]
Appendix 251
f[ac]ta est pluvia erat terribilis. quem congregavit in piscinam. et precepit verbo
suo ut fieret clara. Et statim f[ac]ta est.
Iterum tollebat de luto q[uo]d erat de ip[s]a piscina et fecit ex eo ad
mensura[m] .xii. passerum. Erat aute[m] sabbatu[m]. q[ua]n[do] hoc fecit
Ih[esu]s inter pueros Iudeoru[m]. Et abierunt pueri dicentes ad Ioseph p[a]
ren[t]i eius. ecce filius tuus ludebat simul nobiscum. Tulitq[ue] lutum et fecit
passeres q[uo]d non fuit dignum facere in sabbato. et fregit illud et abiit ioseph
ad puerum Ih[esu]m et dixit illi. Quare h[oc] fecisti q[uod] n[on] dignu[m] erat
facere in sabbato. Ih[esu]s aute[m] ap[er]tis manib[us] precepit passeris dicens.
Recedite in altum et volate. Et a nemine mortem invenietis. Et volantes ceperunt
clamando laudare d[eu]m omnipote[n]te[m]. Videntes aute[m] Iudei que f[ac]ta
sunt. admirati s[un]t. et abierunt nuntiantes signa que fecit Ih[esu]s. Pharisaeus
autem q[ui] erat cu[m] Ih[es]u. apprehendit ramum olive. et cepit derigare fontem
que[m] fecit Ih[esu]s. Cumq[ue] hoc vidiss[et] Ih[esu]s turbat[us] dixit ad eum.
Sodomite impie et nesciens. Q[ui]d te dampnaver[un]t fontes aque facture me.
Ecce sicut arida fies non h[abe]ns radices nec folia nec fructu[m]. Et statim
arefact[us] cecidit i[n] t[er]ra[m] et mortuus e[st]. parentes eius detuleru[nt]
eum mortuu[m]. et increpabant Ioseph dicentes ecce quid fecit filius tuus doce
eum orare et non fecit blasphemare.
Et post paucos dies deambulante Ih[es]u cu[m] Ioseph p[er] villam cucurrit
de infantib[us] un[us] et p[er]cussit Ih[esu]m in ulnas. Ih[esu]s aut[em] dixit ad
eum: Sic p[er]ficias iter tuu[m]. Et statim cecidit in t[er]ram et mortuus e[st]. Illi
aute[m] vidente[s] mirabilia. Clamaveru[n]t dice[n]te[s]. Unde e[st] puer iste: et
dixerunt ad Ioseph. N[on] op[or]tet e[ss]e nobiscum talem pueru[m]. Ille
aute[m] abiit et tulit eum. Et dixerunt ei. Recede de loco isto. et si op[or]tet te no-
biscum doce eum orare et no[n] blasphemare. filii aute[m] n[ost]ri insensati sunt.
Vocavit Ioseph Ih[esu]m et p[er]cepit eum docere. Ut q[ui]d blasphemas. Habita-
tores isti odium h[abe]nt s[upe]r nos de loco isto. Ih[esu]s aute[m] dixit. Ego
aute[m] scio quia isti sermones no[n] sunt mei. S[ed] tui sunt. ego aute[m] tacebo
pro te. Ip[s]i aute[m] videant in sapientia[m] suam. Et hii statim q[ui]
loquebant[ur] adversus Ih[esu]m. ceci f[ac]ti s[un]t. Et deambulantes dicebat.
Omnes sermones qui p[ro]cedunt de ore eius exercitiu[m] h[abe]nt. Et cu[m] vi-
disset Ioseph que fecit Ih[esu]s: cum furore app[re]hendit eum p[er] auriculam.
Ih[esu]s aute[m] turbat[us] dixit ad Ioseph. Sufficit tibi vide[re] me et non me tan-
gere. Tu aut[em] nescis qui ego sum. Q[uod] si scires n[on] me co[n]t[ri]stares. Et
q[uam]vi[s] ego modo tecu[m] sum ante te fact[us] sum. Igitur q[ui]da[m] homo
nomi[n]e Zache[us] ascultabat om[n]ia que loq[ue]bat[ur] Ih[esu]s ad Ioseph et
a[d]miratus in semet ip[su]m dicebat. Talem puerum ita loque[n]te[m] nu[m]
q[ua]m vidi. Et appropinquas ad Ioseph dixit ei. Sapiente[m] pueru[m] habe[s]
trade eum ad docendu[m] litteras. Cu[m] aut[em] doct[us] fuerit in studio littera-
252 Appendix
rum. ego docebo eum honorifice ut non fiat insipie[n]s. R[espondit] Io[seph] dixit
ad eum. Nemo p[otest] docere eu[m] n[isi] solus d[eu]s. Nu[m]q[ui]d paru[m]
creditis. erit parvulus iste. Ih[esu]s aute[m] cu[m] audiss[et] talia dicente[m]
Io[seph] dixit ad Zacheu[m]. Vere mag[iste]r. q[u]i[a] q[ua]nta de ore meo p[ro]
cedu[n]t vera sunt. Et ego an[te] om[ne]s sum d[omi]n[u]s. Vos aute[m] alieni
gene estis. Q[uonia]m m[ihi] data gl[ori]a eor[um]. Vobis datum est nichil.
Q[uia] ante secula ego sum. Ego aute[m] scio q[uo]d anni erunt vite tue. et
q[ua]ndo tuleris in exilium. Q[uo]d dixit p[ate]r m[eu]s ut intelligas quia om[n]
ia que procedunt de ore meo vera sunt. Iudei aute[m] qui astaba[n]t et
audieba[n]t. sermones quos loquebatur Ih[esu]s mirati sunt et dicebant quia
talia mirabilia vidim[us] et audivimus et tales sermones ab isto puero. Q[ua]lia
nu[m]q[ua]m audivim[us] n[ec] audituri sumus ab alio aliquo ho[m]i[n]e.
neq[ue] a pontificib[us] neq[ue] a magistris neq[ue] a Pharisaeis. Respondit
Ih[esu]s et dix[it] eis. Ut quid miramini. Incredibilia habetis quia locut[us] sum
v[er]itate[m]. Scio q[ua]ndo nati estis etiam p[at]res v[est]ri. et si plus dixero
vobis. Q[ua]ndo mu[n]dus fact[us] est ego scio et qui me misit ad vos. Cum audi-
ssent Iudei sermone[m] quem dixerat infans. nati sunt p[ro]pt[er] hoc q[uo]d non
poterant responde[re]. Et [con]v[er]sus in se ip[su]m infans exultavit et dixit.
P[ro]v[er]biu[m] dixi vobi[s]. ego aute[m] scio quia debiles estis et nescientes.
Dix[it] aute[m] mag[iste]r ille ad Ioseph. Affer eum m[ihi]. ego aut[em] docebo
eum lit[ter]as. Ioseph aute[m] app[re]hendit pueru[m] Ih[esu]m et addux[it]
illum in domo sup[ra]dicti magist[ri]. U[bi] alii pueri doceba[n]t[ur]. Mag[iste]r
v[er]o dulci s[er]mone cepit eum docere litteras et sc[ri]psit illi p[ri]mu[m] v[er]
sic[u]l[u]m q[uo]d [est] a usq[ue] t et cepit eu[m] palpare et doce[re]. Doctor
autem ille p[er]cussit infante[m] in capite. puer v[er]o cu[m] accepisset dixit ad
eum. Me aute[m] oportet te docere et te n[on] docere me. Ego scio literas q[ua]
s tu vis doce[re] m[ihi] et scio q[uia] vos estis m[ihi] tamq[ua]m vasa de q[ui]
b[us] n[on] exeunt n[ec] voces et no[n] sapientia neq[ue] anime salvat[i]o. Et
i[n]cipie[n]s v[er]sic[u]l[u]m dixit p[er] lit[er]as ab a usq[ue] t plenit[er] cu[m]
multa festinatione. re respex[it] ad magistru[m] et dixit ei. Tu autem nescis
interp[re]tare q[uo]d est a et b. quom[odo] vis doce[re] alios. O pigritas si scis
et dixeris m[ihi] quid est a vere creda[m] quia pot[er]is enna[ra]re m[ihi] de b.
Ut aute[m] cepit enerrare doctor ille de p[ri]ma lit[ter]a non potuit ei illu[m]
dare responsum. Ih[esu]s aute[m] dixit ad Zacheu[m] Audi me doctor et intellige
p[ri]ma[m] lit[ter]am. Attende m[ihi] quo modo h[abe]t duos v[er]sic[u]los. In
medio graphedi p[er]mane[n]do [con]dona[n]do disp[er]gendo variando
commina[n]do triplex diploide comiscendo simul ingenio pariter omnia co[m]
munia h[aben]t[i]a.
Cu[m] vidiss[et] Zacheus q[uo]d tant[us] divid[er]et p[ri]mas lit[ter]am stupe-
factus est de p[ri]ma lit[ter]a et de tali homine et de doctrina et exclamavit et
Appendix 253
dix[it]. Heu me miser. Quid stupefact[us] sum ego. Conduxi m[ihi] turpitudine[m]
p[er] istu[m] infantem. Et dixit ad Ioseph. P[re]cor te valde frater tolle eum a me.
Q[uia] non possu[m] intuere in facie[m] ei[us] neq[ue] audire graves sermones
eius. Quia iste infans ignem domitare et mare refrenare p[otest]. nam iste ante
s[e]c[u]la natus est. Que vulva eum pep[er]it aut q[ua] mater eum nutrivit ignoro.
O amici mei dimissus sum i[n] mente[m] mea[m] illusus su[m] ego miser. Ego
aute[m] diceba[m] me h[abe]re discipulum ip[s]e aute[m] inventus est mag[iste]
r. Et turpitudine[m] mea[m] n[on] possu[m] prevalere quia senex su[m]. et
q[ui]d ei loquar n[on] possum invenire. Unde habeo irruere in valiam
infirmitate[m] et de isto s[e]c[u]lo transmigrare. aut de ista civitate egrede[re].
quia videru[n]t turpitudine[m] mea[m]. i[n]fans decepit me. Quid habeo ad ad
alios responde[re] aut q[ua]les sermones recitare. eo q[uo]d vicit me in p[ri]ma
lit[ter]a. Stupesco ego cu[m] amici mei et noti mei. Neq[ue] p[ri]mordiu[m]
neq[ue] finem possum invenire q[ui]d vi[m] respondea[m]. Et nu[n]c precor te
f[rate]r Ioseph tollere eum a me et duc illu[m] in domu[m] tuam quia iste magnus
est aut d[omi]n[u]s aut angel[u]s. Quid dica[m] nescio. Et nunc co[n]v[er]sus ad
Iudeos qui cu[m] Zacheo erant dixit illis. Omnes nunc n[on] videntes videa[n]t et
n[on] intelligentes intelligant et surdi audiant et qui pro me mortui sunt resur-
gant. et hiis qui sunt simile altiores in voce sicut p[re]cepit m[ihi] qui me misit
ad vos. Cum autem siluisset puer Ih[esu]s salvi facti sunt om[ne]s infirmi qui
p[ro]pt[er] sermones eius infirmabant[ur]. Et non erant ausi loq[ui] aliq[ui]d ad
eum.
Una aute[m] die cum ascenderet in domo quada[m] cum i[n]fantibus. cepit
ludere eis Ih[esu]s. Unus ex ip[s]is pueris irruit p[er] posticu[m] qui statim mor-
tuus est. Cum audisse[n]t hoc infantes om[ne]s fugerunt. Ih[esu]s autem remansit
in domo illa. Et cum venissent parentes pueri qui defunctus fuerat. Diceba[n]t
adv[er]sum Ih[esu]m. Vere tu eum irruere fecisti. Et insidiaba[n]t[ur] ei. Ih[esu]
s aute[m] descendens de domo illa stetit sup[er] infantem mortuu[m] et clamavit
clara voce nomen infantis: Syno o Syno surge et dic si ego te irruere feci. Et sub-
ito surrexit dix[it]. Non d[omi]ne. Cu[m] vidissent autem parentes eius tam
magnu[m] miraculu[m]. quod fecit Ih[esu]s glorificaverunt d[eu]m et
adoraveru[n]t Ih[esu]m.
Post paucos v[er]o dies puer q[ui]da[m] i[n] ip[s]o vico findebat ligna
percussitq[ue] pedem suum. Et cum venisset turba ad eum multa venit et
Ih[esu]s cum ipsis. Et tetigit pede[m] qui lesus fuerat. et subito sanus factus
est. dixit aute[m] ei Ih[esu]s. Surge et finde ligna et memoria mei. Cu[m] vidisset
turba signa quae f[a]c[t]a s[un]t. adoraverunt Ih[esu]m et dixerunt. Vere certis-
sime credim[us] quia d[eu]s es.
Et cum e[ss]et Ih[esu]s annor[um] sex direxit eum mater ei[us] ad haurien-
dam aquam. Cumq[ue] venisset Ih[esu]s ad fonte[m] v[e]l ad puteu[m] erant
254 Appendix
ibi plurime turbe et fregerunt ydriam eius. Ip[s]e vero accepit pallium suu[m] quo
i[n]duebat[ur] et i[m]plevit eum aqua. et attulit Marie matri eius. Cumq[ue]
vidis[set] m[ate]r miraculum quod fecit Ih[esu]s osculat[a] e[st] eu[m] et dixit.
D[omi]ne exaudi me et salva filium meu[m].
Cum aute[m] e[ss]et tempus seminandi egressus est Ioseph ad seminandu[m]
triticum. et secutus est eum Ih[esu]s. Dum aute[m] cepit seminare Ioseph. exten-
dit manu[m] Ih[esu]s et tulit de t[ri]tico q[ua]ntu[m] pugillo tenere potuit et
disp[er]sit. Venit [er]go Ioseph in tempore metendi ut meteret messem suam.
Venit Ih[esu]s collegit spicas quas disp[er]serat. et fecerunt c[entum] modia op-
timi frume[n]ti. et vocavit paup[er]es et viduas et orphanos et errogavit illis
triticu[m] q[ua]m fecerat. Ioseph tulit de ip[s]o frum[en]to modicu[m] p[ro] ben-
edictione Ih[es]u i[n] domum suam.
Et f[ac]t[u]s est Ih[esu]s annor[um] viii. Erat Ioseph architector faciebat ip[s]e
aratra et iuga boum. Quadam die dixit q[ui]da[m] dives ad Ioseph. D[omi]ne fac
michi grabatu[m] unu[m] utile et speciosu[m]. Erat aute[m] in tribulatione q[ui]
lignu[m] q[uo]d habebat aptu[m] ad hoc opus erat b[re]ve. Dix[it] Ih[esu]s ad
eum. Noli cont[ri]stari. Apprehende hoc lignu[m] ab uno capite et ego p[er]
aliud extraham[us] ill[u]d. Q[uo]d et f[ac]t[u]m erat. Et statim invenit illud
utile ad hoc q[uo]d voluit. Et dix[it] ad Ioseph. ecce labora q[uo]d vis. Ioseph
aute[m] cu[m] vidisset q[uo]d fecerat a[m]plexav[it] eu[m] et dixit. Beatus sum
ego q[uo]d talem filiu[m] dedit m[ihi] d[eu]s.
Et cu[m] vidisset Ioseph q[uo]d tale[m] gr[ati]am habuisset et statura co[n]
siderabat eum trade[re] ad dicend[um] lit[ter]as. Et tradidit illu[m] ad alium
doctore[m] ut eum doceret. Dix[it] aut[em] doctor ad Ioseph. Quales literas desid-
eras illu[m] p[ri]mu[m] doce[re]. R[espondit] Ioseph et dix[it]. P[ri]mu[m] doce ei
lit[ter]as gentilicas et postea hebrea[s]. Sciebat autem doctor illum e[ss]e optime
intelligentie et libent[er] suscipiebat eum. Et cum sc[ri]psisset ei primu[m] v[er]
sic[u]l[u]m q[uo]d est a et b docebat eum p[er] aliquantas horas. Ih[esu]s vero
tacebat et nichil re[s]pondit. Dixit Ih[esu]s ad magistru[m]. si vere magister es
et vere scis lit[ter]as. dic michi fortitudine[m] de a. ego autem dicam tibi
fortitudine[m] de b. Tunc furore replet[us] magister ei[us] percussit eum in capite.
Ih[esu]s aut[em] iratus maledix[it] eum. et subito cecidit et mortuus est. Ih[esu]s
aute[m] regressus est in domu[m] suam. Ioseph vero disposuit ad Mariam
matre[m] eius ut n[on] dimitteret eu[m] egredi de atrio domus sue.
Post multos aute[m] dies venit alius doctor amicus Ioseph. et dix[it] ad eum.
Trade eum m[ihi] et ego eu[m] cu[m] multa suavitate docebo eum lit[ter]as. Et
dixit ad eum Ioseph. Si prevales accipe eum ad disciplinandu[m]. Fiat cum gau-
dio. Cu[m] accepisset eum doctor ibat cum timore et magna constantia et habe-
bat eum cu[m] exultatione. Et cum veniss[et] ad domu[m] doctoris. invenit li-
brum in eode[m] loco iace[n]te[m]. et apprehendit eum et ap[er]uit. et non
Appendix 255
legebat ea que erant sc[ri]pta in libro sed ap[er]iet os suu[m] et loq[ue]bat[ur] de

sp[irit]u s[anc]to et docebat legem. Om[ne]s v[er]o qui astabant i[bi] dilige[n]t[er]
eu[m] audieba[n]t. et magist[er] ille iuxta illu[m] sedebat et libent[ur] eum audi-
ebat et deprecabat[ur] eu[m] ut ampli[us] doceret. Cu[m] collecta fuiss[et] turba
multa audiebant omne[m] s[anc]tam doct[ri]na[m] q[ua]m docebat et dilectos
sermones qui exiebant de ore eius quia pussilus cum e[ss]et talia dicebat.
Cum audisset hoc Ioseph timuit et currens magist[er] ille v[en]erat Ih[esu]s
dixit ad Ioseph. Scias f[rate]r quia p[er]cepi i[n]fantem tuu[m] ad docendu[m]
v[e]l ad disciplina[n]du[m]. ip[s]e aute[m] multa gra[tia] et sapientia repletus
est. ecce nu[n]c tolle eum cum gaudio i[n] domu[m] tua[m] f[rate]r quia gratia[m]
q[ua]m h[abe]t a d[omi]no data est ei.
Cu[m] audisset Ih[esu]s magistru[m] talia dicente[m]. hilaris f[ac]t[u]s e[st] et
dicebat. Ecce nunc magister vere dixisti. Per te resurgere h[abe]t ille qui erat mor-
tuus. Et subito surrexit magist[er] ille qui erat. Et tulit eum Ioseph in domu[m]
sua[m].
Dixit aute[m] Ioseph Iacob ad colligenda[m] stipula[m]. et secutus e[st] eum
Ih[esu]s. Iacob aute[m] colligendo stipula[m]. momordit eu[m] vip[er]a et cecidit
i[n] t[er]ra q[ua]si mortuus p[ro]pt[er] venenu[m]. Cu[m]q[ue] talia vidiss[et]
Ih[esu]s sufflavit i[n] plaga[m] eius et subito san[us] fact[us] est Iacob. et
vip[er]a mortua [est].
Post paucos dies infans vicinus ei[us] mortuus est et deplorabat eum mater
eius valde. Audiens hoc Ih[esu]s abiit et stetit sup[er] puerum. et pulsavit in pec-
tore eius et dixit. Tibi dico infans noli mori sed vive. Et statim surrexit i[n]fans.
Dixit aute[m] Ih[esu]s ad matre[m] pueri. Tolle filium tuu[m] et da illi v[er]ba et
recordare mei. Videntes aute[m] t[ur]be hoc mirac[u]l[u]m dixerunt. I[n] v[er]itate
iste infans celestis est. iam enim plures animas liberavit a morte. et salvos fecit
om[ne]s sp[er]antes i[n] se. Scribe et Pharisei dixerunt ad Maria[m]. Tu es mater
istius infanti[s]. Illa aute[m] dixit. Vere ego sum. Et dixerunt ad eam. Beata es tu
int[er] mulieres q[uonia]m b[e]n[e]dix[it] d[eu]s fructu[m] ventris tui q[ui]a
tale[m] gloriosu[m] i[n]fante[m] et tale donu[m] sapientie dedit tibi quale
nu[m]q[ua]m vidimus n[ec] audivimus. Surrex[it] Ih[esu]s et secutus est matrem
suam. Maria aute[m] co[n]servabat omnia in corde suo q[ua]nta fecit Ih[esu]s
signa magna i[n] pop[u]lo sana[n]do infirmos multos. Ih[esu]s au[tem] crescebat
statura sapientia. et o[mne]s qui videbant eum glorificaba[n]t d[eu]m p[at]rem
omnipote[n]te[m] q[ui] e[st] benedict[us] i[n] s[e]c[u]la s[e]c[u]lor[um] am[en].
Hec omnia Thomas ismaelita ego sc[ri]psi que vidi et recordat[us] sum
gentib[us] et fr[atr]ib[us] meis et multa alia que fecit Ih[esu]s q[ui] nat[us] est
intra iude. Ecce omnia vidit domus est a p[ri]mo usq[ue] ad novissimu[m]
q[ua]nta signa et mirabilia fecit Ih[esu]s i[n] ip[s]is valde bona. Et ip[s]e est
qui debet iudicare mundo[m] sed in voluntate[m] imortalitatis et invisibilia
256 Appendix
p[at]ri suo quo m[od]o enarrat sc[ri]ptura s[anc]ta et p[ro]p[ter] h[ae]c testificati
sunt op[er]a eius in omnib[us] populis isr[ae]l qui ip[s]e est filius dei i[n] univ[er]
so orbe t[er]re. Ih[esu]m decet om[n]is gl[ori]a et honor i[n] sempituu[m]. qui
vivis et regnas d[eu]s p[er] o[mn]ia s[e]c[u]la s[e]c[u]lor[um] amen.
Greek manuscript Codex Sabaiticus 259, Greek Patriarchal Library Jerusalem,

fol. 66r-72v⁹⁸⁸
Τὰ παιδικὰ μεγαλεῖα τοῦ δεσπότου ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.

᾿Aναγκαῖον ἡγησάμην ἐγὼ Θωμᾶς Ἰσραηλίτης γνωρίσαι πᾶσιν τοῖς ἐξ ἐθνῶν
ἀδελφοῖς ὅσα ἐποίησεν ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς ὁ Χριστὸς. γεννηθεὶς ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ
ἡμῶν Βηθλεὲμ. κώμῃ Ναζαρέτ. ὧν ἡ ἀρχή ἐστὶν αὔτη. Τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦς πεντα-
ετὴς ἦν καὶ βροχῆς γεναμένης ἔπαιζεν ἐπὶ διάβασιν ῥύακος καὶ ταράσσων τὰ
ὕδατα τὰ ῥυπαρὰ ὄντα συνήγαγεν εἰς λάκκους καὶ ποιῇ αὐτὰ καθαρὰ καὶ ἐνάρετα
τῇ καταστάσει. λόγου μόνων καὶ οὐκ ἔργων ἐπιτάξας αὐτοῖς. Εἶτα ἄρας ἐκ τῆς
φύλεως πηλὸν τρυφερῶν ἔπλασεν ἐξ αὐτῶν στρουθία ῑβ. ἦν δὲ σάββατον ὅτε
ταῦτα ἐποίῃ καὶ πολλὰ παιδία ἦσαν σὺν αὐτῷ. Ἰδὼν δέ τίς Ἰουδαῖος τὸ παιδίον
Ἰησοῦν μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων παιδίων ταῦτα ποιοῦντα, πορευθεὶς πρὸς Ἰωσὴφ τὸν
πατέρα αὐτοῦ διέβαλλεν τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦν λέγων. ὅτι σάββατον πηλὸν ἐποίησεν
ὧ οὐκ ἔξεστιν. καὶ ἔπλασεν στρουθία ῑβ. Καὶ ἐλθῶν Ἰωσὴφ ἐπετίμα αὐτὸν λέγων.
Διὰ τί τῷ σάββατον ταῦτα ποιεῖς. Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς συγκρωτήσας τὰς χεῖρας μετὰ
φωνῆς ἐπέτασαν τὰ ὄρναια ἐνώπιον πάντων. καὶ εἶπεν. Ὑπάγεται πετασθήτοι
ὡς ζῴντες. Τὰ δὲ στρουθία πετασθέντες ἀπῆλθαν κεκραγώτα. Ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ Φαρι-
σαῖος ἐθαύμασεν καὶ ἀπήγγειλεν πᾶσιν τοῖς φίλοις αὐτοῦ. Ὁ δὲ υἱὸς Ἄννα τοῦ
ἀρχιερέως λέγει αὐτῷ. Τί ποιεῖς οὕτως ἐν σαββάτῳ. Καὶ λαβὼν κλῶνον ἰτέας
κατέστρεψεν τοὺς λάκκους καὶ ἐξέχεεν τὸ ὕδωρ ὅνπερ συνήγαγεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς.
καὶ τὰς συναγωγὰς αὐτῶν ἐξήρανεν. Ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὸ γεγονὸς εἶπεν
αὐτῷ. Ἄριζος ὁ καρπός σου καὶ ξηρὸς ὁ βλαστός σου ὡς κλάδος ἐκκομένος ἐν
πνεύματι τιμίῳ. Καὶ εὐθέως ὁ παῖς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηράνθη. Ἐκεῖθεν πορευομένου
αὐτοῦ μετὰ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ Ἰωσὴφ καὶ τρέχων ἐκεῖνος ἐρράγη εἰς τὸν ὦμον
αὐτοῦ. καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς. Ἐπικατάρατός συ ὁ ἡγεμών σου. Καὶ εὐθέως
ἀπέθανεν. Καὶ εὐθὺς ὁ λαὸς ἐβόησαν ἰδόντες ὅτι ἀπέθανεν. καὶ εἶπαν. Πόθεν
τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο ἐγεννήθη ὅτι τὸ ῥῆμα αὐτοῦ ἔργον ἐστίν. Οἱ δὲ γονεῖς τοῦ ἀπο-
θανόντος παιδίου θεασάμενοι τὸ γεγονὸς. Ἰωσὴφ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ ἐμέμφοντο
λέγοντες. Ποθὲν τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο ἔχων οὐ δύνασαι οἰκεῖν μεθ’ ἡμῶν ἐν τῇ κώμῃ
 For the translations of this text, see Burke, De infantia Iesu, 302– 337; Aasgaard, The Child-
hood of Jesus, 219 – 242.
Appendix 257
ταύτῃ. Εἰ θέλῃς ἴναι ἐνταῦθα δίδαξον αὐτὸν εὐλογεῖν καὶ μὴ καταρᾶσθαι. τὸ γὰρ
παιδίον ἡμῶν ἐστερήθημεν. Καὶ λέγει τῷ Ἰησοῦ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ. Ἵνα τί τοιαῦτα λαλεῖς.
Καὶ πάσχουσιν αὐτοὶ καὶ μισῶσιν ἡμᾶς. Καὶ εἶπεν τὸ παιδίον τῷ Ἰωσὴφ. Φρόνιμα
ῥήματά συ ἐγινώσκες ἄν πόθεν ἦν τὰ ῥήματά σου οὐκ ἀγνοεῖς. Ἐπίπεπτα διήγι-
σαν κἀκεῖνα οὐκ ἀναστήσονται καὶ οὗτοι ἀπολήψονται τὴν κόλασιν αὐτῶν. Καὶ
εὐθέως οἱ ἐγκαλοῦντες αὐτὸν ἐτυφλώθησαν. Ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ ἐπελάβετο τοῦ ὁτί
οὐ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔτιλεν σφόδρα. Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῷ. ᾿Aρκείτω σοι τὸ ζητεῖν
με καὶ εὑρίσκειν μὴ πρὸς τούτῳ ἔτι καὶ μωλωπίζειν φυσικὴν ἄγνοιαν ἐπιλαβόμε-
νος καὶ οὐκ εἶδες με σαφῶς τί σοῦ εἰμι. Ἴδε οἶδας μὴ λυπεῖν με. Σὸς γὰρ ἡμῖν. καὶ
πρὸς σε ἐχειρώθην. Καθηγητὴς δέ οὗ τοὔνομα Ζαγχαῖος ἑστὼς ἀκούσας τοῦ
Ἰησοῦ ταῦτα λέγοντος. πρὸς τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ Ἰωσὴφ ἐθαύμασεν σφόδρα.
Καὶ εἶπεν τῷ Ἰωσὴφ. Δεῦρο δὸς αὐτό ἀδελφέ. ἵνα παιδευθῇ γράμματα. καὶ ἵνα
γνώσιν πᾶσαν ἐπιστήμην καὶ μάθῃ στέργειν ἡλικιώτας. καὶ τιμᾶν γῆρας. καὶ αἰδεῖ-
σθαι πρεσβυτέρους. ἵνα καὶ εἰς τέκνα πόθον κτήσεται ἕξειν ὁμοίως αὐτὰ ἀνταπαι-
δεύσῃ. Ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ εἶπεν τῷ καθηγητῇ. Καὶ τίς δύναται τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο κρα-
τῆσαι καὶ παιδεῦσαι αὐτὸ μὴ μικροῦ ἀνθρώπου ἶναι νομίζῃς ἀδελφὲ. Ὁ δέ
καθηγητὴς εἶπεν. Δός μοι αὐτὸ ἀδελφὲ καὶ μή σοι μελέτω. Τὸ δὲ παιδίον Ἰησοῦς
ἐμβλέψας αὐτοῖς εἶπεν τῷ καθηγητῇ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον. Καθηγητὴς ὢν εὐφυῶς
ἐξήχθης καὶ τὸ ὄνομα ᾧ ὀνομάζῃ ἀλλότριος τυγχάνεις. Ἔξωθεν γὰρ εἰμι ὑμῶν.
ἔνδωθεν δὲ ὑμῖν διὰ τὴν σαρκικὴν εὐγένειαν ὑπάρχων. Σὺ δὲ νομικὸς ὢν τὸν
νόμον οὐκ οἶδες. Πρὸς δὲ τὸν Ἰωσὴφ λέγει. Ὅτε ἐγεννήσω ὢν ἐγὼ σοι παρειστή-
κειν ἵνα πατὴρ παιδευθῇς τὴν παιδείαν παρ’ ἐμοῦ ἣν ἄλλος οὐκ οἶδεν οὐδὲ διδάξ-
αι δύναται καὶ τὸ σωτήριον ὄνομα βαστάσις. ᾿Aνεβόησαν δὲ Ἰουδαῖοι μέγα καὶ
εἶπαν αὐτῷ. Ὢ καινοῦ καὶ παραδόξου θαύματος. Τάχα πενταετὴς ἦν τὸ παιδίον
καὶ ὢ ποῖα φθέγγεται ῥήματα. Τοιούτους λόγους οὐδέποτε οἴδαμεν. οὐδενὸς
εἰρηκότος οὐδὲ νομοδιδασκάλου οὐδὲ φαρισαίου τινὸς ὡς τοῦ παιδίου τούτου.
᾿Aπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς τὸ παιδίον καὶ εἶπεν. Τί θαυμάζετε. μᾶλλον δὲ τί ἀπιστεῖται
ἐφ’ οἷς εἶπον ὑμῖν ἀληθῶς ἐστὶν. Ὅτε ἐγεννήθητε ὑμεῖς καὶ οἱ πατέρες ὑμῶν
καὶ οἱ πατέρες τῶν πατέρων ὑμῶν οἶδα ἀκριβῶς καὶ ὃ πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον κτι-
σθῆναι. ᾿Aκούσαντες δὲ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἐφιμώθησαν λαλῆσαι μηκέτι δυνηθέντες
πρὸς αὐτόν. Προσελθὼν δὲ αὐτοῖς ἐσκίρτα καὶ ἔλεγεν. Ἔπαιζον πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἐπειδὴ
οἶδα μικροθαύμαστοί ἐστε. καὶ τοῖς φρονίμοις ὀλίγοι. Ὡς οὖν ἔδοξαν παριγορί-
σθαι. ἐπὶ τῇ παρακλήσει τοῦ παιδίου. ὁ καθηγητὴς εἶπεν τῷ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ.
Δεῦρο ἄγαγε αὐτὸ εἰς τὸ παιδευτήριον. κἀγὼ διδάξω αὐτὸ γράμματα. Ὁ δὲ
Ἰωσὴφ ἐπιλαβόμενος τῆς χειρὸς αὐτοῦ ἀπήγαγεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ παιδευτήριον.
καὶ ὁ διδάσκαλος κολακεύσας αὐτὸν ἤγαγεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ διδασκαλεῖον. καὶ ἔγρα-
ψεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ζακχαῖος τὸν ἀλφάβητον. καὶ ἤρξατο ἐπιστοιχίζειν αὐτῷ. καὶ λέγει
τὸ αὐτὸ γράμμα πλεονάκις. Τὸ δὲ παιδίον οὐκ ἀπεκρίνατο αὐτῷ. Πικρανθεὶς δὲ
ὁ καθηγητὴς ἔκρουσεν αὐτὸ εἰς τὴν κεφαλήν. Τὸ δὲ παιδίον ἠγανάκτησεν καὶ
εἶπεν αὐτῷ. Ἐγώ σε θέλω παιδεῦσαι μᾶλλον ἢ παιδευθῆναι παρά σου ἐπειδὴ
258 Appendix
οἶδα τὰ γράμματα ἅ συ διδάσκεις ἀκριβῶς πολλοῦ κρειττοτέρους σου. καὶ ταῦτα

ἐμοί εἰσιν ὥσπερ χαλκὸς ἠχῶν ἢ κύμβαλον ἀλαλάζον ἅτινα οὐ παρίστησι τὴν
φωνὴν ἢ τὴν δόξαν οὔτε τὴν δύναμιν τῆς συνέσεως. Παυσάμενον δὲ τῆς
ὀργῆς τὸ παιδίον εἶπεν ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ τὰ γράμματα πάντα ἀπὸ τοῦ ἄλφα ἕως τοῦ
ϖ μετὰ πολλῆς ἕξεως. Καὶ τρανῶς ἐμβλέψας τῷ καθηγητῇ εἶπεν. Σὺ τὸ ἄλφα
μὴ εἰδὼς τὸ κατὰ φύσιν τὸ βῆτα πῶς διδάσκεις ἄλλον. Ὑποκριτὰ εἰ οἶδας πρῶτον
δίδαξόν με τὸ ἄλφα καὶ τότε σοι πιστεύσω λέγειν τὸ βῆτα. Εἶτα ἤρξατο ἀποστο-
ματίζειν τὸν διδάσκαλον περὶ τοῦ α στοιχείου. καὶ οὐκ ἴσχυσεν αὐτῷ εἰπεῖν.
᾿Aκουόντων δὲ πολλῶν λέγει τῷ καθηγητῇ. Ἄκουε διδάσκαλε καὶ νόει τὴν τοῦ
πρώτου στοιχείου τάξιν. καὶ πρόσχες πῶς δὲ ἔχει κανόνας ὀξεῖς καὶ χαρακῆρα
μέσον. οὓς ὁρᾷς ὀξυνομένους διαβαίνοντας. συναγομένους. ἐξέρποντας. ἀφελκο-
μένους. ὑψουμένους. Χορεύοντας. βελεφετοῦντας. Τρισήμους. Διστόμους. ὁμο-
σχήμους. ὁμοπαχεῖς. ὁμογενεῖς. Σπαρτούχους. Ζυγοστάτας. ἰσομέτρους. ἰσο-
μέρους. κανόνας ἔχον τὸ ἄλφα. ᾿Aκούσας δὲ ὁ καθηγητὴς τὴν τοιαύτην
προσεγορίαν καὶ τοὺς τοιύτους κανόνας τοῦ πρώτου γράμματος εἰρηκότος τοῦ
Ἰησοῦ ἠπορήθη ἐπὶ τὴν τοιαύτην διδασκαλίαν καὶ ἀπολογίαν αὐτοῦ. καὶ εἶπεν
ὁ καθηγητὴς. Οἴμοι οἴμοι ἠπορήθην ὁ ταλαίπωρος ἐγώ. ἐμαυτὸν αἰσχύνην παρ-
έσχον ἐπικατασπασάμενος τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο. Ἆρον ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ ἀδελφὲ. Οὐ γὰρ
φέρω τοῦ βλέμματος αὐτοῦ. οὐδὲ τὸν τρανὸν τοῦ λόγου αὐτοῦ. Ἁπλῶς τὸ παι-
δίον τοῦτο γηγενὴς οὐκ ἔστιν. Τοῦτο δύναται καὶ τὸ πῦρ δαμάσαι. Τάχα τοῦτο
τὸ παιδίον πρὸ τῆς κοσμοποιΐας ἦν. Ποία γαστὴρ τοῦτο ἐγέννησε. ἢ ποία
μήτρα ἐξέθρεψεν. ἐγὼ ἀγνοῶ. Οἴμοι ἀδελφὲ ἐξηχεῖ με. Οὐ παρακολουθῶ τῇ δια-
νοίᾳ μου. Ἠπάτησα ἐμαυτόν ὁ τρισάθλιος ἐγώ. Ἡγούμην ἔχειν μαθητὴν καὶ εὑρ-
έθην ἔχωντα διδάσκαλον. Ἐνθυμοῦμαι φίλοι τὴν αἰσχύνην μου ὅτι γέρων ὑπάρχω
καὶ ὑπὸ παιδίου νενίκημαι. καὶ ἔχω ἐκκίσαι καὶ ἀποθανεῖν. ἢ φυγεῖν τῆς κώμης
ταύτης. διὰ τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο. Οὐ δύναμαι γὰρ οὐκέτι ὁραθῆναι. εἰς ὄψιν πάντων
μάλιστα τῶν ἰδόντων ὅτι ἐνικήθην ὑπὸ παιδίου πάνυ μικροῦ. Τί δὲ ἔχω εἰπεῖν ἢ
διηγήσασθαί τινι περὶ ὧν προσέθηκέν μοι κανόνας τοῦ πρώτου στοιχείου. ἀλη-
θῶς ἀγνοῶ φίλοι. Οὔτε γὰρ ἀρχὴν οὐδὲ τέλος ἐπίσταμαι. Τί γὰρ οῦν ἀδελφὲ
Ἰωσήφ. ἄπαγε αὐτὸ μετὰ σωτηρίας εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου. Τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ παιδίον τί
ποτε μέγα ἐστὶν, ἢ θεὸς ἢ ἄγγελος ἢ τί εἴπω οὐκ οἶδα. Τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦς ἐγέλα-
σεν καὶ εἶπεν. Νῦν καρποφορείτωσαν τὰ ἄκαρπα καὶ βλεπέτωσαν οἱ τυφλοὶ. καὶ
φρονήσατε οἱ ἄσοφοι τῇ καρδίᾳ. ὅτι ἐγὼ ἄνωθεν πάρειμι ἵνα τοὺς κάτω ῥύσωμαι
καὶ εἰς τὰ ἄνω καλέσω καθὼς διεστείλατό με ὁ ἀποστείλας με πρὸς ὑμᾶς. καὶ εὐ-
θέως ἐσώθησαν πάντες ὑπὸ τῆς κατάρας αὐτοῦ πεπτωκότες καὶ οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμα
παρουργίσαι αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τότε. πάλιν δὲ μετὰ ἡμέρας πολλὰς ἔπαιζεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς
μετὰ καὶ ἑτὲρων παιδίων ἔν τινι δώματι ὑπερῲῳ. Ἓν δὲ τῶν παιδίων πεσών
ἀπέθανεν. Ἰδῶν δὲ τὰ ἄλλα παιδία ἀπῆλθον εἰς τοὺς οἴκους αὐτῶν. κατέλιπον
δὲ τόν Ἰησοῦν μόνον. καὶ ἐλθόντες οἰ γονεῖς τοῦ τεθνηκότος παιδίου ἐνεκάλουν
τῷ Ἰησοῦ λέγοντες. σὺ κατέβαλας τό παιδίον ἡμῶν. ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν. Ἐγὼ οὐ
Appendix 259
κατέβαλα αὐτό. Ἐκείνων δὲ ἐμμενώντω καὶ κραζόντων κατέβη Ἰησοῦς ἀπὸ τοῦ
στέγου καὶ ἔστη παρὰ τὸ πτῶμα καὶ ἔκραξεν φωνῇ μεγάλῃ λέγων. Ζῆνον Ζῆνον
τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἀνάστα καὶ εἰπὲ εἰ ἐγὼ σε κατέβαλον. καὶ ἀναστὰς
εἶπεν. Οὐχί κύριε. καὶ ἰδόντες ἐθαύμασαν. καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ πάλιν ὁ Ἰησοῦς. καὶ κοι-
μοῦ. καὶ οἰ γονεῖς τοῦ παιδίου ἐδόξασαν τὸν Θεὸν καὶ προσεκύνησαν τὸ παιδίον
Ἰησοῦν. Ἦν δὲ τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦς ὡς ἐτῶν ἑπτὰ καὶ ἐπεύθη ὑπὸ τῆς μητρὸς
αὐτοῦ Μαρίας γεμίσαι ὕδωρ. Ἐν δὲ τῇ ὑδρείᾳ ἦν ὁ ὄχλος πολύς κρουσθούσα ἡ
κάλπη ἀπέρραγεν. ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἁπλώσας τὸ παλλίον ὃν βεβλημμένος ἐγέμισεν
τὸ ὕδωρ. καὶ ἤνεγκεν τῇ μητρί αὐτοῦ. Μαρία δὲ ἰδοῦσα ὃ ἐποίησεν σιμίον ὁ Ἰη-
σοῦς κατεφίλει αὐτὸν λέγουσα. Κύριε ὁ Θεός μου εὐλόγησον τὸ τέκνον μας.
Ἐφοβοῦντο γὰρ μή τις αὐτῷ βασκάνῃ. Ἐν δὲ τῷ καιρῷ τοῦ σπόρου σπείροντος
τοῦ Ἰωσήφ ἔσπειρεν καὶ τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦς ἕνα κόρον σίτου. καὶ ἐθέρισεν ὁ
πατὴρ αὐτοῦ κόρους ρ’ μεγάλους. καὶ ἐχαρίσατο πτωχοῖς καὶ ὀρφανοῖς. Ἦρεν
δὲ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἀπὸ τοῦ σπόρου τοῦ Ἰησοῦ.
Ἐγένετο δὲ ὡς ἐτῶν ὀκτώ καὶ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ τέκτονος ὄντος καὶ ἐργαζο-
μένου ἄροτρα καὶ ζυγούς ἔλαβεν κράβαττον παρά τινος πλουσίου ἵνα αὐτὸν ποι-
ήσῃ μέγα πάνυ καὶ ἐπιτήδειον καὶ τοῦ ἑνὸς κανόνος τοῦ καλουμένου κολοβω-
τέρου ὄντος καὶ μὴ ἔχοντος τὸ μέτρον ἦν λυποῦμενος ὁ Ἰωσὴφ καὶ μὴ ἔχων τί
ποιῆσαι.
Προσελθὼν τὸ παιδίον τῷ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ λέγει Θὲς κάτω τὰ δύο ξύλα καὶ ἐκ
τοῦ σου μέρους ἰσοποίησον αὐτὰ. καὶ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰωσὴφ καθὼς εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰη-
σοῦς. Ἔστε δὲ τὸ παιδίον ἐκ τοῦ ἑτέρου μέρους καὶ ἐκράτησεν τὸ κολοβὸν ξύλον
καὶ ἐξέτεινεν αὐτὸ. καὶ σον ἐποίησεν μετὰ τοῦ ἄλλου ξύλου. καὶ εἶπεν τῷ πατρὶ
αὐτοῦ μὴ λυποῦ ἀλλὰ ποίει ὃ θέλῃς. ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ περιλαβὼν κατεφίλει αὐτὸν
λέγων μακάριός εἰμι ἐγὼ ὅτι τοῦτον παιδίον ἔδωκέν μοι ὁ Θεός. Ἰδὼν δὲ
Ἰωσὴφ τὸ φρόνιμον καὶ νουνεχὲς αὐτοῦ ἠβουλήθη μὴ εἶναι αὐτὸ ἄπορον γραμ-
μάτων ἀλλὰ παρέδωκεν αὐτὸν ἕτερον διδάσκαλον. καὶ ὁ διδάσκαλος γράψας
αὐτῷ τὸν ἀλφάβητον ἔλεγεν εἰπὲ ἄλφα τὸ δὲ παιδίον λέγει. σύ μοι πρῶτον
εἰπὲ τί ἐστὶν τὸ βῆτα κἀγώ σοὶ ἐρῶ τί ἐστὶν τὸ ἄλφα. Πικρανθεὶς δὲ ὁ καθηγητὴς
ἔκρουσεν αὐτὸ καὶ κατηράσατο αὐτὸν ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἔπεσεν ὁ καθηγητὴς καὶ
ἀπέθανεν. καὶ τὸ παιδίον ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοὺς γονεῖς
αὐτοῦ. καὶ Ἰωσὴφ καλέσας τὴν μητήρα αὐτοῦ παρήγγειλε αὐτῇ μὴ ἀπολύσῃ
αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκίας ἵνα μὴ ἀποθνήσκωσιν οἱ παροργίζοντες αὐτὸν.
καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέρας τινὰς πάλιν ἕτερος καθηγητὴς εἶπεν τῷ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ Ἰωσήφ.
Δεῦρο ἀδελφέ δός μοι αὐτὸ εἰς τὸ παιδευτήριον ἵνα μετὰ κολακείας δυνήσωμαι
αὐτὸ διδάξαι γράμματα. ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ εἶπεν αὐτῷ εἰ θαρρεῖς ἀδελφὲ ἄγαγε αὐτὸ
μετὰ σωτηρίας καὶ ὁ διδάσκαλος λαβόμενος τὸ παιδίον ἐκ τῆς χειρὸς ἀπήγαγεν
μετὰ φόβου καὶ ἀγῶνος πολλοῦ τὸ δὲ παιδίον ἡδέως ἐπορεύετο. καὶ εἰσελθὼν
ἐν τὸ διδασκαλείον εὗρεν βιβλίον ἐν τῷ ἀναλογείῳ κείμενον. καὶ λαβὼν αὐτὸ
οὐκ ἀνεγίνωσκεν τὰ γεγράμμενα διὰ τὸ μὴ ἴναι αὐτὰ ἐκ νόμου Θεοῦ ἀλλὰ ἀνοίξας
260 Appendix
τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ ἐπεφεθέγξατο ῥήματα φοβερὰ ὥστε τὸν καθηγητὴν ἄντικρυς

καθιζόμενον ἡδέως πάντα ἠκούει αὐτῷ καὶ παρεκάλει αὐτὸ ἵνα πλείονα εἴπῃ
τὸν δὲ παρεστῶτα ὄχλον ἐκπληττέσθαι ἐν τοῖς ὁσίοις ῥήμασιν αὐτοῦ. Ὁ δὲ
Ἰωσὴφ ταχέως ἔδραμεν εἰς τὸ διδασκαλεῖον ὑπονόησας μήκετι οὗτος ὁ καθηγη-
τὴς ἄπειρός ἐστὶν καὶ πάθῃ εἶπεν δὲ ὁ καθηγητὴς τῷ Ἰωσήφ. ἵνα οἶδας ἀδελφὲ
ὅτι ἐγὼ μὲν τὸ παιδίον σου παρέλαβον μαθητήν αὐτὸ πολλῆς χάριτος καὶ σοφίας
μεστόν ἐστιν τοιγαροῦν ἀδελφέ ἄπαγε αὐτὸν μετὰ σωτηρίας εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου. Ὁ
δὲ εἶπεν τῷ καθηγητῇ ἐπειδὴ ὀρθῶς ἐλάλησας καὶ ὀρθῶς ἐμαρτύρησας διὰ σὲ καὶ
ὁ πληγεὶς σωθήσεται. καὶ παραχρῆμα ἐσώθη κἀκεῖνος ὁ καθηγητής. Ὁ δὲ λαβόμε-
νος τὸ παιδίον ἀπήγαγεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ.
Ὁ δὲ Ἰάκωβος ἀπήγαγεν εἰς τὴν νάπην τοῦ δῆσαι φρύγανα ἵνα ἄρτοι γίνων-
ται. ἀπήγεν καὶ ὁ Ἰησοῦς μετ’ αὐτοῦ. καὶ συλλεγόντων αὐτῶν τὰ φρύγανα ἔχιδνα
παλαμναῖα ἔδακεν τὸν Ἰάκωβον εἰς τὴν χεῖραν αὐτοῦ. Κατατεινομένου δὲ αὐτοῦ
καὶ πολλυμένου προσέδραμεν τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦς πρὸς τὸν Ἰάκωβον καὶ κατεφύ-
σησεν τὸ δῆγμα. καὶ παραχρῆμα ἰάθη τὸ δῆγμα καὶ τὸ θηρίον ἀπενεκρώθη καὶ
Ἰάκωβος ἐστάθη.
Πάλιν σχίζοντος ξύλα ἐν ἴσῳ νεωτέρου τινός καὶ ἔσχισεν τὴν βάσιν τοῦ
ποδὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔξαιμος γενόμενος ἀπέθνησκεν. Θορύβου γενομένου ἔδραμεν
ὁ Ἰησοῦς. καὶ βιασάμενος διῆλθεν διὰ τοῦ ὄχλου καὶ κρατήσας τὸν πόδα τὸν
πεπληγότα καὶ εὐθέως ἰάθη. καὶ εἶπεν τῷ νεανίσκῳ ὕπαγε σχίζε τὰ ξύλα σου.
Ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ ὄχλοι ἐθαύμασαν καὶ εἶπαν. Πολλὰς γὰρ ψυχὰς ἔσωσεν ἐκ θανάτου
καὶ ἔχει σῶσαι πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας τῆς ζωῆς αὐτοῦ.
Ὄντος δὲ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ δωδεκατοῦς ἐπορεύοντο οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ κατὰ τὸ ἔθος
εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα εἰς τὴν ἑορτὴν τοῦ Πάσχα. ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐπιστρέφειν αὐτοὺς ἀπέμει-
νεν Ἰησοῦς εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ. καὶ οὐκ ἔγνωσαν οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ νομίσαντες εἶναι
αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ συνοδίᾳ. ἦλθαν ἡμέρας ὁδὸν καὶ ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς συγγενεῦσιν
καὶ ἐν τῖ γνωστοῖς αὐτῶν. καὶ μὴ εὑρόντες αὐτὸν ὑπέστρεψαν εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ
ζητοῦντες αὐτόν. καὶ μετὰ ἡμέρας τρεῖς εὗρον αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ καθήμενον ἐν
μέσῳ τῶν διδασκάλων καὶ ἀκούοντα αὐτῶν καὶ ἐπερωτῶντα αὐτούς. ἐξίσταντο
δὲ οἱ ἀκούοντες αὐτοῦ πῶς ἀπεστομάτιζεν τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους καὶ ἐπιλύων τὰ
κεφάλαια τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν τὰ σκολιὰ καὶ τὰς παραβολάς. καὶ
εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ τέκνον τί ἐποίησας ἡμῖν ἰδοὺ ὀδυνώμενοι
λυπούμενοι ἐζητοῦμέν σε. καὶ εἶπεν αὐτος ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἵνα τί ἐζητεῖτέ με οὐκ οἴδατε
ὅτι ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου δεῖ εἶναί με. οἱ δὲ γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ φαρισαῖοι εἶπαν τῇ
Μαρίᾳ Σὺ εἶ ἡ μήτηρ τοῦ παιδίου τούτου ἡ δὲ εἶπεν ἐγὼ εἰμι εἶπαν δὲ πρὸς αὐτὴν
μακαρία εἶ σύ ὅτι ηὐλόγησεν κύριος Θεὸς τὸν καρπὸν τῆς κοιλίας σου. Τοιαύτην
γὰρ σοφίαν ἐνεστώς καὶ δόξαν ἀρετῆς οὐδὲ εἴδαμεν οὔτε ἠκούσαμέν ποτε. ἀνα-
στὰς δὲ ἐκεῖθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἠκολούθησεν τῇ μητρὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἦν ὑποτασσόμενος
τοῖς γονεῦσιν αὐτοῦ. καὶ διετήρει πάντα τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα συμβαλοῦσα ἐν τῇ καρ-
Appendix 261
δίᾳ αὐτῆς. καὶ ὁ Ἰησοῦς προέκοπτεν σοφίᾳ καὶ ἡλικίᾳ καὶ χάριτι παρὰ Θεῷ καὶ
ἀνθρώποις ᾧ ἡ δόξα.
Greek manuscript Athens 355, Ethnike Bibliotheke, fol. 61v-68v⁹⁸⁹
᾿Aναγκαῖον ἡγησάμην κἀγὼ γνωρίσαι πᾶσι τοῖς ἐξ ἐθνῶν ἀδελφοῖς ὅσα ἐποίησεν
ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς γεννηθεὶς ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ ἡμῶν Βηθλεὲμ καὶ ἐν κώμῃ
Ναζαρέτ οὗ ἡ ἀρχή ἐστὶν αὔτη. Μετὰ τὸ γενέσθαι τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐτῶν πέντε γενο-
μένης βροχῆς ἔπαιζεν ἐπὶ διάβασιν ῥύακος καὶ τὰ μὲν ῥυπαρὰ ὕδατα συνήγαγεν
εἰς λάκκους καὶ εὐθέως ἐποίει αὐτὰ καθαρὰ τῷ λόγῳ αὐτοῦ. Εἶτα πάλιν ἐπάρας
πηλὸν καθαρὸν ἐκ λάκκου ἐποίησε δώδεκα στρουθία ἦν δὲ σάββατον ὅτε ταῦτα
ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς παίζων μετὰ τῶν παίδων τῶν Ἑβραίων. ἀπῆλθον δὲ πρὸς
Ἰωσὴφ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ λέγοντες αὐτῷ. Ἰδοὺ τὸ παιδίον σου παῖζον μεθ’
ἡμῶν ἐπῆρε πηλὸν καὶ ἐποίησε δώδεκα στρουθία. Καὶ ἀπελθὼν ὁ Ἰωσὴφ λέγει
τῷ Ἰησοῦ. ἵνα τί οὕτως ἐποίησας ὃ οὐκ ἔξεστι ποιεῖν ἐν σαββάτῷ. Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς
κρωτήσας τὰς χεῖρας λέγει τοῖς στρουθίοις. Ὑπάγετε πετάσατε καὶ μιμνήσκεσθέ
μου οἱ ζῴντες. καὶ πετάσαντα τὰ στρουθία ἀπῆλθον κράζοντα. ἀπήγγειλαν πᾶσι
τὸ σημεῖον ὃ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς. Ἄννας δὲ γραμματεὺς ἐκεῖ ἦν μετὰ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ
καὶ λαβὼν κλάδον ἐτέας διέτρεψε τοὺς λάκκους καὶ ἐξέχεε τὸ ὕδωρ ἐξ αὐτων ὃ
συνήγαγεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς. ὃν εἶδος τοῦτο ποιήσαντα ἠγανάκτει κατ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἶπε.
Σοδομίτα ἄσεβες καὶ ἀνόητε τί σε ἠδίκησαν οἱ λάκκοι οἱ ἐμοὶ καὶ τὰ ἐμὰ
ὕδατα. Ἰδοὺ νῦν ὡς δένδρον ἀποξηρανθῇς καὶ μὴ ἔχῃς ῥίζαν μήτε κεφαλὴν
μήτε καρπόν. καὶ πεσὼν ἐξηράνθη παραχρῆμα. ἐλθόντες δὲ οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ
ἦραν αὐτὸν παραχρῆμα τεθνηκότα κατεμέμφοντο δὲ τὸν Ἰωσὴφ λέγοντες ὅτι
ἔχεις τοιοῦτον παιδίον καὶ ἰδὲ τί ποιεῖ ἡμῖν. Δίδαξον αὐτὸ εὐλογεῖν καὶ μὴ κατα-
ρᾶσθαι. Εἶτα μετ’ ὀλίγας ἡμέρας περιπατῶν ὁ Ἰησοῦς μετὰ τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ εἰς τὴν
κώμην καὶ δραμὸν ἓν παιδίον ἔδωκε τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐπὶ τὸν ὦμον. Καὶ ὀργισθεὶς ὁ
Ἰησοῦς λέγει αὐτῷ. Οὐκ ἀπελεύσει τὴν ὁδόν σου. Καὶ εὐθέως πεσὸν ἀπέθανεν.
οἱ δὲ Ἰουδαῖοι ἰδόντες τὸ θαῦμα ἀνεβόησαν λέγοντες πόθεν ἦν τὸ παιδίον
τοῦτο καὶ ἔλεγον τῷ Ἰωσήφ. Οὐ δύνασαι οἰκεῖν μεθ’ ἡμῶν παιδίον τοιοῦτον
ἔχων. λαβὲ αὐτὸ καὶ ἀναχώρησον ἀπεντεῦθεν. Εἰ θέλεις οἰκεῖν μεθ’ ἡμῶν δίδαξον
αὐτὸ εὐλογεῖν καὶ μὴ καταρᾶσθαι. τὰ γὰρ παιδία ἡμῶν ὡς ἀνάπηρα ἐποίησεν.
Προσκαλεσάμενος δὲ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐνουθέτει αὐτὸν κατ’ ἰδίαν λέγων.
Διὰ τί καταρᾶσαι καὶ πάσχουσιν καὶ μισοῦσιν ἡμᾶς. καὶ διώκουσιν ἐκ τῆς
 Burke translated his edition of the Gd variant, reconstructed based on three manuscripts,
out of which only manuscript Athens 355 contains the complete text. See Burke, De infantia Iesu,
392– 451.
262 Appendix
κώμης. Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῷ. ἐγὼ οἶδα ὅτι τὰ ῥήματα οὐκ ἔστιν ἐμὰ ἀλλὰ σά
εἰσιν. ὅμως ἔχω σιωπῆσαι διὰ σέ. ἐκεῖνοι δὲ ἕξουσι τιμωρίαν ἑαυτῶν. Καὶ εὐθέως
ἀγανακτῶντες ἐτυφλώθησαν. καὶ διηπόρουν μαινόμενοι. ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἔτει-
νεν αὐτοῦ τὸ ὠτίον. Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ὀργισθεὶς ἠγανάκτησεν λέγων τῷ Ἰωσήφ.
᾿Aρκεῖ σοι ὅτι βλέπεις με καὶ μή με λοπϊάζεις. οὐ γὰρ οἶδας τίς εἰμὶ καὶ πρὸς σὲ
πάρειμι.
Διδάσκαλος δέ τίς ὀνόματι Ζακχαῖος ἠκροᾶτο πάντα ὅσα ἐλάλει Ἰησοῦς πρὸς
τὸν Ἰωσὴφ καὶ ἐθαύμαζε λέγων ἐν ἑαυτῷ. τοιοῦτον παιδίον ταῦτα φθέγγεται. καὶ
προσκαλεσάμενος τὸν Ἰωσὴφ λέγει αὐτῷ. Φρόνιμον παιδίον ἔχεις καὶ καλὸν
νοῦν ἔχει ἀλλὰ παράδος μοι αὐτὸν ἵνα μάθῃ γράμματα. καὶ διδάξω αὐτὸν
πᾶσαν ἐπιστήμην ἵνα μὴ ἀνυπότακτον. ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ Ἰωσὴφ εἶπεν αὐτῷ. Οὐ
δύναταί τίς τοῦτον ὑποτάξαι εἰ μὴ μόνος Θεός. μὴ μικρὸν σταυρὸν νομίζῃς
αὐτὸν εἶναι ἀδελφέ. ὡς δὲ ἤκουσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ τοῦτο λέγοντος ἐγέ-
λασε καὶ εἶπε πρὸς τὸν Ζακχαῖον. ἀληθῶς καθηγητά ὅσα εἴρηκέ σοι ὁ πατήρ
μου ἀληθές ἐστί. καὶ τούτων μὲν ἐγώ εἰμι Κύριος καὶ πρὸς σὲ πάρειμι καὶ ἐν
ὑμῖν ἐγεννήθην καὶ μεθ’ ὑμῶν εἰμί. ἐγὼ οἶδα ὑμᾶς πόθεν ἐστὲ καὶ πόσα ἔτη
ἔσται τῆς ζωῆς ὑμῶν ἀληθῶς λέγω σοι, διδάσκαλε, ὅτε ἐγεννήθης ἐγὼ εἰμί.
καὶ εἰ θέλεις τέλειος εἶναι διδάσκαλος, ἄκυσόν μου κἀγὼ διδάξω σε σοφίαν ἣν
οὐδεὶς ἄλλος οἶδε πλὴν ἐμοῦ καὶ τοῦ πέμψαντός με πρὸς ὑμᾶς. σὺ γὰρ τυγχάνεις
ἐμὸς μαθητὴς κἀγὼ οἶδά σε πόσων ἐτῶν εἶ καὶ πόσον ἔχεις ζῆσαι. καὶ ὅταν ἴδῃς
τὸν σταυρόν μου ὃν εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ μου τότε πιστεύσεις ὅτι πάντα ὅσα εἶπόν σοι
ἀληθῆ εἰσιν. οἱ δὲ παριόντες Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ ἀκούοντες τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐθαύμασαν καὶ
εἶπον. ὢ ξένον καὶ παράδοξον πρᾶγμα. οὔπω ἐστὶν ἐτῶν πέντε τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο
καὶ τοιαῦτα φθέγγεται. Τοιούτους γὰρ λόγους οὐδέποτε ἠκούσαμεν εἰρηκότος
τινὸς ὡς τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο. ᾿Aποκριθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς λέγει αὐτοῖς. Πάνυ θαυ-
μάζετε. μᾶλλον δὲ ἐπιστῆτε ἐφ’ οἷς εἶπον ὑμῖν. ἀληθῶς οἶδα καὶ πότε ἐγεννήθητε
ὑμεῖς καὶ οἱ πατέρες καὶ τὸ παράδοξον λέγω ὑμῖν. ὅτε δὴ ὁ κόσμος ἐκτίσθη, ἐγὼ
εἰμὶ καὶ ὁ πέμψας με πρὸς ὑμᾶς. ᾿Aκούσαντες δὲ οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ὅτι οὕτως λέγει τὸ
παιδίον ἐθυμώθησαν μὴ δυνάμενοι ἀποκριθῆναι αὐτῷ λόγον. Προσελθὼν δὲ τὸ
παιδίον καὶ σκιρτῆσαν αὐτοῖς λέγει. Ἔπαιξα ὑμᾶς. οἶδα γὰρ ὅτι μικροθαύμαστοί
ἐστε μικροὶ τοῖς φρονήμασιν. Ὡς οὖν ἔδοξαν παρηγορεῖσθαι ἐν τῇ παρακλήσει
τοῦ παιδίου. εἶπεν ὁ καθηγητὴς πρὸς τὸν Ἰωσήφ. ἄγαγε αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ παιδευτή-
ριον. κἀγὼ αὐτὸν διδάξω γράμματα. Ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ λαβὼν αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς χειρὸς
ἤγαγεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ διδασκαλεῖον. καὶ ἔγραψεν αὐτῷ ἀλφάβητον καθηγητὴς
καὶ ἤρξατο ἐπιτηδεύειν καὶ εἶπε τὸ ἄλφα πλειστάκις. Τὸ δὲ παιδίον ἐσιώπα καὶ
οὐκ ἀπεκρίνατο αὐτὸν ἕως ὥρας πολλάς. ὀργισθεὶς οὖν ὁ καθηγητὴς ἔκρουσεν
αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν κεφαλήν. Τὸ δὲ παιδίον ἀξίος παθὸν εἶπεν αὐτῷ. Ἐγώ σε παιδεύω
μᾶλλον ἢ παιδεύομαι ἀπὸ σοῦ ὅτι οἶδα γράμματα ἅ σύ με διδάσκεις καὶ πολλή σου
κρίσις ἐστί. καὶ ταῦτά σοί ἐστιν ὡς χοῦς χαλκοῦς ὡς κύμβαλον ἀλαλάζον ἅτινα οὐ
παρέχουσι διὰ τὴν φωνὴν τὴν δόξαν καὶ τὴν σοφίαν. οὐδέ τινος ψυχὴ τὴν δύνα-
Appendix 263
μιν τῆς σοφίας μου. Παυσάμενος δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς εἶπε τὰ γράμματα ἀπὸ τοῦ
ἄλφα ἕως τὸ ϖ μετὰ πολλῆς ὀξύτητος. ἐμβλέψας δὲ εἰς τὸν καθηγητὴν λέγει
αὐτὸν. Σὺ τὸ ἄλφα μὴ εἰδὼς κατὰ φύσιν τὸ βῆτα πῶς μᾶλλον διδάσκεις. Ὑπο-
κριτά εἰ οἶδας δίδαξόν με πρῶτον σὺ τὸ ἄλφα καὶ τότε σοι πιστεύω τὸ βῆτα. ὁ
δὲ ἤρξατο ἐπερωτᾶν τὸν διδάσκαλον περὶ τοῦ πρώτου στοιχείου. καὶ οὐκ ἴσχυσεν
εἰπεῖν οὐδέν. ᾿Aκουόντων δὲ πολλῶν λέγει πρὸς Ζακχαῖον. Ἄκουε διδάσκαλε καὶ
νόει τὴν τοῦ πρώτου στοιχείου τάξιν. δέ πῶς ὧδὲ ἔχει δύο κανόνας καὶ χαρακῆ-
ρας μέσον. ὀξυσμένους διαμένοντας συναγομένους. ὑψουμένους χορεύοντας τρι-
στόμους Διστόμους ἀμαχίμους ὁμογενεῖς παρόχους Ζυγοστόμους ἰσομέτρους κα-
νόνας ἔχει τὸ ἄλφα. ὡς δὲ ἤκουσεν ὁ Ζακχαῖος τὰς τοιαύτας προσεγορίας καὶ
τοὺς κανόνας τοῦ πρώτου γράμματος εἰρηκότος τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἠπόρησεν ἐπὶ τὴν
τοιαύτην διδασκαλίαν καὶ ἐβόησε λέγων. Οἴμοι ὅτι ἠπατήθην ὁ τάλας ἐγὼ καὶ
ἐμαυτῷ αἰσχύνην κατέσχον. Ἆρον αὐτὸν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ παρακαλῶ σε ἀδελφέ. Οὐ
φέρω τὸ αὐστηρὸν τοῦ βλέμματος αὐτοῦ. οὐδὲ τοῦ λόγου αὐτοῦ. τοῦτο τὸ παι-
δίον δύναται παραδαμάσαι πάντας καὶ χαλινῶσαι τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο πρὸ τῆς
κοσμοποιΐας ἦν. Ποία μήτηρ αὐτὸ ἐγέννησεν ἢ τίς ἐξέθρεψεν αὐτό ἐγὼ ἀγνοῶ.
Οἴμοι φίλοι μου ἐξέστη μου ἡ διάνοια. Ἠπατήθην ἐγὼ ὁ ἄθλιος κἀγὼ ἠγωνιζόμην
ἔχειν μαθητὴν καὶ εὐθέως ἔχω διδάσκαλον καὶ τὴν αἰσχύνην οὐχ ὑποφέρω ὅτι
γέρων ὢν ὑπὸ παιδὸς ἐνικήθην. ὧν οὔτε ἀρχὴν εὑρίσκω οὔτε τέλος καὶ ἔχω
ἐκκακῆσαι καὶ ἀποθανεῖν. ἢ φυγεῖν τὴν κώμην διὰ τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο. Οὐ δύναμαι
γὰρ ὁραθῆναι. εἰς ὄψιν αὐτοῦ πάντων ἰδόντων ὅτι ὑπὸ παιδὸς ἐνικήθην. Τί δὲ
ἔχω εἰπεῖν ἢ διηγήσασθαι περὶ ὧν προέθηκέ μοι κανόνα τοῦ πρώτου στοιχείου.
οὗ ἐγὼ ἀγνοῶ παρακαλῶ σε ἀδελφέ ὕπαγε αὐτὸν εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου. οὗτος γὰρ
μέγας ἐστὶν ἢ Θεὸς ἢ ἄγγελος ἢ κτίστης τῶν ἁπάντων τῶν δὲ Ἰουδαίων παραι-
νούντων τὸν Ζακχαῖον ἐγέλασεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν. Νῦν καρποφορείτωσαν τὰ
ἄκαρπα. Νῦν βλεπέτωσαν τὰ ἄβλεπα. Νῦν ἀκουέτωσαν οἱ κωφοὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ. ὅτι
ἐγὼ ἄνωθεν πάρειμι ἵνα τοὺς κάτω ῥύσωμαι καὶ εἰς τὰ ἄνω βλέπω καθὼς προ-
σέταξέ μοι ὁ ἀποστείλας με πρὸς ὑμᾶς. καὶ ὡς ταῦτα εἶπε τὸ παιδίον ἐγένοντο
ὑγιεῖς πάντες ψυχῇ καὶ σώματι καὶ οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμα εἰπεῖν αὐτῷ λόγον πονηρόν.
Μιᾷ δὲ τῶν ἡμερῶν ἔπαιζεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς σὺν τοῖς παισὶ καὶ ἓν παιδίον ἔπεσεν
ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνωγαίου καὶ ἀπέθανεν. ὡς δὲ εἶδον τὰ παιδία τὸ πτῶμα ἔφυγον. ἀπέ-
μεινε δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς μόνος εἰς τὸ ἀνώγαιον. ἐλθόντες δὲ οἰ γονεῖς τοῦ τεθνηκότος
παιδίου ἔλεγον τῷ Ἰησοῦ. ὅτι σὺ αὐτὸν κατέβαλες. ὡς δὲ ἐμαίνοντο κατὰ τοῦ
Ἰησοῦ κατῆλθε κάτω καὶ στὰς ἐπάνω τοῦ πτώματος ἔκραζε λέγων τὸ ὄνομα
τοῦ τεθνηκότος Ζῆνον Ζῆνον ἀνάστα καὶ εἰπὲ ἐγώ σε κατέβαλα. καὶ ἀναστὰς
παραχρῆμα εἶπεν. Οὐχί κύριε. οὐχί ἰδόντες δὲ οἰ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ τὸ παράδοξον
θαῦμα ὃ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐδόξασαν τὸν Θεὸν καὶ προσεκύνησαν τὸν Ἰησοῦν.
Εἶτα μετ’ ὀλίγας ἡμέρας νεώτερός τις ἐν τῇ γειτονίᾳ ἔσχισε ξύλα. καὶ ἔκοψε τὸν
δεξιὸν αὑτοῦ πόδα. καὶ συνήχθη ὁ ὄχλος ἐπ’ αὐτῷ εἰσῆλθε δὲ καὶ ἰώμενος τὰς
νόσους ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς Χριστός καὶ κρατήσας τοῦ πληγωμένου ποδός
264 Appendix
παραχρῆμα ἰάθη καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Κύριος. ἀναστὰς σχίσον τὰ ξύλα καὶ μνημόνευέ
μου. Ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ ὄχλοι ὃ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς σημεῖον προσεκύνησαν αὐτὸν καὶ
εἶπον. ἀληθῶς τάχα ὁ Θεὸς οἰκεῖ ἐν τῷ παιδίῳ τούτῳ.
Γενομένου δὲ τοῦ παιδὸς ἑξαετοῦς ἐξαπέστειλεν αὐτὸν ἡ Θεοτόκος ἵνα
ἀγάγῃ ὕδωρ. ὄχλου δὲ ὄντος πολλοῦ ἐν τῇ πηγῇ ἐκλάσθη ἡ ὑδρία αὐτοῦ. καὶ
ἁπλώσας τὸ πάλλιον αὑτοῦ ὃ ἐφόρει ἔθηκεν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ ἐπήγαγε τῇ
μητρὶ αὑτοῦ Μαρίαμ. ἰδοῦσα δὲ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ ἡ ἁγία Θεοτόκος ὅτι ἐποίησεν
ὁ Ἰησοῦς σημεῖον κατεφίλησεν αὐτὸν καὶ εἶπε. Κύριε ἐλέησον τὸν υἱόν μου.
Ἐν δὲ τῷ καιρῷ τοῦ σπόρου ἀπῆλθεν ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἵνα σπείρῃ σῖτον. ἠκολούθησε
δὲ αὐτὸν ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἐν τῷ σπείρειν τὸν Ἰωσὴφ ἔσπειρε καὶ ὁ Ἰησοῦς μίαν δρά-
καν. Ἐν δὲ τῷ καιρῷ τοῦ θέρους συνάξας ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὃν ἔσπειρε σῖτον, ἡλώνισεν
αὐτὸν καὶ ἐποίησεν ἐξ αὐτοῦ μόδια ἑκατόν. καὶ καλέσας χήρας καὶ ὀρφανοὺς
δέδωκεν αὐτῶν τὸν σῖτον ὃν ἔσπειρε. Κεκράτηκε δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐξ αὐτοῦ τοῦ
σίτου ὀλίγον ἵνα ἔχωσιν εἰς εὐλογίαν τοῦ σπόρου. Ἐγένετο δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐτῶν
ὀκτώ ἦν δὲ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ τέκτων ἐργαζόμενος ἄροτρα καὶ ζυγούς λέγει αὐτῷ τις
πλούσιος κύρ’ Ἰωσὴφ ποίησόν μοι κλίνην ἔντιμον καλήν ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ ἦν ἐν θλίψει
διὰ τὸ εἶναι τὸ ἓν ξύλον στρεβλόν. λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς μὴ λυποῦ ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον
θὲς τὰ ξύλα καὶ ἰσάζωμεν αὐτό. ἐποίησε ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ὡς προσέταξεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς
τὸ ἓν μέρος τοῦ ξύλου ἔτεινεν αὐτός. καὶ λέγει τῷ Ἰωσήφ ποίει ὃ βούλει ὁ δὲ
Ἰωσὴφ ἰδὼν ὅτι ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς σημεῖον περιπλακεὶς ἐφίλησε τὸν Ἰησοῦν
λέγων Μακάριός εἰμι ὅτι τοιοῦτον παιδίον δέδωκέ μοι ὁ Θεός. ὡς δὲ εἶδεν ὁ
Ἰωσὴφ ὅτι ὀξὺν νοῦν ἔχει καὶ ἡλικίαν αὐξάνει, ἠβουλήθη δοῦναι αὐτὸν ἵνα
μάθῃ γράμματα καὶ δίδωσιν αὐτὸν εἰς ἕτερον διδάσκαλον ὅπως αὐτὸν διδάξῃ
καὶ λέγει ὁ διδάσκαλος τῷ Ἰωσήφ ποῖα γράμματα θέλεις διδάξω αὐτὸν πρῶτον
λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ⁹⁹⁰ τὰ ἑλληνικὰ εἶτα τὰ ἑβραϊκά. ἔχων δὲ πεῖραν τοῦ
Ἰησοῦ ὁ καθηγητὴς ἐφοβεῖτο αὐτόν. ὅμως γράψας αὐτὸν τὸν ἀλφάβητον ἐπε-
στοίχασεν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πολλὰς ὥρας ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπε πρὸς τὸν καθηγη-
τήν εἰ ὄντος διδάσκαλος ᾖς καὶ οἶδας καλῶς τὰ γράμματα εἰπέ μοι τὴν δύναμιν
τοῦ ἄλφα κἀγώ δέ σοι λέγω τὸ βῆτα. ὀργισθεὶς δὲ ὁ διδάσκαλος ἔτυψεν αὐτὸν
εἰς τὴν κεφαλήν. ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἀγανακτήσας ἐκατηράσατο αὐτὸν καὶ εὐθέως ἔπε-
σεν ὁ διδάσκαλος ὀλιγωρήσας ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὑτοῦ ὁ δὲ
Ἰωσὴφ παρήγγειλε τῇ μητρὶ αὐτοῦ ἵνα μὴ ἀφῇ αὐτὸν ἔξωθεν τῆς οἰκίας ἐξέρχε-
σθαι ἵνα μὴ καταρᾶται τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. μεθ’ ἡμέρας δὲ τινας ἕτερος διδάσκαλος
φίλος ὢν τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ λέγει αὐτόν. Παράδος μοι αὐτόν ἀδελφὲ κἀγὼ μετὰ πολλῆς
παρακλήσεως διδάξω αὐτὸν τὰ γράμματα λέγει αὐτῷ Ἰωσήφ εἰ γὰρ θαρρεῖς
ἀδελφὲ παράλαβε αὐτὸν καὶ δίδαξον. μετὰ πολλῆς χαρᾶς ἀπελθὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς
εἰς τὸ διδασκαλεῖον εὗρε βίβλον κειμένην καὶ ἀνοίξας αὐτὴν οὐκ ἀνεγίνωσκεν
 In the margin, fol. 66r.

Appendix 265
τὰ ἐν τῇ βίβλῳ γεγραμμένα ἀλλὰ ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὑτοῦ ἔλεγεν ἐν Πνεύματι

ἁγίῳ καὶ ἐδίδασκε τὸν νόμον αὑτοῦ τοὺς παρόντας καὶ ἀκούοντας ὥστε καὶ ὁ
καθηγητὴς πλησίον αὐτοῦ καθίσας πάνυ ἡδέως αὐτοῦ ἤκουσεν παρακαλῶν
αὐτὸν ἵνα πλείονα εἴπῃ ὄχλος δὲ πολὺς συνεισῆλθε καὶ ἠκροῶντο πάντες καὶ
ἐθαύμαζον ἐπὶ τῇ ἁγίᾳ αὐτοῦ διδασκαλίᾳ. καὶ τοῦ λόγου αὐτοῦ ὅτι νήπιος ὢν
τοιαῦτα φθέγγεται. ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἔδραμεν εἰς τὸ διδασκαλεῖον καὶ
λέγει αὐτὸν ὁ καθηγητὴς ἵνα εἴδῃς ἀδελφὲ ὅτι ἐγὼ ἐπαρέλαβον τὸ παιδίον σου
εἰς μαθητήν αὐτὸς δὲ χάριτος καὶ πολλῆς σοφίας ἐστὶ μεστός λαβὲ αὐτὸν εἰς
τὸν οἶκόν σου μετὰ χαρᾶς. τὸ γὰρ χάρισμα ὃ ἔχει ἀπὸ Θεοῦ ἐστιν. ὡς δὲ ἤκουσεν
ὁ Ἰησοῦς τοῦ καθηγητοῦ τούτους λόγους ὄντος μειδιάσας εἶπεν ἐπειδὴ ἀληθῶς
ἐμαρτύρησας διὰ ἐσὲ κἀκεῖνος σωθήσεται ὃς χθὲς πέπονθε καὶ παραχρῆμα ἰάθη ὁ
ἄλλος καθηγητής. παραλαβὼν δὲ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ τὸ παιδίον ἤγαγεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον
αὑτοῦ. μεθ’ ἡμέρας δὲ τινας ἔπεμψεν Ἰωσὴφ τὸν Ἰάκωβον συλλέξαι φρύγανα
τοῦ φούρνου ἠκολούθει δὲ καὶ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὸν Ἰάκωβον καὶ συλλεγόντων τὰ φρύ-
γανα ἔχιδνα ἔδακε τὸν Ἰάκωβον καὶ πεσὼν εἰς τὴν γῆν ἔμελλε τελευτᾶν ἐκ τοῦ
πόνου τοῦ φαρμάκου. ὁ δὲ εὐθέως ἐμφυσήσας τὴν πληγήν ἰάθη Ἰάκωβος καὶ τὸ
θηρίον ἀπεκτάνθη.
ὀλίγων δὲ ἡμερῶν διελθουσῶν παιδίον τῆς γειτονίας ἀπέθανε καὶ ὠδύρετο ἡ
μήτηρ αὐτοῦ σφοδρῶς ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἦλθε καὶ στὰς ἐπάνω τοῦ παιδίου
ἥψατο τοῦ στήθους αὐτοῦ εἰπών σοὶ λέγω βρέφος μὴ ἀποθάνῃς ἀλλὰ ζήθητι
καὶ ἔσο μετὰ τῆς μητρός σου καὶ εὐθέως ἀνέβλεψε τὸ παιδίον καὶ λέγει ὁ Ἰησοῦς
τῇ μητρὶ αὐτοῦ ἆρον τὸ παιδίον σου καὶ δὸς αὐτῷ μασθὸν καὶ μνημόνευέ μου. οἱ
δὲ ὄχλοι ἰδόντες τὸ παράδοξον θαῦμα εἶπον ἀληθῶς τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο ἢ Θεὸς ἢ
ἀγγελός ἐστὶν ὅτι πᾶς λόγος αὐτοῦ ἔργον γίνεται. Ἄλλοτε πάλιν οἰκοδόμος τίς
πεσὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους ἀπέθανεν ἐλθὼν δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς λέγει τῷ τεθνηκότι σοὶ
λέγω ἄνθρωπε ἀναστὰς ποίει τὸ ἔργον σου εὐθέως ἀνέστη καὶ προσεκύνησεν
αὐτόν ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ ὄχλοι εἶπον ἀληθῶς τοῦτο τὸ παιδίον οὐράνιόν ἐστιν πολλὰς
γὰρ ἔσωσε ψυχὰς καὶ σῶσαι ἔχει μέχρι ζωῆς αὑτοῦ.
Γενομένου δὲ δωδεκατοῦς ἐπορεύοντο οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ Πάσχα
μετὰ τοῦ ὄχλου καὶ ἐκοινώνουν τὸ Πάσχα. ὑποστρέψαντες δὲ ἐν τῇ πόλει αὑτῶν
Ναζαρέτ ἔμεινεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ. ἐνόμισαν δὲ σὺν τῷ ὄχλῳ καὶ εἰς τὴν
συνοδίαν αὐτὸν εἶναι ὁδεύσαντες δὲ ἡμέρας διάστημα τῇ ἑσπέρᾳ ἐζήτουν τὸν Ἰη-
σοῦν ἐν τῷ ὄχλῳ καὶ ἐν τοῖς γνωστοῖς αὑτῶν. καὶ μὴ εὑρόντες αὐτὸν λυπηθέντες
ὑπέστρεψαν ἐν Ἱερουσαλήμ μετὰ δὲ τρεῖς ἡμέρας εὗρον αὐτὸν ἐν Ἱερουσαλήμ
καθεζόμενον καὶ διδάσκοντα τοὺς ὄχλους ἡδέως αὐτοῦ γὰρ πάντες ἤκουον οἵ
τε γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ νομοδιδάσκαλοι καὶ ἐθαύμαζον πάντες ὅτι πῶς παιδίον πάν-
τας ἀπεστόμιζεν τούς τε πρεσβυτέρους καὶ νομοδιδασκάλους τῶν Ἰουδαίων
ἑρμηνεῦον αὐτοῖς τὸν νόμον καὶ τὰς φωνὰς τῶν προφητῶν προσελθοῦσα δὲ ἡ
μήτηρ αὐτοῦ εἶπε διὰ τί τέκνον τοῦτο ἡμῖν ἐποίησας καὶ ἐζητοῦμεν ὀδυνόμενοι
ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐτοῖς τί με ἐζητεῖτε οὐκ εἶπον ὑμῖν ὅτι ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου δεῖ
266 Appendix
εἶναί με. οἱ δὲ φαρισαῖοι καὶ γραμματεῖς ἔλεγον πρὸς τὴν Μαριάμ. Σὺ εἶ μήτηρ τοῦ
παιδίου τούτου λέγουσι πάλιν αὐτῇ μακαρία σὺ ἐν γυναιξὶν ὅτι εὐλόγησεν ὁ Θεὸς
τὸν καρπὸν τῆς κοιλίας σου. Τοιαύτην χάριν καὶ σοφίαν καὶ δόξαν οὐδέποτε εἴδα-
μεν ἢ ἠκούσαμν πώποτε. ἀναστὰς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἠκολούθησεν αὐτοῖς ἡ δὲ Μαρία
πάντα διετήρει ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὑτῆς ὅσα ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῷ λαῷ μεγαλεῖα
ἰώμενος τὰς νόσους πάντων ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς προέκοπτεν ἡλικίᾳ καὶ σοφίᾳ καὶ χάριτι
καὶ ἐδοξάσθη παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς αὑτοῦ καὶ ἔστιν εὐλόγητος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν
αἰῶνων ἀμήν.
Greek manuscript Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. hist. gr. 91, fol. 199v–204r⁹⁹¹
Λόγος ἰσραηλίτ[ου] φιλοσόφου εἰς τὰ παιδικὰ κεφάλεια τοῦ κ[υρίο]υ ἡμῶν Ἰ[ησο]
ῦ Χ[ρίστο]υ. Κύριε ἐ[λέη]σον.
᾿Aναγκαῖ[ον] ἡγησάμην ἐγὼ Θωμᾶς ἰσραηλίτ[ης] πᾶσι τοῖς ἔθνεσι ἀδελφοῖς
γνωρίσαι τὰ παιδικὰ καὶ μεγαλεῖα τοῦ κ[υρίο]υ ἡμ[ῶν] Ἰ[ησο]ῦ Χ[ρίστο]υ. ὅσα
ἐποίησεν ὁ κ[ύριο]ς ἡμῶν Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς Χ[ριστὸ]ς γεννηθεὶς ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ ἡμῶν.
Τὸ παιδίον ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς πενταετὴς γενόμενος βροχῆς γενομένης ἔπαιζεν ἐπὶ
διάβασεις ῥύακος καὶ τὰ ῥέοντ[α] ὕδατα παρεσυνήγαγε[ν] εἰς λάκκους. καὶ
ἐποίη αὐτ[ὰ] εὐθέ[ως], καθαρὰ καὶ ἐνάρετα ἵνα μό[νῳ] λόγῳ. καὶ οὐκ ἔργῳ ἐπέτα-
σθη αὐτὰ ἐπάρας δὲ ἐκ τῆς ἐφάλε[ος] αὐτῶν πηλ[ὸν] τρυφερ[ὸν] ἔπλασεν ἐξ
αὐτ[οῦ] στρουθία [δώδεκα] ἦν δὲ σάββατον ὅτε ταῦτα ἐποίη παίζων. ἦν δὲ καὶ
πολλὰ παιδία παίζοντα σὺν αὐτῷ.
Ἰδὼν δὲ τις Ἰουδαῖος ἃ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἐν τῷ σαββάτ[ῳ] ἀπῆλθεν καὶ
ἀπήγγειλε τῷ π[ατ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ Ἰωσὴφ λέγων. Ἰδοὺ τὸ παιδίον σου παίζων ἐπὶ τὸ
ῥυάκιν. καὶ ἦρεν πηλ[όν] καὶ ἐποίησεν ἐξ αὐτοῦ στρουθία [δώδεκα]. Καὶ ἐβεβήλω-
σεν τῷ σαββάτ[ῳ]. Καὶ ἐλθὼν ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον καὶ ἰδὼν ἀνέκραξεν αὐτὸν
λέγων. Διατὶ ποιεῖς ὃ οὐκ ἔξεστι ἐν σαββάτῷ. Ὁ δὲ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς συγκροτήσας τὰς χεῖ-
ρας, ἀνέκραξεν τοῖς στρουθίοις. Καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς. Ὑπάγετε καὶ πετάσθηντα τὰ
στρουθία ὑπῆγον κράζων. Ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἐθαμβήθησαν καὶ ἀπελθόντες
ἐδιηγήσαντο τοῖς πρώτοις αὐτῶν ὅπερ ἴδων σημεῖον πεποιηκότ[α] τοῦ Ἰ[ησο]ῦ.
ὁ δὲ υἱὸς τοῦ Ἄννα ἀρχιερέ[ως] ἦν ἑστὼς ἐκεῖ μετὰ τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ καὶ λαβὼν κλα-
δίον ἰτέας, ἐξέχεεν τὰ ὕδατα ἃ συνήγαγεν ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς. ἰδὼν δὲ τὸ παιδίον Ἰ[ησοῦ]
ς, ἠγανάκτησεν καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ. ἄδικε ἀσεβὴ καὶ ἀνόητε τί ἠδίκησάν σε τὰ
ὕδατ[α] καὶ οἱ λάκκοι. Ἰδοὺ νῦν καὶ σύ, ὡς δένδρον ἀποξηρανθῇς ὅ καὶ οὐ μὴ
ἐνέγκῃς φύλλα οὔτε ῥίζαν οὔτε καρπ[όν]. καὶ εὐθέ[ως] ὁ π[αῖς] ἐκεῖνος ἐξηράνθη
 Burke translated his edition of the Ga variant, reconstructed based on a number of manu-
scripts, among which this manuscript. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 340 – 389.
Appendix 267
ὅλος. Ὁ δὲ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἀνεχώρησεν καὶ ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτ[οῦ]. οἱ δὲ γονεῖς
τοῦ ξερανθέντο[ς] ἐβάστασαν αὐτ[όν] λέγοντες αὐ[τῷ] [ὅτι] τοιοῦτον ἔχεις π[αι]-
δίον ἐργαζόμενον τοιαῦτ[α].
Εἶτα πάλ[ιν] ἐπορεύετο ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς διὰ τῆς κώμης καὶ παιδίον τρέχοντα διερ-
ράγη εἰς τὸν ὦμον αὐτοῦ. Καὶ πικρανθ[εὶς] ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς εἶπεν αὐτῷ. Οὐκ ἀπελεύσει
τὴν ὁδόν σου. Καὶ παραχρῆμα πεσ[ὸν] ἀπέθανεν. ἰδόντες δὲ τινες τὸ γινόμεν[ον],
εἶπον πόθεν τοῦτω τὸ παιδί[ον] ὅτι πᾶν ῥῆμα ἔτοιμον ἦν καὶ εἰς ἔργον. Καὶ προ-
σελθόντες οἱ γονεῖς τοῦ τεθνεῶτος, ἐμέμφον[το] τῷ π[ατ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ Ἰωσήφ λέγον-
τος. Σὺ τοιοῦτον παιδίον ἔχων οὐ δύνασαι […] μεθ’ ἡμῶν ἢ οἰκεῖν, ἐν τῇ κώμῃ
ταύτῃ. ἢ δίδαξον αὐτῷ εὐλογεῖν καὶ μὴ καταρᾶσθαι. τὰ γὰρ παιδία ἡμῶν θανατοὶ.
Προσκαλεσάμενος δὲ ὁ Ἰωσήφ τὸ παιδίον κατ’ ἰδίαν, ἐνουθέ[τει] αὐτὸν λέγων.
Ἵνα τί τοιαῦτα κατεργάζει. καὶ πάσχουσιν οὗ[τοι] καὶ μισοῦσιν ἡμᾶς. καὶ διώκω-
σιν. εἶπεν δὲ ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς αὐτῷ. ἐγὼ οἶδα ὅ[τι] τὰ ῥήματά σου ταῦτα, ἐμά οὐκ εἰσὶν
ἀλλὰ σά. ὅμως σιγήσω διὰ σέ. ἐκεῖνοι δὲ ἤσουσι τὴν κόλασιν αὐτῶν. Καὶ οἱ ἐγκα-
λοῦντες αὐτ[ὸν] ἐτυφλώθησαν. καὶ ἰδόντες ἐφοβήθησαν σφόδρα καὶ ἠπόρουν καὶ
ἔλεγον περὶ αὐτ[οῦ]. Τί ἐσ[τίν] τοῦτο. ὅτι πᾶν ῥῆ[μα] ἤτε καλ[ὸν] ἤτε κακ[όν],
ἔργον ἐγένετο. ἰδόντες δὲ τοῦτω ὃ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἐγόγγυζον ἔτι πλῆον
κατ’ αὐτοῦ. καὶ ἐγερθεὶς Ἰωσήφ, ἐπελάβετο αὐτοῦ τὸ ὠτίον. καὶ ἔτιλλ[εν]
αὐτῷ σφό[δρα]. τὸ δὲ παιδίον ἠγανάκτησεν καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ. ᾿Aρκετόν σοί
ἐσ[τίν] ζητεῖν καὶ μή εὑρίσκ[ειν]. Μάλι[στα] ὅτι σοφὸς ἔπραξας οὐκ οἶδας ὅτι
σός εἰμί, μή με λύπ[ει].
Καθηγητής δέ τις ὀνόμα[τι] Ζακχαῖος ἐστὼς ἐν μέ[ρει] ἤκουσε τοῦ Ἰ[ησο]ῦ
ταῦτα λαλοῦντος πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ ἐθαύμασεν σφόδρα. ὅτι παιδίον τοιαῦταν ὃν
τοιαῦτα φθέγγεται. καὶ μετ’ ὀλί[γας] ἡμέ[ρας] προσήγγι[σε] τῷ Ἰωσὴφ καὶ
εἶπεν αὐτῷ. Ὦ ἀδελφὲ Ἰωσὴφ, τὸ παιδίον α[ὐτ]οῦ φρόνιμον ἐσ[τι] καὶ νοῦν
ἔχει. δεῦρο παράδως μοι αὐτὸ ὅπ[ως] μάθοι γράμμα[τα] μάθοι. καὶ ἐγὼ διδάξω
αὐτ[ὸν] μετὰ τῶν γραμμάτων πᾶσαν ἐπιστήμην καὶ προσαγορεύειν πάντες τοὺς
πρεσβυτέρους καὶ τιμᾶν αὐτοὺς ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντας τοὺς συνιλικιώτας φοβεῖσθαι
καὶ ἐντρεπέσθαι γονεῖς. ὅπως καὶ αὐτῷ τῷ ἰδίον τέκνον, ἀγαπηθήσεται. ὁ δὲ
Ἰωσὴφ ὀργισάμενος πρὸς αὐτ[ὸν], εἶπε τῷ καθηγητῇ Ζακχαί[ῳ]. τίς δύναται τοῦ-
τον παιδίον διδάξαι μικροῦ στ[αυ]ροῦ αὐτοῦ ὄντος. μή νομίσῃς ἀδελφέ. ὡς δὲ
ἤκουσε τὸ παιδίον τοῦτα τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ εἰρήκοτ[ος], ἐγέλασε μέγα καὶ εἶπε τῷ καθη-
γητῇ. ἀληθ[ῶς] καθηγητά πάντα ὅσα εἴρηκέν σοι ὁ π[ατ]ήρ μου ἀληθὰ ἐισὶν. καὶ
τοῦτο μὲν ἐγὼ, Κ[ύριό]ς εἰμι. ὑμεῖς δὲ ἀλλότριοί ἐσταὶ. ὅτι ἐμοὶ μόνον ἡ ἐξουσία,
ἐδόθ[η] αὐτὴ ἐγὼ πρὸ τοῦ αἰῶ[νος] εἰμὶ καὶ νῦν πάρημοι καὶ ἐν ὑμῖν ἐγεννή[θην]
καὶ μεθ’ ὑμῶν εἰμ[ι]. ἐγὼ καὶ οὐκ οἴδατε τίς εἰμὶ. ἐγὼ δὲ οἶδα τὸ, πόθεν ἐστὲ καὶ
πόθεν ἔτη καὶ πόσα ἐις[ὶν] ἔτη τῆς ζωῆς ὑμῶν. ἀληθ[ῶς] λέγω σοι, διδάσκαλε, ὅτε
σὺ ἐγέννω, ἐγὼ οἶδα. καὶ εἰ θέλεις τέλειος εἶναι διδάσκαλος, ἄκυσόν μου κἀγὼ
σοι διδάξω σοφίαν ἣν οὐδεὶς ἄλλος οἶδεν καὶ πλὴν ἐμοῦ καὶ τοῦ πέμψαντός με
πρὸς ὑμᾶς. ἐγὼ σου διδάσκαλός εἰμὶ σὺ δὲ ἐμοῦ μαθητὴς ἐγὼ οἶδα πόσων χρονῶν
268 Appendix
εἶ καὶ πόσ[ον] ἔχεις ζῆσαι. ἀληθ[ῶς] μόνος ἐγὼ οἶδα. καὶ ὅταν ἴδῃς τὸν σταυρόν
μ[ου] ὃν εἴπεν σοι ὁ πατήρ μου τότε πιστεύσει. ὅτι πάντα ὅσα εἶπον σοί ἀληθινά
εἰσι. καὶ τούτων μὲν ἐγὼ Κ[ύριό]ς εἰμὶ ὑμεῖς δὲ ἀλλότριοί ἐσ[τ]ὲ. ὅτι τότε καὶ νῦν
ὁ αὐτὸς ἐγὼ εἰμι. οἱ δὲ παρόντες Ἰουδαῖοι ἐξεπλάγησαν ἀκούοντες τοῦ παιδαρίου
τοιαῦτα λέγοντος καὶ ἐξεβόησαν μεγάλην φωνὴν λέγοντες. Ὦ καινοῦ καὶ παρα-
δόξου θαύματος. Τάχα ὅλων πέντε ἐτῶν οὐκ ἐστιν τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο. καὶ οἶδε ποῖ
[α] φθέγγηται. ἤ οὐκ ἠκούσαμεν εἰρηκότος […] οὔτε ἀρχιερέ[ως] οὔτε νομοδιδα-
σκάλου οὔτε γραμματέ[ως] ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ Φαρισαί[ου] τινὸς ὡς τοῦ παιδίου τούτου.
καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπε τὸ παιδίον αὐτοῖς. Τί πάνυ θαυμάζετε. μᾶλλον δὲ ἀπιστεῖ[τε]
ἐφ’ οἷς εἶπον ὑμῖν. ὅτι εἴπον π[ῶς] οἶδα οἴε ἐγεννήθη[τε] ὑμεῖς καὶ οἱ π[ατέ]ρες
ὑμῶν καὶ οἱ π[ατέ]ρες τῶν π[ατέ]ρων ἔτι. καὶ τὸ παράδοξον ὅτι οἶδα ὅτε ὁ κόσμος
ἐκτίσθη, καὶ ὁ πέμψας πρὸ[ς] ὑμᾶς οἶδε. ᾿Aκούσαντες δὲ οἱ Ἰουδαῖ[οι] ὅ[τι] καὶ ὤμ-
νυεν ἐφυκήθησαν μηκέτι δυνάμ[ενοι] αὐτῷ λαλ[ῆσαι]. Προσελθ[ὸν] δὲ τὸ παιδίον
αὐτοῖς ἔλεγε. Ἔπαιξα πρὸ[ς] ὑμᾶς. ἐπειδὴ οἶδα ὅτι μικροί θαυμαστοί ἐστὲ καὶ μικ-
ροὶ τοῖς φρονήμασιν. Ὡς οὖν ἔδοξαν παρηχωρεῖσθ[αι] ἐπὶ τῇ παρακλήσει τοῦ παι-
δὸς ἤρξατο ὁ καθηγητ[ὴς] λέγειν. τῷ π[ατ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ. Δεῦρο […] ἄγαγε αὐτ[ὸν] εἰς
τὸ παιδευτήριον. κἀγὼ διδάξω αὐτὸν γράμματα. Ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ κρατήσας αὐτοῦ
τῆς χειρὸς, ἤγαγεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ διδασκαλεῖον. Ὁ δὲ διδάσκαλ[ος] Ζακχαίος κολα-
κεύσας αὐτὸν ἔδειξεν αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀλφάβητον. καὶ ἤρξατο ἐπιτρέπ[ειν] αὐτ[ὸν] εἶ-
πειν τὸ ἄλφα πλεονάκις. Τὸ δὲ παιδίον ἐσιώπα καὶ οὐχ ὑπήκουεν αὐτῷ ἕ[ως]
ὥρ[ας] πολλ[άς]. ὔπερον δὲ εἶπεν. Ἐγώ θέλω διδάσκεσθαι; Ἐγώ οἶδα τὰ γράμματα
σου ἅ διδάσκεις πολλά σου κρεῖττον καὶ ταῦτα μοί ἐσ[τι] ὡς χαλκὸς ἠχῶ[ν] ἢ κύμ-
βαλον ἀλαλάζων’. τίνα παρ’ αἰτῶ ὡς φωνῆς ἀμοιβὴν οὔτε δόξαν σοφί[ας] οὔτε
δύναμιν ψυχῆς. οὔτε συνέσεως. Τὸ δὲ παιδίον παυσάμεν[ον] τῆς ὀργῆς εἶπεν
ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ πάντ[α] τὰ γράμμ[ατα] ἀπὸ τοῦ α ἕ[ως] τοῦ ϖ μ[ετὰ] πολλῆς ἐξε-
τάσεως τρανῶς. ἐμβλέψας δὲ πάλιν τῷ καθηγητῇ Ζακχαίῳ λέγει αὐτῷ. Σὺ τὸ
ἄλφα μὴ εἰδὼς κ[ατὰ] φύσιν τὸ βῆτα π[ῶς] ἄλλ[ους] διδάσκεις. Ὑποκριτὰ πρῶτον
εἰ οἶδας δίδαξον τὸ ἄλφα καὶ τότε σοι πιστεύσωμεν περὶ τοῦ βῆτα. εἶτα ἤρξατο
ἀποστοματίζ[ειν] τ[ὸν] διδάσκαλον περὶ τοῦ π[ρώτο]υ γρά[μματο]ς. καὶ οὐκ ἴσχυ-
σεν ἀποκριθῆν[αι] αὐτῷ. ᾿Aκουόν[των] δὲ πολλ[ῶν] λέγει τὸ παιδίον τὸν Ζακχαῖ
[ον]. Ἄκουε διδάσκαλε τὴν τοῦ π[ρώτο]υ στοιχ[είου] τάξιν. καὶ πρὸς ὧδὲ π[ῶς]
ἔχει κανόν[ας] καὶ μεσοχαρακῆρας οὓς ὁρᾷ ξίνους διαβαίνοντας συναγομ[ένους].
ὑψουμ[ένους] χορεύον[τας] βαλεφεγγούντας τρισή[μους] ὁμογενεῖς ὑπαρπού-
χους ζυγοστάτας ἰσομέτρους κανόνας ἔχει τὸ ἄ[λφα]. ὡς δὲ ἤκουσεν ὁ διδάσκα-
λος Ζακχαῖος τὰς τοσαύτα[ς] ἀπολλογί[ας] καὶ τοσαύτην διδασκαλί[αν], εἶπε τοῖς
παροῦσιν. Οἶμοι φίλοι ὑπορήθην ὁ τάλας ἐγὼ ἐμαυτῷ αἰσχύν[ην] παρέχων. ἐπι-
σπασάμενος δὲ τὸ παιδὶ ἔφη. Ἆρον αὐ[τὸ] ἀδελφὲ Ἰωσήφ. Οὐ φέ[ρω] τὸ αὐστη-
ρὸν τοῦ βλέμματος τοῦ προσώπου αὐ[τοῦ]. οὐδὲ τὸν λόγον αὐ[τοῦ] ἀκούσ[ας]
ἅπαξ ἢως ἐστι τοῦτο τὸ παιδίον οὐκ ἐστι γηγενὴς. τοῦτο δύναται καὶ πῦρ
δαμάς[αι]. τοῦτο πρὸ τῆς κόσμου ποίησιν ἐστι γεγεννημέν[ον]. Ποί[α] γαστὴρ
Appendix 269
τούτον ἐγέννησεν. Ποί[α] δὲ μ[ητέ]ρα ἐξέθρεψεν τοῦτον. ἐγὼ ἀγνοῶ. Οἶμοι φίλοι
ἐξεχείμαι οὐ παρακολουθῶ τῇ διανοί[ᾳ] αὐτοῦ ἠπατήθην ἐγὼ ὁ τρισάθλι[ος] ἐγὼ
ἠγωνιζώμην καὶ εὑρέθην ἔχειν διδάσκαλον ἐγνοῶ τὴν αἰσχύνην ὅ[τι] γέρων ὑπ-
άρ[χων], καὶ ὑπὸ παιδί[ου] ἐνική[θην]. καὶ ἔχω ἐκκακῆσαι καὶ ἀποθαν[εῖν] διὰ θέ
[ας] τούτου τοῦ παιδίου. Οὐ δύναμ[αι] γὰρ ἔτι ὁραιθῆν[αι]. εἰς τὴν ὄψιν αὐτ[οῦ]
μάλλιστα εἰπόντων πάντων ὅτι ἐνικήθην ὑπὸ παιδί[ου] μικρ[οῦ]. Τί ἔχω διηγήσα-
σθαι τινι περὶ ὧν μου εἶπεν κανόνων τοῦ π[ρώτου] στοιχεί[ου]. Οὐ γὰρ αὐτοῦ
ἀρχὴν ἢ τέλος γινώσκω. Τοιγαροῦν ἀξιῶ σ[ε] ἀδελφὲ Ἰωσήφ. ἀπάαγε αὐτὸν εἰς
τὸν οἶκόν σου. τοῦτο γ[ὰρ] ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ ἢ Θ[εὸ]ς ἐστι ἢ ἄγγελος ἢ τί εἴπω οὐκ
οἶδα. τῶν δὲ Ἰουδαί[ων] παραινούντων τὸν Ζακχαῖον ἐγέλασε τὸ παιδίον μέγα
καρποφορήτωσαν τὰ σὰ καὶ βλεπέτωσαν οἰ τυφλοὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ ὅτι ἐγὼ ἄνωθεν
πάρειμι ἵνα τοὺς κάτω ῥύσωμαι καὶ εἰς τὰ ἄνω καλέσω καθὰ διετάξατο ὁ ἀποστεί-
λας με εἰς ὑμᾶς. καὶ ὡς τὸ παιδίον κατέπαυσε τὸν λόγον εὐθέ[ως] ἐσώθη[σαν]
ὑπὸ τὴν κατάραν αὐτοῦ πεσόντες καὶ οὐδεὶς ἀπὸ τότε ἐτόλμα παροργίσαι
αὐτ[ὸν] μήπ[ως] καταάσετ[αι] αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔσον[ται] ἀνάπηροι.
Μεθ’ ἡμέρας δὲ τινας ἔπαιζεν ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἔν τινι δοματίῳ ἐν ὑπερό[ῳ] καὶ ἓν
τῶν παιδίων τῶν παιζόντων πεσὼν ἀπὸ τῆς διστέγου κάτω ἀπέθανεν. ἰδόντα δὲ
τὰ ἄλλα παιδία ἔφυγων εὐθέ[ως]. Κατελήφθη δὲ μόνος ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς. καὶ ἐλθῶντες
οἰ γονεῖς τοῦ ἀποθανώντος παιδίου ἐνεγκάλουν αὐτὸν ὡς αὐτὸς καταβαλόντος
αὐτ[ὸν]. Ἐκείνον δὲ ἐπηρεαζόντων αὐτ[ὸν] καταβαλόντων αὐτ[ὸν] κατεπήδησεν
ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἀπὸ τοῦ στέγους καὶ ἔστηκεν παρὰ τοῦ πτώματος καὶ ἔκραζεν φωνῇ
με[γάλῃ] κ[αὶ] εἶπε[ν]. Ζῆν[ον] οὕτω γὰρ ἔκαλλᾳ ὁ παῖς ἀναστὰς εἰπέ μοι ἐγώ σοι
κατέβαλον. ὁ δὲ π[αῖς] ἔφη. Οὐχί κ[ύρι]ε ἐκατέβαλας ἀλλὰ ἀνέστησ[ας]. καὶ ἰδόν-
τες ἐξεπλάγησαν οἰ γονεῖς τοῦ παιδί[ου] καὶ ἰδόντες αὐτ[ὸν] ἀναστάντα προσε-
κύνη[σαν] τῷ Ἰ[ησο]ῦ. μετ’ ὀλίγας ἡμέρας ξύλα σχίζων τις νεώτε[ρος] ἐν γειτονίᾳ
τούτου ἔπεσεν ἡ ἀξίνη καὶ ἔσχισεν τὴν βάσιν τοῦ ποδὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ αὐτίκα ὄλι[…]
ἰαθήμησθεν μικρ[ὸν] δὲ ἀπέθνῃσκεν. Θορύβου δὲ γενομένου καὶ συνδρομῆς ἔδρα-
μεν καὶ τὸ παιδίον Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς καὶ βιασάμενος διῆλθεν τ[ὸν] ὄχλον καὶ ἐκράτησην
τοῦ νεανίσκου τὸν πεπληγότα πό[δα] καὶ εὐθέ[ως] ἰάθη εἶπε δὲ τῷ νεανίσκῳ
ἀνάστα νῦν σχίζε τὰ ξύλα καὶ μνημόνευέ μου. ὁ δὲ ὄχλ[ος] ἰδὼν τὸ γεγονὸς προ-
σεκύνησαν τὸ παιδίον λέγοντες. ἀληθῶς τάχα ὁ Χ[ριστὸ]ς οἰκεῖ. Ὄντος δὲ αὐτὸν
ἑξαετοῦς πέμπει αὐτὸν ἡ μ[ήτ]ηρ αὐτ[οῦ] Μαρία, ἀντλῆσαι ὕδωρ. Δεδωκ[ὼς]
αὐτ[ὸν] ὑδρί[αν]. ἐν δὲ τῷ ὄχλῳ συνγκρουσθεῖσα ἡ ὑδρία διερράγει. ὁ δὲ Ἰ
[ησοῦ]ς ἁπλώσας τὸ παλλῖον ὅπερ αὐτὸ ἐβεβλήτος ἐγέμησεν αὐτὸ ὕδωρ καὶ
ἤνεγκε τῇ μ[ητ]ρὶ αὑτοῦ. ἰδοῦσα δὲ ἡ Μαρία τὸ γεγονὸς κατεφίλῃ αὐτ[ὸν] καὶ διε-
τήρει ἐν αὐτῇ τὰ μιστή[ρια] ἃ ἔβλεπεν αὐτ[ὸν] ποιοῦντα. Πάλιν δὲ ἐν καιρῷ τοῦ
σπόρου ἐξῆλθεν μετὰ τοῦ π[ατ]ρὸς αὐτοῦ ἵνα σπήρῃ σῖτον εἰς τὴν χώραν αὐτοῦ
καὶ ἐν τῷ σπήρειν τὸν π[ατέ]ρα ἔσπηρεν καὶ τὸ παιδίον Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἕνα κόκκου
σίτου. καὶ θερίσας καὶ ἁλωνίσας ἐποίησεν μεδίμ[ων] ρ. καὶ καλέσας τοὺς πτωχοὺς
πάντας καὶ πένητ[ας] τοὺς ἐν τῇ κώμῃ ἐν τῇ ἅλω[νι] ἐχαρίσατο αὐτ[οῖς] τὸν
270 Appendix
σῖτον. ἀλλὰ λειφθέντα τι ἔλαβε τοῦτο ὁ Ἰωσήφ καὶ ἀπήγει εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐ[τοῦ]
ἐκ τοῦ σί[του] Ἰ[ησο]ῦ. ἦν δὲ λοιπ[ὸν] ἐτῶν ἤ ὅτε τοῦτο ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς. τοῦ
δὲ πρὸς αὐτοῦ τέκτον[ος] ὄντος καὶ ἐργαζομ[ένου] αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐκείνῳ καιρῷ ἄρο[-
τρα] καὶ ζυγ[ούς] ἐπετάγη αὐτοῦ γενέσθαι κράβατος παρὰ τινος πλουσίου ὅπ[ως]
ποιήσει αὐτ[ῷ]. τοῦ δὲ ἑνὸς κάνονος τοῦ καλουμέ[νου] ἐνλακτὸν μὴ ἔχον[τος]
μέτρον κολοβω[τέρου] ὄντος καὶ μὴ ἔχων τί ποιῆσαι ὁ Ἰωσὴφ, εἶπεν αὐ[τῷ] ὁ
Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς, θὲς κάτω τὰ δύο ξύλ[α] καὶ τοῦ μέσ[ου] μέ[ρους], ἰσοποίησον αὐτὰ.
καὶ ἐποίησεν Ἰωσὴφ καθ[ὼς] εἶπε τὸ παιδίον. ἔστη δὲ ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς εἰς τὸ ἑτέρου
μέ[ρους] καὶ ἐκράτησεν τὸ κολοβώ[τερον] ξύλον καὶ ἐκτείνας αὐτὸ ἴσον ἐποίησεν
μετὰ τοῦ ἄλλου. καὶ εἶπε τῷ π[ατ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ μὴ λυποῦ μὴν ἀλλὰ ποίει ὃ θέλεις. ὁ δὲ
Ἰωσὴφ περιλαβ[ὼν] τὸ παιδίον κατεφίλ[ει] αὐτ[ὸν] λ[έγων] Μακάρι[ός] εἰμι ὅ[τι]
τοῦτον τὸν παιδίον μοι ἔδωκην ὁ Θ[εό]ς. ἰδὼν Ἰωσὴφ τὸν νοῦν τοῦ παιδί[ου] καὶ
τὴν ἡλικί[αν] καὶ τὴν νεό[τητα] ὠς ἀκμά[ζει] πάλιν ἠβουλείσατο μὴ εἶναι αὐτὸν
ἄπειρον γραμμά[των] καὶ ἀπαγαγ[ὼν] αὐτὸ παρέδωκεν ἑτέρῳ διδασκάλῳ εἶπε
δὲ ὁ διδάσκαλος τῷ Ἰωσήφ ποῖ[α] θέλεις γράμματα διδάξω αὐτ[ὸν] εἶπε δὲ
Ἰωσὴφ πρῶτον τὰ ἑλληνικὰ ἔπειτα ἑβραϊκά. εἴδη γὰρ ὁ διδάσκαλος τὴν πεῖραν
τοῦ παιδί[ου] καὶ ἐφοβεῖ[το] αὐτόν. ὅμ[ως] γράψας τὴν ἀλφάβητον ἐδιάβαζε
τοῦ τὸν ἐπὶ πολλ[ὴν] ὥρα καὶ οὐκ ἀπεκρί[νατο] αὐτὸν ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς οὐδὲν λέγων.
ἀλλὰ τί ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἔφατο εἰ ὄντος διδάσ[καλος] εἰ καὶ οἶδας ὅλος καλ[ὸς] τὰ γράμ-
ματα, εἰπέ τοῦ ἄ[λφα] τὴν δύναμιν, κἀγώ σοι ἐρῶ τοῦ βῆτα. πικρανθεὶς δὲ ὁ δι-
δάσκαλ[ος] ἔκρουσεν αὐτ[ὸν] εἰς τὴν κεφαλ[ήν]. τὸ δὲ παιδίον ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἠγα-
νάκτησε καὶ κατηράσατο αὐτὸν καὶ εὐθέ[ως] ἐλιποθύμησεν καὶ ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ
στόματος. ἐξ ἐπίδησεν δὲ τὸ παιδίον καὶ ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκο[ν] αὑτοῦ Ἰωσὴφ
δὲ ἐλυπήθη καὶ παρήγγειλεν τῇ μ[ητ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ ὅπ[ως] ἔξω τῆς θύρ[ας] μὴ ἀπο-
λύσῃ αὐτὸν ὅ[τι] ἀποθνῄσκουσιν οἱ παροργίζοντες αὐτ[ὸν]. μετὰ δὲ χρόνον
τινα ἕτερος πάλιν καθηγητής γνήσι[ος] ὢν τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ἄγαγέ μοι
αὐ[τὸ] εἰς τὸ παιδευτή[ριον] ὁ ἂν δυνηθῶ ἐγὼ μετὰ κολακεί[ας] διδάξω αὐτ[ὸν]
τὰ γράμμ[ατα]. πρέπει γὰρ τὸ παιδίον φρόνιμον ὄν τὸ καὶ νοῦν ἔχων, εἰδέναι
γράμμα[τα]. καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ Ἰωσήφ εἰ θαρρεῖς ἀδελφέ ἄπαγε αὐτ[ὸν] μετὰ σε.
καὶ παραλαβὼν αὐτ[ὸν], ἀπήγαγεν μετὰ φόβ[ου] καὶ ἀγώνου πολλ[οῦ]. τὸ δὲ παι-
δίον ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἡδέ[ως] ἐπορεύετο. καὶ εἰσελθὼν θράσυν[ος] εἰς τὸν διδάσκαλον
εὗρεν βιβλίον κείμενον ἐν τῷ ἀναλογί[ῳ]. καὶ λαβὼν αὐτὸ οὐκ ἀνεγίνωσκε τὰ γε-
γραμμ[ένα] ἐν αὐτῷ ἀλλὰ ἀνοίξας τὸ στό[μα] αὐτοῦ, ἐφθέγγετο πν[εύματ]ι ἁγίῳ
καὶ ἐδίδασκεν τὸν νόμον τοὺς παρόντας, καὶ ἀκούοντες αὐ[τοῦ] ἦν δὲ ὄχλο[ς]
πολὺς ἐθαύμαζον ἐν τῇ ὡραιό[τητι] τῆς διδασκαλί[ας] αὐτοῦ. καὶ τῇ στοῖμασιν
τῶν λόγων αὐτοῦ ὅτι νήπι[ος] ὂν τοιαῦτ[α] φθέγγε[ται]. ἀκούσας δὲ Ἰωσὴφ
ἐφοβή[θη] καὶ ἔδραμεν εἰς τὸ διδασκαλΐον. Πτωησάμ[ενος] μὴ οὔτως ὁ καθη-
γητ[ὴς] ἔστε ἄπειρος εἶπε δὲ ὁ καθηγητὴς τῷ Ἰωσὴφ. ἵνα εἴδῃς ἀδελφέ. ἐγὼ
μέν τὸ παιδί[ον] παραλαβῶν ὡς μαθητήν αὐτὸς δὲ πολλῆς χάριτ[ος] καὶ σοφί
[ας] μεστ[ός] ἐ[στὶ] τοιγαροῦν ἀξιῶ σε ἀδελφέ ἆρον αὐτ[ὸν] εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου.
Appendix 271
ὡς δὲ ἤκουσεν τὸ παιδίον ταῦτ[α] αὐτοῦ εἰρηκό[τος] πρὸτον Ἰωσὴφ εὐθέ[ως]

προσεγέλασεν αὐτ[ὸν] καὶ εἶπε. ἐπειδὴ ὀρθῶς ἐκρίν[ησας] καὶ ὀρθ[ῶς] ἐμαρτύ-
ρησ[ας] διὰ σὲ κἀκεῖνος ὁ πληγωθεὶς σωθήσεται καὶ παραχρῆμ[α] ἰάθη ὁ ἕτερος
καθηγητ[ής]. παρέλαβε δὲ Ἰωσὴφ τὸ παιδίον καὶ ἀπήγαγεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον
αὐτοῦ. ἔπεψεν τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τ[ὸν] Ἰάκωβον τοῦ δῆσαι ξύλ[α] καὶ ἐνέγκαι εἰς
τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ. ἠκολού[θει] δὲ τὸ παιδ[ίον] ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἐπεὶ ἔχει κρεμάσης[ε]
εἰς χειρὰς Ἰακώβου καὶ δαχθεὶς καὶ κατεφύσησε τὸ δῆγμα ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ὁ μὲν
ἐπάνθη τοῦ σπώρου ὁ δὲ ἦγουν τὸ θερίον διερράγη. ἐν τῇ γειτο[νίᾳ] τοῦ
Ἰωσὴφ ἄ νοσ[ῶν] τις ἀπέθανε καὶ ἔκλαιεν ἡ μή[τη]ρ αὐτοῦ σφόδρα. ἤκουσεν
δὲ ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ὅ[τι] πένθος μέγα καὶ θόρυβος γίνεται ἔδραμεν σπουδαῖος καὶ
εὑρ[ὼν] τὸ παιδίον νεκρ[ὸν] ἥψατο τοῦ στήθους αὐτοῦ καὶ λέγει αὐ[τῷ] σοὶ λέ
[γω] μὴ ἀποθάνῃς ἀλλὰ ζῆθι καὶ εὐθέ[ως] ἀνίστη καὶ προσεγήλασε. εἶπε δὲ τῇ
μ[ητ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ ἆρον τὸ τέκνον σου καὶ μνημόνευέ μου. ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ ὄχλ[ος] ὁ παρε-
στὼς ἐθαύμασεν καὶ εἶπ[εν] ἀληθῶς τοῦτο τὸ παιδ[ίον] ἢ Θ[εὸ]ς ἢ ἀγγελός ἐ[στιν]
ὅτι πᾶς λόγ[ος] αὐτοῦ ἔργον γί[νεται]. ἐξῆλθεν δὲ ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς, πάλιν καὶ ἔπαιζεν
με[τὰ] τῶν παίδων. μετὰ δὲ χρόνον τινὰ οἰκοδομῆς γενομ[ένης] ἔπεσεν
ἄν[θρωπ]ος ἀπὸ τῆς ἀναβάθρ[ας] κάτω, καὶ ἀπέθαν[εν] συνδρομ[ῆς] δὲ γε-
νομ[ένης] καὶ θορύβ[ου] μ[εγάλου] ἵστατο τὸ παιδ[ίον] ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς καὶ ἀπῆλθ[εν]
ἕ[ως] ἐκεῖ ἰδὼν δὲ τὸν ἄν[θρωπ]ον κείμ[ενον] νεκρ[ὸν] ἐπελάβετο τῆς χειρ[ὸς]
αὐτ[οῦ] καὶ εἶπ[εν] σύ λέγω ἄν[θρωπ]ε ἀνάστα ποίει τὸ ἔργον σου καὶ εὐθέ[ως]
ἀναστ[ὰς], προσεκύνης[εν] αὐτόν. οἱ δὲ ὄχλοι ἐκραύγασ[εν] λέγοντες. τοῦτο τὸ
παιδίον οὐ[ρά]νιόν ἐσ[τιν] πολλ[ὰς] γὰρ ψυχὰς ἔσωσ[εν] ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου καὶ
ἔχει σῶσ[αι] ἕ[ως] πάσ[ας] τ[ὰς] ἡμέ[ρας] τῆς ζω[ῆς] αὐ[τοῦ]. ὄντος δὲ αὐτ[οῦ]
[δωδεκατοῦς] ἔτης ἐπορεύοντο οἱ γονεῖς αὐτ[οῦ] κα[τὰ] τὸ ἔθο[ς] εἰς τὴν τοῦ
Πάσ[χα] ἑορτὴν μετὰ τῆς συνοδί[ας] αὐτ[ῶν] μετὰ λαβούντ[ο] τὸ Πάσ[χα]
ἀπέστρεφον εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτ[ῶν] ἐν δὲ ὑποστρέφ[ειν] αὐτοὺς ἀνῆλθεν Ἰ
[ησοῦ]ς ὁ π[αῖς] εἰς Ἱ[ερουσαλή]μ ἐνόμισαν δὲ αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ὄχλῳ εἶναι τῆς
συνοδί[ας]. μεταξύ δὲ ὁδεύσαντες ὁδὸν ἡμέ[ρας] μι[ᾶς] ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν ὄψε ἐν
τῇ συγγενεῦσιν αὐτὸν καὶ μὴ εὑρόντες αὐτὸν, ἐλυπήθησ[αν] καὶ ὑπέστρεψαν
εἰς τὴν πόλιν ζετοῦντες αὐτὸν καὶ ἐγένητο πρωῒ. καὶ μετὰ τὴν τρίτην ἡμέρ[αν]
εὗρον ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ αὐτὸν καθεζόμενον ἐν μέσῳ τῶν διδασκάλ[ων] καὶ ἀκού
[οντα] καὶ ἐρωτῶν[τα] περὶ ὧν ἐζήτουν γνῶναι περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἱ προσῆλθον πάν-
τ[ες] ἐθαύμαζον πῶς παιδί[ον] ὑπάρχ[ων] ἀπεστόμιζεν καὶ τούς πρεσβυτέρους καὶ
διδασκάλ[ους] τοῦ λαοῦ ἐπιλ[ύω]ν τὰ κεφάλ[αια] τ[οῦ] νόμου καὶ τὰς ῥῆσεις τῶν
προφητ[ῶν] προσελθοῦσα δὲ ἡ μή[τη]ρ αὐτοῦ Μαρία εἶπε τῷ Ἰ[ησο]ῦ ἴνα τί τέ-
κνον ἐποίησ[ας] ἡμῖν. ἰδοὺ ὠδυνόμ[ενοι] καὶ λυπούμενοι ἐζητοῦμέν σε. καὶ
εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἐν τ[οῖ]ς οἴκοις τοῦ π[ατ]ρ[ό]ς μου δεῖ
εἶναί με τί ἄρα ἐζητεῖτε με οἱ δὲ γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ φαρισαῖοι εἶπον. σὺ εἶ ἡ μή
[τη]ρ τοῦ παιδί[ου] τούτου ἡ δὲ εἶπ[εν] ἐγὼ εἰμὶ καὶ εἶπον αὐτὴν μακαρί[α] σὺ
ἐν γυναιξὶν ὅτι εὐλόγησ[εν] ὁ Θ[εὸ]ς τ[ὸν] καρπ[ὸν] τῆς κοιλία[ς] σου. Τοιαύτην
272 Appendix
γὰρ δόξ[αν] καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν οὔτε οἴδαμ[εν] οὔτε ἠκούσαμ[εν] πόπω[τε]. ἀναστὰς
δὲ ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς ἠκολούθησεν τῇ μ[ητ]ρὶ αὐτοῦ. καὶ ἦν ὑποτασσόμ[ενος] τοῖς γονεῦ
[σιν] αὐτοῦ. ἡ δὲ μή[τη]ρ αὐτοῦ διετήρ[ει] τὰ περὶ αὐτοῦ ὅσα ἐποίησ[εν] ὁ Ἰ
[ησοῦ]ς τὸ δὲ παιδίον ὁ Ἰ[ησοῦ]ς προέκοπτεν σοφίᾳ καὶ χάριτι καὶ ἐδοξάσθη
ὑπὸ θ[εο]ῦ παντοκράτ[ορος] αὐτῷ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας ἀμήν.
Slavonic manuscript Cod. 637, formerly in the National Library, Belgrade,

Serbia, Collection of P.S. Srećković (edition by Novaković)⁹⁹²
Младѣньство Господа Бога и спаса нашего Іс. Христа, отьче благослови!

Азь ϴома избраньныи Ісраильтѣнинь вьзвѣстихь вьсѣмь оть ѥзыкь,
братиѥ, видѣти дѣтьство, егда створи величнѩ Господь нашь Ісоусь Хрис-
тось, рожден се вь градѣ Назареθѣ ѡть дѣвы Мариѥ, иже града вла-
дычьства есть.
Тѣмь отроче и Господь бывь в лѣть и дьждоу бывьшоу играше вь мимо-
ходештихь рѣчицахь, одьждаѥть и текоушти водѣ моутьнѣи соушти сьбы-
раше ихь вь пишьце, и абиѥ ѩко дѣте твораше, а не дѣломь повелѣваѥ
ниѣмь. Абнѥ вьзьмь брѣниѥ оть землѥ меко, и створи оть нѥго ві пьтиць.
Бѣше бо соубота, егда твораше Ісоусь играѥ, и многыѥ дѣти бѣхоу тоу сь
нимь играюште. Видѣвь же ѥдинь оть Юдеи ѥже твораше Ісоусь играѥ
вь соуботоу, и шьдь рече отьцоу ѥго Иосифоу: Се отрокь твои играѥть
тамо вь рѣчицахь и вьзьмь каль и сьтвори оть нѥго ві пьтиць и
оскврьнѩѥть соуботы. Шьдь же Иосифь отьць ѥго на мѣсто, и видѣвь Ісо-
уса и вьзва и. И рече ѥмоу: Что створиши вь соуботоу, ихь же не достоить
творити? Ісоусь же вьсплескавь пьтицамь своимь, и рече имь: Вьзьлетѣте
вы и да ме поменете жива соушта. Тьгда вьзлетѣхоу пьтице и летѣхоу
поюште. И видѣвьше же Июдеиѥ и оужасоше се. И вь коупѣ шьдьше и
вьзвѣстише ниѣмь иже створи Ісоусь.
Сынь же Ианьны кьнижьника бѣше тоу стоѥ сь Ісоусомь и сь Иоси-
фомь. Вь ть чась вьзьмь вѣю врьбовоу и расыпа ѥмоу вирькь, и истекоше
воды изь нихь, иже си бѣ сьтвориль Ісоусь. И видѣвь Ісоусь разорениѥ ви-
ровь вьзьнѣгодовавь рече ѥмоу: Содомлѩнине нечисты и неразоумьны,
како те вьзненавидѣше мои вирьци и моѥ рѣчице? Нь да исьхиеши ѩко
и дрѣво и да не имаши ни листиѩ, ни плода своѥго. И абиѥ отрочишть
соухь бысть вь ть чась. Ісоусь же бѣжавь иде вь домь свои. Родителѩ же
 Novaković, “Apokrifi jednoga srpskog ćirilskog zbornika,” 36 – 92.

Appendix 273
ѥго пришьдьша вьзеста сь плачемь и глаголахоу Иосифоу: По что таково

отроче имаши?
И пакы гредоуштоу Ісоусоу скрозѣ градь и ино отроче текь сь зади
скочи ѥмоу на рамо. И абиѥ прогнѣва се Ісоусь, и рече ѥмоу: Да не
доидеши до дома своѥго. Тьгда абиѥ паде ниць отроче. И видѣвьше то
ини отроци, вьзоупише глаголюште: Откоудоу се отроче роди се, ѩко
слово вьсакоѥ ѥго на вьсако дѣло готово ѥсть. И пришьдьша родителѩ
падьшаго кь отьцоу ѥго Иосифоу и прѣштахоу, глаголюште: Откоудоу се
роди отроче се? Ѩко таково отроче имѣѥ, не можеши быти вь градѣ
семь; аште ли хоштеши жити сь нами, то оучи ѥго благословити, а не
клети дѣтеи нашихь.
Тьгда призва Иосифь отроче своѥ Ісоуса, и сице оучаше и, глаголѥ: По
что тако кльнѥши тоужднѥ дѣти и страждоуть сице и ненавидеть нась,
изьгонеть ны изь града сего. Тогда рече Ісоусь отьцоу своѥмоу: Азь вѣдь
сиѥ глаголи нѣсоуть мои, еже ты глаголѥши, обаче азь да прѣмлькноу
тебе ради, отьче. Онь же да приимоуть троуды своѥ. И абиѥ глаголюштеи
на нь ослѣпѣхоу и не видѣвьше не смѣѩхоу гнѣвати ѥго по семь. Оужась бо
великы нападе на нѥ, ѩко вьсако дѣло ѥго, ѥже рече, аште либо зло, либо
добро, то истина бываше. Тогда абиѥ видѣвь Иосифь что сьтвори, и ѥть
Ісоуса за оухо и протегноу и зѣло. И бѣхоу ини тоу сь ними играюште.
Отроче же Ісоусь вьзнегодовавь рече ѥмоу: Достоить ти, да иштеши
мене обрѣзати, отьче, разбоиниче мои, истиноу ты не вѣси ли, твои ли
ѥсмь азь? То и ты не оскрьблѩи мене, нь оубо твои ѥсмь сынь, ѩко кь
тебѣ придохь.
И оучитель етерь бѣше тоу стоѥ сь Иосифомь. Оуслыша Ісоуса глаго-
люшта кь отьцоу своѥмоу, и чоудѣше се зѣло, ѩко отроче таковаѩ словеса
глаголаше отьцоу своемоу. И бысть по мнозѣхь дьнехь, приде кь Исифоу и
глагола ѥмоу, ѩко добрь оумомь имаши дѣтишть твои и моудрь, приди и
прѣдаи ми ѥго, да наоучоу книгамь и вьсемоу наставлѥнию кьнижьномоу,
ѩко да разоумѣѥть вь старьцехь чьстьно, ѩко прадѣди и отьци, и любити
ѥго имамь сь кротостию, ѩкоже и вьсе сьврьстьникы ѥго, и боѩти се и
срамлѩ родитель своихь, ѩко да и тои вьзлюблѥнь боудеть оть родитель
своихь. Иосифь же прогнѣва се и рече: Оучителю, томоу кто можеть наоу-
чити ѥго, кто моу маломоу Христоу или мниши быти ѥго, брате мои!
Ѩкоже слыша отроче Ісоусь отьца своѥго рекьша то, насмиѩ се
вельми и рече Закьхѣю оучителю: Вьса, ѥлико ти рече отьць мои, истина
ѥсть, вьсемоу же Господь азь ѥсмь, а вы тоужди ѥсте, мнѣ бо ѥдиномоу
власть ѥсть дана оть Бога, ѩко азь прѣжде вѣкь ѥсмь и оть вѣка азь
ѥсмь, и вь вьса родих се и сь вами ѥсмь, или кто ѥсмь азь? Азь бо вѣмь
откоудоу вы ѥсте и кто ѥсте и како се ѥсте родили и колико ѥсть лѣть
274 Appendix
живота вашего. И вьсе ти истиноу глаголю, оучителю. Ѥгда же ты раж-

даше се, азь прѣдстоѩхь, и прѣжде рождениѩ азь знаю старьце. И аште
хоштеши сьврьшень быти оучитель, попослоушаи мене, и азь наоучоу те
прѣмоудрости, ѥже инь никто не вѣсть развѣ мене и пославьшаго ме кь
вамь, да наоучю вы. Азь бо ѥсмь тебѣ оучитель, а ты оубо оученикь
мьнѣ наречеши се, зане азь знаю оть коихь лѣть ѥси и колико лѣть живота
твоѥго ѥсть? Вь истиноу знаю. Егда хоштеши видѣти крьсть мои, ѥже рече
отьць мои, истина ѥсть. Вьсемоу азь ѥсмь Господь и отьць, вы же тоужди
ѥсте, ѩко тогда и до вѣка тьжде ѥсмь азь.
Соушти же тоу Иоудеиѥ слышеште словеса та и дивлѩхоу се. И вьзо-
упивьше вельми и рекоше: О новоѥ чюдо, понѥже, ѩко е. лѣть ѥсть отро-
чете сего и се такыѥ рѣчи глаголѥть, таковыѥ бесѣды николиже не знаю
рекьше арьхиѥрею; законодавьца и оучителѩ и кьнижьника ни оу Фари-
сеи не бѣ такова, ѩкоже отроче се ѥсть. Отвѣштавь Ісоусь рече имь:
Вьси вы чюдите се, нь паче не разоумѣѥте и не вѣроуѥте, вь истиноу
вѣдь кьгда родисте се вы и отьци ваши прѣславьно глаголахоу вамь. Вь
истиноу азь знаю пославьшаго ме кь вамь, и ѥгда вь мирь сьздань
бысть. Слышавьше же Июдеиѥ како бесѣдоуѥть и ничесоже не вьзьмогоу
отвѣштати и. Пришьдь же отроче Ісоусь сказаше играѥ и роугаѥ се имь,
глаголаше, зане ихь вѣдѣше мало чюдьнѣхь и мало разоумьныхь, ѩкоже
слава вь мнѣ вьмѣнѩше се на оутѣшениѥ отрочетоу.
Рече же оучитель отьцоу ѥго Иосифоу: Приведи ѥго, да се оучить вь
оучилишти, и азь да наоучю ѥго книгамь. Иосифь же отьць ѥго ѥмь Ісоуса
за роукоу, и приведе и вь оучилиште, и написа ѥмоу арьфа вита, и начеть
сказати ѥмоу множицею. Онь же мльчаѩше и не послоушаше ѥго чась
голѣмь. И прогнѣвавь се оучитель и заоуши ѥго. Тьгда рече отроче Ісоусь:
Недостоино твориши. Азь хоштоу тебѣ казати, а или хоштоу оть тебе нака-
зань быти. Тьгда пакы начеть ѥго оучити дидаскаль. И сказа ѥмоу: арьфа.
Ісоусь же рече ѥмоу: Да рьци ты: Виθа, вѣмь оубо азь книгы, имь же ме
хоштеши оучити, а ты много осоуждаѥши се, ѩко ты оубо рече ѩко
мѣдь звьнешти и ѩко кумьваль звецаюшти, ѩко не прѣставеть се горы
гласове прѣмоудростию ни доуши си лоуны разоума.
И прѣмлькноу отроче, ѩко рече вьсоу крамолоу и оть арьфа до ωмега
и многымь истьзаниѥмь сь гнѣвомь вьзрѣвь на дидаскала. И рече ѥмоу: Ты
арьфоу не вѣси по законоу и не оумѣѥши людь како оучити лицемѣре.
Аште арьфоу знаѥши, то вѣроуи о виθѣ. И паче начеть отроче прѣпирати
дидаскала о замышлѥни прьвомь писани. Тьгда иже бѣхоу слышали глаго-
ланѩ та, глаголахоу Закьхею оучителю: Разоумѣи прьвога стиха чинь и ра-
зоумѣи како имать правило. Вьтореи чрьтѣ ѥже по срѣдѣ видиши, створи,
и миноухь заданиѩ та. И вьзвышахоу глаголюште хвалоу триоупостасноу
Appendix 275
оть двою ѥстьствоу ѥдинообразьноу и ѥдинодрьжавьноу, равьночьстноу

стоѥштоу. И равно правило имѣѥ арьфа. Ѩкоже бо слыша дидаскаль Закь-
хеи таковыѥ рѣчи оть отрочета испрьва оть прьваго закона ѩкоже рече
вьсоу истиноу и немѣѩхоу како отвѣштати о оучени ѥго.
И рече: О горѣ мьнѣ, изоумихь се азь оканьны, голѣмоу срамотоу
имамь. И рече: Вьзми брате Иосифе, и отведи ѥго тамо, ѩко паче тои оу-
чить нась. Не трьплю бо красоты видѣниѩ ѥго и добрьныхь словесь ѥго.
Вь истиноу отроче се нѣсть оть земльныхь. Се ти отроче може те огнь
оумоучити, нь обаче древлѥ строѥниѥ мира сего нѣсть. Каѩ ложесна нар-
оди ѥго? Коѩ ли мати вьздои ѥго? Азь бо не знаю ѥго. О горѣ мьнѣ дроузи
мои? Забыхь се и не имаю оума своѥго, прѣльстихь бо се много безоумны и
страстьны азь. Вьсхотѣхь бо, да имамь себѣ оученика, и обрѣтохь себѣ оу-
чителѩ. И помышлѩю оубо срамотоу мою, ѩко азь младь бѣхь и пакь
сьстарѣхь се; имамь бо злобоу оть отрочета сего, нь азь да оумроу за
нѥго, не могоу бо вьзырати на лице ѥго паче и вьсѣмь видештимь ѥго,
ѩко побѣждень быхь оть дѣтишта млада. Како имамь решти или повѣдати
комоу о прѣложеньныхь ми правилѣхь, прьваго стиха не разоумѣю бо, о
друзи, зачела бо оучениѩ ни коньца не знаю, мнозѣ бо правдѣ достоино
ѥсть отроче се, нь вьзьми ѥго, брать Иосифе, и отведи ѥго вь домь свои,
сиѥ бо отроче велико ѥсть, либо ѥсть Богь, либо аггель, не знаю оубо,
како ѥго нарекоу, Июдеиѥ же прѣдстоѩхоу ти.
Тьгда вьсмиѩ се вельми отроче Ісоусь и рече: азь плодь принесоу ти о
всѣхь за здравиѥ, да прозроуть слѣпи, и глоуси прослышоуть и неразо-
умьин срьдцемь разоумьни да боудоуть, ѩко азь сь выше ѥсмь, да нижь-
ныхь избавлю и на высотоу вьзьведоу ихь, ѩкоже заповѣда ми пославы
ме отьць кь вамь. Ѩкоже прѣста отроче глаголати слово, тьгда абиѥ спа-
сени бывьше о нихь же глаголаше Ісоусь, иже падохоу оть клетвы за-
коньныѥ Ісоусовы. И никтоже отолѣ не смѣѩше гнѣвати ѥго, да не пакы
прокльнеть ихь и боудоуть неключими вьси.
По дьнехь же инѣхь вьзигра Ісоусь на здани высоцѣ, и ѥдинь оть дѣтеи
еврѣискыхь вьзигра сь Ісоусомь на полатѣ высоцѣ и спаде оть закрылиѩ
еврѣискоѥ дѣте, и оумрѣть. Видѣвьше же ини отроци бѣжахоу, и абиѥ
оста единь Ісоусь. И придоста родителѩ ѥго оумрьшаго отрочета: Таро-
хою, глаголюште, ты сврьже наю сына. Ісоусь же рече: Нѣсмь ѥго сврьгль
азь, нь самь скочи оть закрылиѩ и ѥсть мрьтво отроче ваю. Тьгда вьзвавь
абиѥ Ісоусь отроче: Зиноѥ, Зиноѥ, вьстани (тако бо бѣше име оумрьшо-
моу), вьстани и рьци, аште те свалихь ѩ. И вьскрьсе отроче и рече: Ни,
Господи мои. И вьси видѣвьше дивлѩхоу се. Родителѩ же отрочете про-
слависта Бога о бывьшихь ѥго чюдесехь и поклониста се Богоу.
276 Appendix
И пакы же, не по мнозѣхь дьнехь, юноша ѥтерь, сѣкоушти дрьва вь

соусѣдѣхь и оудари се сѣкырою и отсѣче пласоу оть ногы своѥ и оужасе
се, и начеть оумирати. Мльва же бысть и стекоше се людиѥ и тече Ісоусь.
И тече Ісоусь, идеже бѣ юноша ть и приде скозѣ народь едьва. И ѥть ѥго за
ногоу и оусѣченоу и абиѥ цѣла бысть нога болештаго. Рече же Ісоусь
юноши: Вьстани, и сѣци дрьва и помени ме Ісоуса. Народи же видѣвьше
и поклонише се Ісоусоу и рекоше: вь истиноу оубо Богь вь нѥмь живеть.
Бывьшоу же Ісоусоу вь .ѕ. лѣть посла ѥго мати Мариѩ на водоу, да ѥи
донесеть водоу вь домь. И ниспоуштаюштоу ѥмоу скоудельникь вь народѣ
же стлькноувьшоу се, и разби се. Ісоусь же прострь ризоу свою, вь ню же
бѣ обльчень, и напльни ю воды, и принесе матери своѥи. Видѣвьши же
мати ѥго Мариѩ знамениѩ, ѩже сьтвори Ісоусь и приѥмьши облобыза
и матерскыи и блюдѣше ѥго.
Егда бысть пакы вь врѣме сѣдьбѣ, иде сь отьцемь своимь Иосифомь, да
сѣѥта пьшеницоу на нивѣ своѥи. И ѥгда сѣѩше отьць ѥго, тьгда отроче
Ісоусь вьсѣѩ мѣроу пьшенице. И пожеть Иосифь обрьше и обрѣть ρ.
мѣрь великыхь и призва Иосифь вьсе оубогыѥ и дасть имь пьшеницоу
на гоумьнѣ своѥмь. И самь Иосифь вьзеть оть пшенице, еже сѣѩ Ісоусь.
Бѣше же отроче Ісоусь вь то врѣме .и. лѣть.
Бѣше нѣкто богать зѣло, и вьзва Иосифа, да и маисторьство
дрѣводѣльноѥ сьдѣла ѥмоу, ѩкоже хоштеть Егьдоусь. И бысть ѥдино
дрѣво кроупо, ѥже хотѣше прагь быти. И оскрьбѣ Иосифь зѣло. Тьгда
рече Ісоусь отьцоу своѥмоу: Положи обѣ дрѣвѣ на земли тькьмо. И ѥть Ісо-
усь за окраштеньноѥ дрѣво и протегьноу и. И абиѥ равьно сьтвори дроу-
гомоу дрѣвоу. И рече Иосифоу отьцоу своѥмоу: не скрьби, нь сьтвори
ѩкоже хоштеши. Иосифь же приѥмь облобыза, и рече вь себѣ: Благослов-
лѥнь ѥсмь азь, ѩко сико отроче дасть ми Богь.
Видѣвь же Иосифь поспѣшениѥ и вьзрасть отрочетоу и прѣмоудрость
и помысли пакы ѩко книгы не оумѣѥть, и ведь прѣдасть ѥго дроугомоу
дидаскалоу. И рече дидаскаль: коимь книгамь хоштеши да оучю ѥго. Ио-
сифь же рече: прѣжде елиньскымь, по томь еврѣискымь. Знаѩше бо
дидаскаль отрочета того законь и боѩше се оть нѥго. И написа ѥмоу
арьфа вита, и прооучаше ѥго, глаголѥ: арьфа, и пакь глагола ѥмоу:
виθа. И не отвѣшта ѥмоу, нь рече ѥмоу: аште оучитель ѥси и знаѥши
добрѣ, рьци ми арьфа силою, и азь тьгда рекоу ти о виθѣ. Тьгда прогнѣва
се дидаскаль ть и оудари Ісоуса вь главоу. Ісоусь же негодовавь проклеть
дидаскала того, и абиѥ изнемогь паде ниць. Ісоусь же вьставь иде вь домь
свои. Иосифь же отьць ѥго оскрьби се зѣло и запрѣти матери ѥго глаголѥ:
не поуштаи ѥго, жено, на дворь изь домоу, ѩко да не страждоуть сице
гнѣваюште его.
Appendix 277
Пакы же на ино лѣто рече дроугы дидаскаль искрьни Иосифоу: греди

и приведи ѥго вь казательство, еда быхь азь могль оутолить ѥго, и ласка-
юште наоучю ѥго книгамь и врачебьнымь боуквамь. Тьгда рече Иосифь:
како дроугыѥ дары принесоу оучителю ѥго? Врачь же начеть оучити
ѥго, и показа ѥмоу былиѩ врачебнаѩ. Бѣше чловѣкь ть единѣмь окомь
слѣпь и приде врачевати око ѥдно. Тьгда Ісоусь видѣвь отроче и рече
ѥмоу: како ѥдно око приде врачевати, а о гледаюштимь како не радиши?
И се рекьшоу Ісоусоу отьѥть се зѣница цѣлаго ока, и бысть ѥмоу болѣзнь
велика зѣло, ѩко искаше вожда себѣ. Ісоусь же косноу се очию ѥго, и доу-
ноу на лице ѥго, ицѣли очи ѥго; и прозрѣ. И принесе дары и дасть оучи-
телю ѥго.
Врачь же видѣвь чловѣка обѣ очи имоушта и не позна ѥго и не домы-
сли се о дарѣхь, комоу принесе ихь, и рече ѥмоу: кто ѥси ты иже ми тако-
ваѩ принесеши, ѩко азь не знаю тебе. Онь же рече: знаѥши ли чловѣка
едино око имоушта, иже оть тебѣ ицѣлѩ. Почюдивьше се врачь и рече
ѥмоу: каковымь образомь ицѣлѩ, едино бо око врачеваше и обѣ ти
бысть больнѣ и не видѣѩше сь нима не болѣвьшомоу здравомоу. Онь же
истиноу вьзвѣштаѥ и рече ѥмоу: добрымь твоимь оученикомь Ісоусомь
обѣ исцѣлѣстѣ. Врачь же разоумѣвь ѩко ничесоже оуспѣ о рѣчехь тѣхь,
и пакы вьпроси ѥго. Онь же истиньнаѩ дѣла сказа ѥмоу: Ѩко прѣжде
не обрѣтохь тебе, придохь тебе искати, и наидохь добраго оученика твоѥ-
го Ісоуса. Отвѣштавь ми и рече: чюждоу ти се, чловѣче, како зрештомоу
окоу не сматраѥши, нь о гледаюштимь потрѣбоу иштеши. Азь бо слышавь
рѣхь: То что могоу смотрити. Онь же рече: аште хоштоу, да исцѣлю те. И
вьставь доуноу на ме, и косноу се очию моѥю, и затвореньноѥ око моѥ
отврьзе и больноѥ ицѣли. Врачь же вьставь и измывь пльно ѥже гоушти
и очисти ѥго. Иосифа же призва нареченьнаго отьца Ісоусова и рече
ѥмоу: поими сына своѥго и отведи ѥго тамо, ть бо врачьство чловѣкомь
имать разорити. Вьзеть же Иосифь отроче своѥ Ісоуса и отведе и вь
домь свои.
Вь дроугы же дьнь посла Иосифь сына своѥго Иѩкова да свезавь дрьва
донесеть вь домь свои. Идоуштоу же ѥмоу и сьбыраюштоу дрьва идѣѩше
Ісоусь изь далече по нѥмь. И се зьмиѩ люта оусѣкноу Иѩкова вь роукоу, и
оцѣпѣнѣвь паде. И иьглоу се и приближи се Ісоусь кь нѥмоу, и доуноу на
оуѩдениѥ его, тьгда адь ослабѣ ѥмоу, а звѣрь оумреть.
Ино же пакы отроче оумрѣ вь соусѣдѣхь, и плакаше се мати ѥго. Слы-
шавь же Ісоусь плачь велеи, тече абиѥ, и видѣ отроче лежешта мрьтва на
лонѣ матере своѥѥ. Коусноу се прьсехь ѥго и рече: тебѣ глаголю,
дѣтиштоу, не оумираи, нь живь боуди и матери своѥи. Тьгда абиѥ вьскло-
ни се отроче и вьсмиѩвь се кь Ісоусоу, и рече Ісоусь кь женѣ: вьзми си
278 Appendix
дѣтишта своѥго и даждь сьсь ѥмоу, и помени ме Ісоуса. Видѣвьше же нар-

оди дивише се и глаголахоу: сиѥ отроче либо ѥсть Богь, либо ѥсть аггель
прѣбываѥи вь нась, ѩко вьсако слово ѥго на вьсако дѣло готово ѥсть.
Приде же Ісоусь оть тоудоу, вь дроугоѥ же лѣто сьзданию творимоу,
спаде чловѣкь сь высоты и оумрѣть. Стече же се народь многь и веиль
бысть велеи. Слышавь же Ісоусь тече тамо. И видѣ чловѣка мрьтва ле-
жешта. И ѥмь ѥго за роукоу десноую и рече ѥмоу: тебѣ глаголю, чловѣче,
вьстани, и твори дѣло твоѥ. Видѣвьше же народи дивише се и рѣше: се
отроче сь небесь ѥсть, многыѥ бо доуше спасе оть смрьти, и спасти
имать до живота своѥго.
Бывьшоу же Ісоусоу вь .ві. Лѣть вьзидоста родителѩ ѥго по обычаю вь
црьквь вь Ероусалимь вь празьникь пасцѣ сь дроужиною. И приѥмьша пас-
коу вьзвратиста се вь домь свои. Тьгда отроче Ісоусь оставь вь Ѥроуса-
лимѣ, и не знаѩста родителѩ ѥго что створи Ісоусь. Мнѣста же: вь родѣ
ѥсть вь дроужниѣ. И на срѣдѣ поути шьствиѩ дьнь ѥдинь искаста ѥго ве-
черь вьрождени. И бысть оутро, и не обрѣтаста ѥго родителѩ. И вьзвра-
тиста се пакы вь Ѥроусалимь скрьбешта. И вьзискаста ѥго. По трехь же
дьнехь обрѣтоста ѥго вь црькви сѣдешта посрѣдѣ оучитель. И послоу-
шаста родиелѩ ѥго, како прѣпираше се. И вьпрашахоу его о нѥмь же
хотѣхоу разоумѣти. И вьноушахоу вьси слышештеи глаголаниѩ та, и чюж-
дахоу се вьси како отроче прѣпираѥть старьце людскыѥ оучителе и
раздрѣшаѥ имь вьсакоу правьдоу законьноую и причахь чловѣчьскыхь.
И по томь глагола Июдеомь: Гдѣ соуть дроузи мои, да играимь. Они же
бѣхоу затворили вь хыжи. Исоусь же вь врата тькноувь и благословивь
рече: да боудоуть свиниѥ. Егда же родителиѥ отврьзоше чеда своѩ,
тьгда излѣзьше крьтеште коѥждо на страноу.
Пришьдьши бо мати ѥго Мариѩ и рече кь нѥмоу: по что нама сиѥ сьт-
вори, чедо, се бо скрьбешта и болешта иштевѣ тебѣ. Рече же Исоусь: что
искаста мене, ли не вѣста, ѩко иже соуть отьца моѥго и мнѣ вь тѣхь подо-
баѥть быти. Кьнижьници же и фарисеиѥ рѣше кь матери ѥго: ты ли ѥси
мати отрочета сего? Она же рече: азь ѥсмь. И рѣше ѥи: благословлѥиьна
ты ѥси вь женахь, и благословлень плодь оутробы твоѥ. Таковыѥ бо славы
и таковыѥ дѣли и прѣмоудрости таковыѥ не видѣхомь. Вьставь же Ісоусь и
иде вь слѣдь матере своѥ, и бѣ повиноуѥ се родителѥма своима. Мати же
ѥго сьблюдаше (вьсе) ѥлико твораше величиѩ и слагаше вь срьдьци
своѥмь. Ісоусь же спѣше прѣмоудростию и тѣломь и благодѣтию и
ицѣленимь прославивьшомоу вьса оть Бога отьцоу и сыноу и светомоу
доухоу, Богоу нашемоу слава.
Appendix 279
Slavonic manuscript Cod. 162, Russian State Historical Museum, Moscow,

Collection of A. I. Hludov, fol. 200v-206r
Чтениѥ дѣтьства Іс[уса] Х[ристо]ва, w[тьче] бл[а]г[осло]ви

Азь ϴѡма Ис[раи]льтѣнинь избраннѣ вьзвѣстихь вамь всѣмь вь градѣ
їер[осо]л[и]мѣ еже творааше г[оспод]ь нашь Іс[оусь] Х[ристос]ь знамениа
и чюдеса. рождеи се вь странѣ жидовсцѣмь виθлеωмѣ. Вь градѣ Назарѣте.
Бѣше же влчьстви томь ωтроче триимь лѣтомь. и дьждевомь бывшиимь.
играаше ωтроче Іс[оусь]. вь мимотекоущиихь рѣчицахь дьждевниих. и
потекоше води моутны. И сьбирааше Іс[оусь] вь виркови. и твораше ихь
чисти. Словомь ты смо, а не дѣломь и вьземь брениѥ мекко. и створи
птиць. Бѣ же соубота, егда творааше Іс[оусь] играе и мнѡги дѣти бѣхоу с
нимь играюще. Видѣвше же їюдеие и шдьше повѣдаше їѡсїфоу ѡцоу его.
ѡтрокь твои творить игре. вьземь брение мекко и сьтвори ві птиць. Его
же не до[сто]ить творити. И оскврьнити соуботи. И пришьд Їѡсїфь на
мѣсто, и призва І[соу]са и г[лаго]ла емоу. Почто твориши вь соуботоу,
ихь же не до[сто]ить творити. І[соу]с же плесьнь роукама и вьзоупи г[ла-
го]ль и бл[а]г[осло]ви. Гл[аголи]ѥ имь идѣте вьзлетите. и помните ме
жива соуща. Зовоуще ви ви. И видѣвше Їюдеиє и оужасоше се. И шдьше
вьзвѣстише ниѣмь еже видѣше вь знамени еже сьтвори І[соу]сь с[и]нь
б[о]жии. И се видѣвь, іже бѣ книжникь тоу стое сь Їѡсїфомь. И вьзьмь
вѣхь врьбовь и оудари вь виркови, и истекоше води еже бѣше сьбраль І
[соу]сь. И видѣвь отроче и негодова. Содомлѩнине, нечтиви и неразо-
умны. Что вьзобидоше виркови мои та ихь разкази и се да исьхиеши
ѩко тои дрѣво. Да не принесеши плода ни корѣне. И абыѥ исьше отрокь
вь ть ча[с] и падесе. І[соу]сь же иде вь дом свои. И родителѩ же ѡслаблен-
нааго приидоста плачющасе ѡтрочета своего. И рекоста Їѡсїфоу виждь си
ѡтроче каково имаши. И пакы идѣше скрозѣ гра[д] ино же ѡтроче текь вьс-
кочи на рамо его. И разгнѣва се отроче І[соу]сь и рече. Да не вьзвратиши
се поздравоу ѩмо же идѣши, и абыє падь издьше. Тог[д]а видѣвше дроузи
с нимь бывше чюдише се и рекоше ѡ[т]коу[д] се ѡтроче. ѩко слово его и
дѣло готово ѥ[сть] и пришь[д]ша родителѩ его па[д]шааго и запрѣщаста
гл[агол]юще таково ѡтроче имѣє не можеши быти с нами з[д]е вь градѣ
семь. аще ли наоучи его вльсвити а не клети. наше дѣти иско[у]сни тво-
рити. И призва Їѡсїфь ѡтроче ѡ таинно г[лаго]ль. Чедо почто тако кль-
неши. И рьпщоуть на на[с] людие вси. И изгонет ни изь гра[д] сего. и
ре[че] ѡтроче І[соу]сь. Гла[с] мои нѣ[с] ѩко гл[а]сь ихь. Ѡбаче тебе рада
оумльчоуть. Они же да приимоуть троуды ихь. И потомь оубоаше се. И
не смѣахоу гнѣвати єго. Ѩко вьсь гла[с] еже ре[че] збивает се емоу. Или
золь или добрь. И разгнѣва се Їѡсїфь на І[соу]са. И еть его за власи и поте-
280 Appendix
заше зѣло цепено. І[соу]сь негодова. Докле стрти искати мене и неѡбрѣта-
ти. разбоиниче ег[д]а истинине веси твои ли ѥсмь азь. Аще ли то не гнѣваи
мене. Обаче твои ѥсмь к тебѣ приидохь. Оучител бѣ тоу стое именемь зак-
хеи. слишавь І[соу]са сїце гл[агол]юща кь ѡ[т]цоу си. и чюди се зѣло. И
ре[че] ѩко ѡтроче се таково гл[агол]ѥть. Не по мнозѣхь днехь прииде кь
Їѡсїфоу закхеи г[лаго]ла емоу. ѩко смисльно и разоумно ѡтроче имаши
да прѣдаи ми его да га наоучю книгамь и всемоу наставлению. Еже посло-
ушати емоу старце. И почести всакого и родителѥ боѩти се и почитати. И
срамлѩти се ихь. Ѩко ктѡ ѡ[т] своихь чедь почтань боудеть. Їѡсїфь же
ре[че] кь оучителю да кто можеть мла[д] соуща хитра. Смѣрен бо ѥ[ст] и
кротькь. Паче всакиихь си. Ѩкоже слыша І[соу]сь оца своего сице г[лаго]-
ла. Вьсмѣа се и ре[че] закхеѡви вса ѥже ти ре[че] ѡ[т]ць мои истина ѥ[сть]
ѩко вьсѣмь азь ѥсмь г[оспо]дь. ви же тоуж[д]и ѥсте. Ѩко мнѣ единомоу да
се всака вла[сть] ѩко азь прьвѣивась есьмь и прьвѣи вась родих се. Ви же
не вѣсте ѡ[т]коу[д] есмь азь вѣде вась ѡ[т]коу[д] есте и ког[д]а родисте се и
колико лѣть ѥ[сть] живота вашего. Истиноу оучителю гл[агол]ѥ. Ег[д]а ты
роди се, ѩ прѣ[д]стоѩхь прѣ[д] б[о]г[о]мь попрѣди всего мира. Азь вѣди
истиноу. И ти оучителю аще хошеши сьврьшень быти, ты вьпрашаи
мене, и азь те наоучю всакои прѣмоудрости. юже не вѣсть никто развѣ
мене пославшааго ме кь вамь. да и аз наоучю вась. Вь истиноу оучитель
есмь. ты же оучитель нарицаеши се мнѣ. Понѥже азь вѣде. колико лѣть
имаши. Ег[д]а же оузриши кр[с]та моего. Его же ре[че] ѡ[ть]ць мои.
Тог[д]а разоумѣеши. Ѩко вса елико ти рекохь, истина соуть. И всемоу
азь б[ог]ь ѥсмь. И ви же тоуж[д]и ѥсте. Слышавьше же їюдеие г[лаго]ли
їс[оусо]ви. Дивише се гл[агол]юще ѡ прѣдивноѥ ч[оуд]ю. То поне тре[х]
лѣть нема ѡтроче се а такова гл[агол]ѥть. Таковѣхь бо словесь не
слишахѡ[м] николиже. законоу оучителѩ и фарисеа. Ѩкоже отроче се
гл[агол]ѥть. Ѡ[т]вѣща имь гл[агол]ѥ: Вси ви чюдите се. А не вѣроуете.
Ѩко азь рѣхь вамь истино[у]. И послави ме истиньнь ѥ[сть]. Егда мирь
вьсь небезде. Нь азь прѣди всего мира бѣхь. Слышавше же їюдеие такови
гл[агол]ы и оубоаше се. Никто же вьзможе ѡ[т]вѣщати емоу. И ѡш[д]ьши-
ихь ѡтрочеть. Играахоу ра[д]ваахоу се. И досаж[д]аше гл[агол]ь. Понеже
азь вѣде ѩко чюдни ѥсте. и маломощни есте. Ѩко слава вьмѣнѩше се,
на поспѣшение ѡтрочете. И ре[че] оучитель кь ѡ[ть]цоу его. Приведи его
вь наказание. И азь наоучю его книгамь. Їѡсїфь же емь дѣтища и веде
его кь оучителю. Оувещаваѥ ї[соу]са. и написа емоу азь вѣде. и наче оучи-
тель прѣди гл[агол]ати. Рьци. Азь. Многоущи ре[че] р[е]ци. І[соу]с же не
провѣща емоу вь единь ча[с]. И прогнѣва се оучитель и оудари его по
главѣ. И ре[че] емоу ѡтроче. Недостоина сьтвори. Азь тебѣ хощоу оучити,
а паче ли хощоу ѡ[т] тебе наказань быти. Азь книги оумею все. Имиже ме
Appendix 281
оучиши. И ниѩ ли та могоуть ме ѡсоуидити. И тие мнѣ нѣсоуть. Ѩко мѣдь

звьнещи. Или коумбаль звецающи. Ви же гла[с] неимате. Ни прѣмоудрос-
ти. ни д[оу]ши сїлныи разоума. Рекь сице прѣмльче ѡтроче. рекь вьсоу гра-
мата. Ѡт азь дое ѩсно. Вьзрѣвь ї[соу]сь на оучителѩ закхеа. И ре[че] ты не
вѣси що е азь. Ащо ли боукви. Понеже не вѣси лице мѣ[т]ре. Да како ме
оучиши книгамь. Аще ли вѣси то да скажи ми чтѡ ѥ[ст]ь ѥ. Иначе прори-
цати оучителю си. Слыши оучителю и разоумѣи. Азь. Авь стоухне. И ре[че]
закхеи кь ѡтрочетоу. Недоразоумѣю се таковомоу ѡ[т]вѣтоу чтѡ рещи. Сьт-
ворихь себѣ и срамотоу ѡбрѣтохь. Нь поими си їѡсїфе. Отроче свое вь домь
свои. Не трьпе оугледати быстро ти его. И пѣсньнихь его словесь. Виж[д]оу
бѡ ѩко нѣ[с] сеи ч[е]л[о]в[е]кь ѡт земльныихь. себо ѡгнемь мощьныимь
моучитныи. и азь се емоу чюж[д]оу се ѡ[т]коу[д] ѥ[сть] коѩ ли м[а]тре ло-
жесна родише его. И азь подвизах се имѣти оученика и ѡбрѣтох си оу-
чителѩ. Бе промишлѩи срамотоу мою ѩко ѡ[т] детища посрамлень
бы[х]. Стар си и ниѩ имамь ѡзлоблень оумрѣти ѡ[т] сего ѡтрочете. Не
моги соущи налище его зрѣти. Что хощоу сьтворити. Или чтѡ хощо[у]
комоу повѣдати. Ѡт прѣ[д]ложениихь ми правилѣхь вьпрьвне стоухиѥ.
Ни зачела ни конца не вѣде что ѥ[сть]. Приими брате и веди ѥ вь домь
свои. Себо нѣщо ѥ[сть] ли бо б[ог]ь ли бо агг[е]ль. Или нѣщо ѥ[сть] велико
не веде с юдеωм же прѣдьстоещимь оу закхеа. Вьсми асе ѡтроче ї[соу]сь
ниѩ принести плоды и непло[д]ные и слѣпы прозреть. И глоуси слишеть
и неразоумни ср[д]цемь разоумѣють. Ѩко азь ѡ[т]вышныихь есмь. Да вась
нищнихь избавлю. Инавысотоу позовоу ѩкоже заповѣда вамь. Послави ме
кь вамь. Ѩкоже прѣста ѡтроче гл[агол]е и сп[а]сени быше они же вси
падоше клетвы ради да ѡ[т] или не смѣаше гнѣвати его да не кльне
тьихь. И потомь играаше ѡтро[че] ї[соу]с на единомь здани висоце. И
едино ѡт отрочеть с нимь играаше. Испаде се ѡ[т] двое кровника и
оумрѣ[ть]. И видѣвше ини дѣти и бѣшаахоу ѡ[т] тоу[д]. ї[соу]с стое единь
тоу. И приидоста родителѩ падьшааго ѡтрок[а]. И кричаста на ї[соу]са.
Ѩко ты сьврьже ѡтроче наше. ї[соу]с же ре[че] не азь сьврьгохь. Нь ѡнь
свали се не истовство дѣе. Искочи ѡ[т] двое кровника. И ѥ[сть] мрьтьвь.
Тог[д]а ї[соу]с на ѡтроче гл[аголи]ѥ на име емоу зине вьстани. Азь ли те
сьврьгохь. И вьста ѡтроче ѡ[т] сьмрьти. Ни г[оспо]ди мои. Тог[д]а видѣвше
вси и дивише се. А родителѩ его прослависта гра[д]. И поклонише се нар-
оди ї[соу]соу. И покаже не по мнозѣхь днехь. Юноша етерь зцѣпеше дрьва
в соусѣде[х]. И прѣсече си ногу. И наче оумирати. И мльве же бывши исте-
чению. Ѡтроче же ї[соу]с провре се скрозѣ народи. Неть его заврѣдноую
ногоу. И ре[че] ем[оу] тебе юноше гл[агол]ю вьстани цѣпи дрьжа. И помени
ме. Народи же видѣвше знамение бывшее. И поклонише се ї[соу]соу. И ре-
коше вьйстиноу ѩко б[ог]ь с нимь живе[т]. И соущоу ї[соу]соу скончашоу ƨ
282 Appendix
лѣть. И м[а]ти его марїа поиде на водоу вьзьмь сь соудь вь народѣ. И тльк-
ноувши и разби водонось. ї[соу]с же простьрь рїзоу вь ню же бѣ ѡбльчень.
И испльнию води. И несе м[а]т[е]ри и видѣвши м[а]т[р]и его еже сьтвори ї
[соу]с и лоби злего и паки изиде ї[соу]с сь ѡцемь своимь да сѣе пшеницоу
на нивѣ. И сѣа ѡ[т]ць его и сѣа господь единь. И поже и створи .р. кьбьль
пшенице великыихь и призва ї[соу]с все оубогие и нищие. На гоумно и
раз[д]а имь седбоу ѡтрочета. Сьврьши же ѡ[т]роче .и. лѣ[ть]. И ѡцоу его
хитроу соушоу и дѣлающоу нѣкомоу богатоу соушоу. И оукрати се едино-
моу ѡ[т] правиль нарицаемыи нилать. И неимоущиимь мѣри. И вь спеча-
лова їѡсїфь зѣло. И ре[че] емоу ї[соу]с положи долоу обѣ дрѣвѣ. И стани
на краи. И ѡбѣ дрѣвѣ сьтвори равне. И сьтвори ѩкоже повелѣ емоу ї
[соу]с. И ет се за кратко дрѣво и потеза его равно сьтвори сь дроугыимь.
И ре[че] ѡцоу си неснелити сьтворихь ѩкоже хощеши. Їѡсїфь же приѥмь
дѣтища и лобзл его. И ре[че] си в себѣ бл[а]жень ѥсмь азь с тобою. Ѩко та-
ково ѡтроче да[с] ми ѣ г[оспод]ь. И видѣв же їѡсїфь спѣхь и вьзрасть и моу-
дро ѡтрочета и пакы помь если е дати ѩко да не боуде не вѣдещеѥ книгы
и ведь и прѣда иномоу оучителю. И ре[че] оучитель кь їѡсїфоу коимь кни-
гамь хощешь да наоучю е и ре[че] емоу їѡсїфь прѣж[д]е грьчесыимь по-
томь иевреискои и видѣв же оучитель ї[соу]са хїтра соуща и прѣмоудра.
И наче боати се. И написа ѥмоу азь вѣде и прѣди гл[агол]аше азь. ї[соу]с
же ре[че] понѥмь. Пакы же оучитель ре[че] надль зѣвѣде. ї[соу]с не глагола
по немь. И потомь ре[че] ї[соу]с емоу. Аще оучитель еси и вѣси добрѣ.
Повѣждь ми азоу сьль. Азь рекь вѣде разгнѣва се оучитель. И оудари его
по главѣ. Ѡтроче же ї[соу]с прогнѣва се, и проклеть его. И падесе изне-
моги. ї[соу]с же иде вь домь свои. Їѡсїфь же ѡскрьбѣ зѣло. И запрѣти
м[а]т[е]ри его г[лаго]ли. Не испоущаи его изь домоу. Ѩко да не
страж[д]оуть гнѣвающи его. И вь дроузѣм же л[ѣт]ь дроугы оучитель
искрьны ш[д]ь їѡсїфоу гл[агол]и[ѥ] приведи его кь мнѣ е да могоу
оувѣщавь его оутѣшити и наоучити книгамь. Лѣпо ѥ[сть] ѡтроче се и моу-
дро вьзрастомь. Да би вѣдело книгы. И ре[че] емоу ї[соу]с аще оуповаеши
собою то поимне брате. И ѡпасно по емь е оучитель. И веде сь подвигомь
вь домь свои ѡтроче же иде сь дрьзновениѥмь вь оучилище. И обрѣте
книгы лежеще вь ѡлтари. И ѡ[т]врьз оуста своѩ наче г[лаго]лати
д[у]хомь с[ве]тыимь. И оучаше люди прѣстоупниѥ законоу и слышаахоу
его. Народь же мнѡгь прѣ[д]стоаше їс[оусо]ви. И чюдѣхоу се красотѣ оуче-
нию его. И готовьствоу словесь его. Ѩко дѣтище се и таковаго ѥ[сть]. Слы-
шав же їѡсїфь и оубоа се и тече вь оучение. Еда искоушень боудеть имь. И
ре[че] оучител азь ѡтроче се приехь ѩко оученика. Ѡн же мнѡго бл[а]г[о-
дари]ти и прѣмоудрости знаѥ ть вь себѣ. Ѩко тъ и бл[а]гь ѥсть, и бь ѥ[сть],
достоино ѥ[сть]. Брате мои поими ѥ оумлюти се, и веди ѥ вь домь свои.
Appendix 283
Ѩкоже слыша ѡтроче, сице гл[агол]юща кь ѡ[т]цоу его. И абиѥ проре[че] ї

[соу]с кь оучителю. Тебе ра[ди] ч[е]л[о]в[е]кь ѡнь оу ѩзвлѥнь да спе[с]т се.
И сцѣле ѡн оучитель вь томь ча[с]. И потомь ї[соу]с прохож[д]а шез[д]аниа
црковнаа. И спаде се кїрамида. И оудари ї[соу]са. И ре[че] ї[соу]с потрѣби
се з[д]ание злии домь. И абие разори се, все з[д]ание его. И ре[че] да
сьзиж[д]ет се пакы, вь доброе з[д]ание. А невь идолодеменское. И сьз[д]ае
словомь и мнозѣмь оучителимь прѣда. Ѩко видѣ їѡсїфь ѡ[т] ни единого
оучителѩ не наоучи се нь па оучителѥ оучаше и потомь прѣда его вра-
чеви. И кь врачеви томоу прихож[д]аше ч[е]л[о]в[е]кь ѡ единомь оцѣ
видѣ. Да зреше око исцѣлѩеть а слѣпааго не брѣжаше. Ѡшдьшоу же оучи-
телю. Прииде ч[е]л[о]в[е]кь на помазание и ѡбрѣте ѡтроче вь врачилище.
И вьпроси каза оучителѩ г[д]е ѥ[сть], да ми помаже ѡко. и ре[че] емоу ї
[соу]с чюж[д]оу ти се ч[е]л[о]в[е]че. Ѩко ѡвидещи имь оцѣ печеши се. И
ре[че] емоу да що хощоу оучинити. И ре[че] емоу ї[соу]с хощеши ли да
те исцѣлю. И ре[че] емоу хощоу и косноу се роукама своима. И абые
исцѣлѩста емоу ѡбѣ ѡчи. Врач же помисли вь себѣ ѩко ни едине ползе
сьтвори[х] емоу. И ревность приѥмь вь ср[д]ци своемь. И ч[е]л[о]в[е]ка вь
прашааше како исцѣле. И ре[че] емоу добрыимь твоимь оученикомь при-
идохь и помаза ми ѡчи и виж[д]оу. Се или ти ѩвившаго и. И почюдив се
врачь вьпрашааше гл[аголи]ѥ како исцѣле. Понеже ти бѣсте ѡчи врѣдне.
И ѡслѣпемь не радише. Нь видешее и ниѩ ти естѣ обѣ ѡчи [зд]раве.
Ѡнь же все видеше проповѣда. Добрыимь твоимь оученикомь. Ѩко при-
идохь и тебе не ѡбрѣтохь нь оученика ти ѡбрѣтохь. И ре[че] ми сице
чюж[д]оу ти се ч[е]л[о]в[е]че. Како цѣлиши видещее ѡко. А ѡне видещимь
ѡцѣ не печеши се. Да и азь ѡ[т]вѣщахь емоу да хощоу сьтворити. Тог[д]а
ми ре[че] хощеши ли да те исцѣлю. И рекохь хощоу. Тог[д]а се косноу
ѡбѣма ѡчима моима и исцѣле с тами ѡчи. Врач же помисли вь себѣ ѩко
никое ползесь творихь емоу. И ревность приемь вь ср[д]ци своемь. И
ч[е]л[о]в[е]ка нецѣлѣвшааго ѡ[т]поусти. И абыѥ їѡсїфа призва и ре[че]
поими си ѡтроче и ведне. Се бо хощеть все врачство ч[е]л[о]в[е]че сказати
и поѥмь їѡсїфь ѡтроче. И веде е вь домь свои. И потомь посла їакѡва с[и]на
своего. Да бере храстие. Ехидна лютлоу сѣкноу еговь роукоу. И ѡцѣпенѣ
роука его. И приближи се ї[соу]с и доуноу на врѣдь его. И ослабѣ емоу
врѣдь. А змил оумрѣ. И пакы ино ѡтроче оумрѣ вь соусѣдехь. И плачаше
се м[а]ти его зѣло. Слышав же ї[соу]с плачю бывшоу, и тече скоро. И
видѣ лежеща на лонѣ м[а]т[е]ри своѥи. И пристоупи ї[соу]с и косноу се
вьпрьси его. И ре[че] тебѣ гл[агол]ю дѣтищоу вьстани не оумираи и живь
боуди м[а]т[е]ри своеи. И абыѥ вьста ѡтроче и вьсмиа се. И ре[че] ї[соу]с
поимне и да и емоу ѩсти. Видѣвше же наро[д] что сьтвори ї[соу]с и
чюдише се. И рекоше ѩко вьсемь ѡтроче ти или б[ог]ь или аггель, прѣбы-
284 Appendix
ваѥть вь нѥмь. Все бо слово и дѣло его готово ѥ[сть]. И ш[д]ь ї[соу]с ѡ[т]
тоуде, идеше вь домь свои. По дроузѣм же лѣть, зданию творимоу и ѡ[т]
з[д]аниа ч[е]л[о]в[е]кь свали се и оумрѣ сь высока бобѣ се свалиль. Истече-
нию бывшоу и мльве велицѣи. И слышав же ѡтроче ї[соу]с идѣ тамо. И
видѣ ч[е]л[о]в[е]ка мрьтва лежеща. И емь за роукоу и ре[че] тебѣ гл[агол]ю
ч[е]л[о]в[е]че вьстани и твори дѣло своѥ. И абиѥ вьста и поклони се емоу и
видѣвше народи дивише се. И рекоше ѩко ѡ[т] б[ог]а ѥ[сть]. Се моги да
сп[ас]еть ѡт сьмрьти и сп[аси]ти има всѣхь. И скончавшоу ї[соу]соу ве лѣ
[ть] изидоста родителѩ его по ѡбычаю вь їер[оу]с[а]л[и]мь. Вь празникь
паскы, из дроужиноу поѥмь ї[соу]са їѡсїфь и м[а]т[е]ре его. Вьзврати
стасе вь домь свои. Ѡтроче же ѡ[т]иде вь їер[оуса]л[и]мь. И неразоумѣста
родителѩ его. Нь мнѣвшавь дроужине соуша. И приидоста искати его. По
три дни вь рож[д]ени вь дроужинѣ. И не ѡбрѣтоста его. И вьзвратиста се вь
їер[оуса]л[и]мь. Скрьбеше искаста его. По три дни ѡбрѣтоста и вь цркви. И
оучителие послоушаахоу его. Закона что мааго. И вьпрашаахоу его ѡнем
же хотѣхоу разоумѣти ѡ[т] него и вси внимахоу слышеще словеса его и
чюдѣхоу се. Ѩко дѣти щьсьи прѣпираеть стариихь и оучител ѥ раз[д]роу-
шаеть главы законние. И притче пррочскыи и прииде м[а]ти его марїа. И
ре[че] что сьтвори нама таковое чедо. Се болеще и скрьбѣше искаховѣ
тебе. И ре[че] ї[соу]с почтѡ искасте мене скрьбеше не вѣсте ли ѩже ѥ
[смь] оу ѡца моего. Вь тѣх ми достои ть быти. Книжници же и фарисеие
рекоше м[а]т[е]ри его. Ты ли еси м[а]ти ѡтрочета сего. Ѡна же ре[че] азь
ѥсмь. Ѡни же рекоше бл[а]женна ты еси вь женахь. И бл[а]г[осло]вень
пло[д] удѣва твоего. И г[оспод]ь б[ог]ь бл[а]г[осло]виль те ѥ[сть]. Ѩко тако-
ваго дара б[о]жиа и прѣмоудрости неслышахомь николиже. И вьставь ї
[соу]с иде вь слѣдь м[а]т[е]ре своеи. И бѣ повиноуе се има. Марїа же
м[а]ти его блюдаше словеса его вь ср[д]ци своѥмь. И вса ѩже творѩше ї
[соу]с величиѥ н[е]б[ес]ь. Іже прѣспѣваше моудростию и тѣломь.
Исцѣлениа твораше. Ѡ всѣмь прославлѩющи се ѡ[т] б[ог]а ѡца своего
емоу же слава вь вѣкы аминь.
Slavonic manuscript St Petersburg, 13.3.17, Library of the Russian Academy of

Sciences, St Petersburg, fol. 177r-183v
Дѣанїа и дѣтство Г[оспод]а наше[га] И[сус]а Х[рист]а. ѡче бл[аго]с[ло]ви.

Избранныи възвѣстих азь ϴома иср[аи]льтѣни[н]. Въсѣсѣ[х] ѡ[т] ѧзыкь
братїе видѣ[х] дѣ[т]ство Г[оспод]а нашего. еже сътвори величьство
Г[оспод]ь, истр[с]ть. рѡди бо сѧ въ странѣ нашеи иже нарицаетсѧ, ви-
ѳлеемь. Въ градѣ Назаретъстѣ[м]. Иже въ вла[д]чьстви том, ѡтрочѧ ї
Appendix 285
[соу]сь, четырїемь лѣто[м] бывь. и дъж[д]оу бывшоу, играаше въ мимо-

хож[д]енїи рѣчиць дъж[д]евныи[х]. Текѫщїи[х] вод мѫтныи[х] събирааше
и[х] въ единѫ строуѫ. и абїе чистыи[х] творѣше слово[м] тъкмо а не
дѣло[м] повелѣваѫ и[м]. Паче възе[м] ѡ[т] бренїа мѧккь каль, и сътвори ѡ
[т] него дванадесѧте птицъ. Бѣше сѫбота ег[д]а творѣше. И играаше. и
многы дѣти тоу бѣхѫ съ ни[м] и играахѫ. И видѣвше жидове еже творѣше
играѫщи ше[д]ше и повѣдашѫ ѡцоу его Иѡсифоу. Гл[агола]ще се ѡтрокь
твои играеть въ рѣчици тамо. Възе[м] бренїе и сътвори .ві. птиць и скв-
ръни[т] сѫ[бо]тѫ. И прише иѡсіфь на мѣсто и видѣ ї[соу]са и призва его
гл[агол]ѧ почто сїе твориши въ сѫ[бо]тѫ. их же недо[сто]ить творити. ї
[соу]сь же съплескавь рѫкама и възъпивь птица[м] и ре[че]. Възлетѣте и
ипомѣнѣте живы сѧще. Излетѣшѫ птицѧ и идошѫ зовѧще. И видѣвше
въси и оужасошѫс. Въкоупѣсъ ше[д]ше сѧ и възвѣстишѫ инѣмь и
видѣшѫ знаменїе еже сътвори ї[соу]сь. С[и]нь же анны книжника бѣше
съ Иѡсїфѡ[м]ь тоу. И въз[м]е вѣѫ връбовѫ и раскази емоу виркы и
истекошѫ воды из ни[х] же бѣ събраль. Ѡтроче же ї[соу]сь видѣвь бывшее
и негодова и ре[че] емоу Содомите нечьстиве неразоумне что тѧ ѡбидѣшѫ
мои вирове и воды та и[х] раскази. Се да бѫдеши ѩко и дрѣво соу[х] да не
принесеши ни листїа ни коренїа ни пльда. И абїе ѡтро[к] тъ, то[м] часѣ
соу[х] бывесь. ї[соу]сь же иде въ до[м] свои. Родителѣ же прїидоста ослабе-
наго и гл[агол]аста їѡсифоу. Виж[д]ы ѩко таково ѡтрочѧ имаше. пакы же ї
[соу]сь идѣше сквозѣ гра[д]. ѡтроче ино скочи на рамо его. И прогнѣвасѧ ї
[соу]сь. и ре[че] да не доидеши пѫте[м] тѣ[м]. И абїе паде ниць ѡтрочѧ
издъше. видѣвше же дроуѯи и рекошѫ ѡ[т]кѫдоу бо сие ѡтрочѧ рѡдисѧ
ѩко въсѣ слово[м] его и дѣло[м] его готово бываеть. И прїидоста родителѣ
па[д]шааго прѣтѧща їѡсифоу ѡцоу и гл[агол]ѧша, ты, таковое ѡтрочѧ
имѣѫ не можеши съ нами жити въ градѣ се[м]. аще ли то оучи е бл[агосло]-
вити, а не клѧти. Нашѫ бо дѣти искоусны твори[т]. Призвав же їѡсифь
ѡтрочѧ ї[соу]са, и оучаше е гл[агол]ѧ. Почто тако клънеши и страж[д]ѫть
си. И ненавидѧ[т] на[с] и изгонѧ[т] ны изь гра[д]. И ре[че] ї[соу]сь, Азь
вѣдѧ ѩко гл[агол]и мої си, нѣсѫ[т] тъ еже азь гл[агол]ѧ, ѡбаче тебе ради
прѣмлъчѧ. Они же рїимѫ[т] троу[д] и[х]. И абїе гл[аголѧ]ще на него въси
и ѡслъпошѫ и не видѣшѫ и оубоашѫ[с] ѯѣло и к томоу не смѣахѫ его гнѣва-
ти. ѩко въсѣкь гл[агол]ъ ѡтрочѧ те еже речаше либо зло либо добро. и
видѣ їѡсифь ѩко сътвори и разгнѣва сѧ ѯѣло. и ѧть его за оухо и влѣчаше
ѡн же ѡтѧѯаше сѧ. ѡтрочѧ же ї[соу]сь негодова и ре[че]. Довлеть пти иска-
ти мене и не ѡбрѣтати ѡ разбоиниче ѩко въ истинѫ твои ли есмь не вѣси.
Абїе не ѡскръблѣи мене. твои бо есмъ и к тебѣ прїидо[х]. Нѣкыи же оу-
чите[л] стоѧ бѣ тоу имене[м] закхеи, и слыша ї[соу]са гл[агол]ѧ къ ѡцоу
своемоу. и чюдисѧ ѯѣло. ѩко ѡтрочѧ тако гл[аголѫ]ща. И по мноѯѣ
286 Appendix
прїближисѧ закхеи къ їѡсифоу гл[агол]ѧ. имаши ѡтрочѧ мѫдро грѧди и

прѣдаж[д]ь мие. да навыкне[т] книгы и въсемоу наоучѧ еже оумѣти
емоу. Въсѧ старцѧ чьсти и прѣ[д] ды. А ѡцѧ любити съ кротостїѫ. И въсѧ
съвръстникы его. боатисѧ и срамѣтисѧ родителю, ѩко да ѡ[т] инѣ[х] и ѡ
[т] свои[х]ь чьд възлюбень бѫде[ть]. їѡсифь же прогнѣвасѧ ѯѣло на
ѡтрочѧ ре[че] ре[че] къ оучителю: да кто може[т] наоучити его. чим же
маломоу гви его мниши бо ти ѩко бра[т] ти е[сть]. Ѩко слыша ѡтрочѧ
ѡца си, тако рекша, оусмиѩ сѧ велми и ре[че] къ закхеоу истина е[с] оучи-
телю. Въсе еже ре[че] ѡ[та]ць мои, и семоу азь г[оспод]ь есмь. вы же
тоуж[д]и есте. Ѩко мнѣ единомоу вла[с] да[с] сѧ. Ѩко азь прѣж[д]е бѣ[х]
и ниѣ азь есмь. И оу ва[с] роди[х]сѧ и с вами есмь. И не знаете кто есмь
азь. Аз же ва[с] знаѫ кто есте и ког[д]а се родисте сѧ. и колико лѣть е[с]
живота вашего. въ истинѫ гл[агол]ѧ ти оучителю. Ег[д]а родистесѧ азь
знаѫ. и прѣж[д]е рож[д]ьства вашего азь знаѫ въ истинѫ. И аще хощеши
съвръшень быти оучите[л], то послоушаи мене и азь наоучѧ тѧ
прѣмѫдрости еѧ же никто же не вѣ[с] развѣ и мене и пославшаго мѧ къ
ва[м], да ва[с] наоучѧ. Азь тебѣ оучите[л] есмъ. ты же мнѣ оучени[к]
нарицаешисѧ. понеже знаѫ колико лѣ[т] имаши. И колико врѣмѧ живота
твоего. Истинно знаѫ. Ег[д]а оузриши кр[с]т мои, иже ти ре[че] ѡ[т]ць
мои. Тогда вѣрѫ имеши ѩко въсе елико рекѫ ти истина е[сть]. И се азь
блгь есмъ. вы же тоуж[д]и есте. ѩко тож[д]е и ниѣ есмь. Сѫщїи же Июдеие
тоу слышѫще дивлѣхѫсѧ. И възъпивше велми и рекошѫ. ѡ дивное чю[д] и
прѣславное е[сть]. Лѣ[т] не има[т] ѡтрочѧ се. И таковыѫ рѣчи слышахо[м] ѡ
[т] него ѩковыи[х] же не слышах ѡ[м] ре[к]ша, на хїи ереми книжничѧ ти ї
[соу]са. Имѣже ї[соу]сь. Ѡ .и. Лѣ[т] ѡцоу же его маистороу сѧщоу. в то
врѣмѧ ѩко хотѣше нѣкоемоу богатоу да сътвори[т] съсѧды. Единомоу пра-
вилоу нарица емоу двѣ дрѣвѣ бѣстѣиѧ едино ѡкрѧпено неимѣѧ мѣры.
Ре[че] ї[соу]сь ѡцоу своемоу по[ло]жи двѣ дрѣвѣ долоу. И ѡ[т] своѧ страны
равно сътвори. И сътвори їѡсїфь ѩко же ре[че] емоу ї[соу]сь равна конца.
И емь ї[соу]сь крѧпое дрѣво и потѧги же и равно е сътвори. Дроугомоу
дрѣвоу и ре[че] їѡсифоу не скръби нѧ твори еже хощеши. Їѡсїфь же при-
емъ ѡтрочѧ и ѡблобыза е и ре[че] Бл[а]ж[ен]ь есмъ азъ каково ѡтрочѧ
да[с] ми Б[ог]ь. Видѣв же їѡсїфь въспѣанїе ѡтрочѧ ти и възраста мѧдрости
его. и пакы помысли да бѫде[т] оумѣѧи книгы и ведеи и прѣдаде его дро-
угомоу оучителю. И ре[че] їѡсифоу оучите[л] книгам ли хощеши да наоучѧ
его. їѡсїф же ре[че] прѣж[д]е елиньскы[м], пото[м] и еврѣискы[м]. Знааше
оучите[л] законь ѡтрочѧтоу и боашесѧ его. Ѡбаче написа емоу аз боуквы.
и прѣди вѣщааше емоу гл[агол]ѧ азь, ї[соу]сь ре[че] емоу. Азь. и пакы пом-
лъча гл[агол]а емоу боуквы. И не ѡ[т]вѣща емоу ї[соу]сь помлъчаи ре[че]
емоу ї[соу]сь. аще оучите[л] еси и оумѣеши добрѣ книгы ръци ми аз овѧ
Appendix 287
силѧ. азь ти ѡ[т]вѣщаѧ боуквы и прогнѣвасѧ оучите[л] и оудари его по

главѣ. Ѡтрочѧ же негодоваи проклѧ[т] его. Тог[д]а тоу изнемогь паде
ниць. ї[соу]с же ѡтиде въ домь свои. їѡсиф же ѡскрь[…..] и запрѣти
м[а]т[е]ри его. И ре[че] не испоущаи его вънь из дом[оу] ѩко да не
страж[д]ѫть тако гнѣваѫщеи его. По лѣтѣ пакы едино[м] дроугыи пакы оу-
чите[л] ближнїи їѡсїфоу ре[че] иди и приведи е въ наказате[л]ство. Не
могѧ лї азь оувѣщаѫи и ласкаѧи его, наоучити книга[м]. Лѣпо е[ст]
ѡтрочѧ и мѫдро. И възра[с] имѣѧ да оумѣеть книгы. Ре[че] їѡсїфь аще
оуповаеши брате. То поими есъ ѡпасенїемь. Събоазниѧ нї […]подвигом.
Ѡтрочѧ же въпиде съ дръзновенїемь въ оучите[л]ство. И ѡбрѣте книгы
лежѧщѧ на конець келїа. Ѡ[т]връзение чьтѣше ѩже бѣхѧ писана. Въ
ни[х]. Нѫ ѡ[т]връзе оуста своа гла[гола]аше д[у]хо[м] с[ве]ты[м] и оучааше
законоу и послоушаахѫ его, прѣ[д]стоѧщии. Имаѣхѫс паче да более ре[че]
ть. Народ же многь прише[д] послоушаахѧ ї[соу]са. И чюж[д]аахѫ[с] кра-
сотѣ и оученїю его. И готовствоу словесь его. Ѩко дѣтищь съ, таковаа
гл[агол]аше. Слышавь їѡсиф и оубоасѧ […] ре[че] оучите[л]ство разоумѣеть.
Ѩко да и тъ оучите[л] искоушень бѫде[т]. И ре[че] оучите[л] їѡсифоу да
вѣси брате ѩко азь поѧ[х] ѡтрочѧ сие ѩко оученїка. Ѡн же бл[а]г[оде]тїѧ
исплънень е[сть]. Бл[а]г[о]д[е]тѩ же ѡ[т] б[ог]а е[ст]. Что оубо до[с] ино е[ст]
и он ми е брате и веди е въ до[м] свои. Ѩко слыша ѡтрочѧ си рекша оу-
чителѣ къ ѡцоу его. Тог[д]а въсмїасѧ понеже празо ре[че]. Тебе ради и
ѡнь ч[е]л[ове]кь сп[ас]етсѧ оуѩзвеныи. И абїе то[м] часѣ цѣль бы[с] и ѡнь
оучите[л]. Пото[м] же ї[соу]с ходѧщоу скозѣ и долыѯи же м[……] западе
на него. Ре[че] п[…..]исѧ ѯѣло ѯижде мы домен тог[д]а потрѣбисѧ и долское
капище. Тог[д]а пакы ре[че] да съ ѯиж[д]етсѧ въ доброе съз[д]анїе. А не
въжилище демонъское. Тог[д]а съз[д]асѧ ѩко многѫѧ хытрость. Прѣда-
ваеть его їѡсїфа ини единомоу ненавыченѧ ѡнь паче оучаше. И посе[м]
врачеви его прѣдаде. И къ врачеви томоу прихож[д]ааше слѣпь съ еди-
но[м] окомь. Изрѧщее око его болѣше и помазовааше е. Патри лоуча
оуже единомоу ѡбрѣтшоусѧ ѡтрочѧ тоу въ врачилищи. И оучителѣ его
не бѣ тоу. Ч[е]л[овѣ]коу же прише[д]шоу на помазанїе ока. и ре[че] емоу
ї[соу]с ч[е]л[ове]че ѩко ѡзрѧщїи[м] ѡцѣпечешисѧ а ѡне зрѧщи[м] никако
же печалоуешисѧ. Слышав же сїе ч[е]л[ове]кь ѡ[т] отрочѧ та и почюдисѧ.
И ре[че] ч[е]л[ове]кь что оубо дасъ творѧ. И ре[че] емоу ї[соу]с хощеши
ли да тѧ исцѣлѧ. И ре[че] ч[е]л[ове]кь хощѧ г[оспод]и. Тог[д]а ї[соу]с
коснѫсѧ очию его. И абїе прозрѣ слѣпое и и болѧщее боле исцѣлѣ. И
ишед ч[е]л[ове]кь, тъ хлѣбь и вино и иныѫ дары принесе цѣлителю его.
Врачь же видѣ вь ч[е]л[ове]ка ѡбѣма очима зрѧща. И недомыслисѧ ѡ
дарѣ[х] комоу принесе. И рече емоу кто ты еси принесы ми таковаа не
вѣдѧ. Ѡн же ре[че] къ немоу не вѣси ли мене ч[е]л[ове]ка приходѧ
288 Appendix
щанцѣа ѧщасѧ ѡ[т] тебе. Едино око имѧща и ѡ[т] тебе цѣлѧщасѧ. И юдиѩ
ивжесѧ врачьви въпроси его гл[агол]ѧ како исцѣлѣ. Ѡбѣ бо ти очи бѣстѣ
ѩрѣднѣ. И незрѧщее оубо и машивидѧще е, и болѣвшее з[д]раво. Ѡн же
истинѫ бывшѫѧ повѣда. И ре[че] добрыи[м] твои[м] оученко[м] ѡбѣ исцѣ
[л]стѣ ми. Врачь же разоуммѣ ѩко ничто же емоу небѣ оуспѣ[л]. Ниползы
никоеѫ же емоу не бѣ сътвори[л] ѡ врач бѣ сего ради пакы въпроси его. ѡн
же пакы по истинѣ сказа емоу чюдо еже сътвори емоу ї[соу]сь. И ре[че]
емоу ѩко прѣж[д]едніи си[х] прїидо[х] ищѫщи тебе. И не ѡбрѣто[х] тебе.
Нѫ оученка Твоего добра[г]а ѡтрока ѡбрѣто[х]. ѡн же възрѣвь на мене и
рече ми. Чюж[д]ѫ ти сѧ ч[е]л[ове]че. Ѩко зрѧщомоу окоу поиѣ мало
ползѫ и щешна ѡне видѧ щимни како же не печалоуешисѧ. Аз же слышавь
то реко[х] къ немоу. Да что емоу сътворїти хощѫ. Ѡн же ре[че] аще
хощеши да тѧ исцѣлѧ азь же реко[х] хощѫ. И въставь ѡтрок прикоснѫсѧ
очима моим и [….] око ѡ[т]връзе а болѧщеем коле исцели. Вра[ч] же [….]
въ ср[д]ци своемъ. И ѡ[т]поусти ч[е]л[ове]ка того. И призва їѡсїф ини
ре[че] емоу поими с[и]на своегѡ и ѡ[т]веди. Син бо можеть врачевство
ч[е]л[ове]чьское разорити. И поемь їѡсифь ѡтрочѧ и ведех е въ домь
свои. Посемъ посла їѡсифь с[ы]на своего їакѡва. да свѧжеть храстїе и при-
несеть въ домь свои. И понемь поиде ѡтрочѧ исъбравшоу же храстїе. И
зѧмїа лютаа сѣкнѫ, іакѡва въ рѫкѫ. и ѡцѣтѣнѣвшоу же емоу и оумираѫ-
щоу. приближисѧ ї[соу]сь, и доунѫ на грїзенїе. Тогда ѩдь ѡслабѣа зъмиа
оумрѣть. Ино же ѡтрочѧ пакы въ съсѣдѣ[хь] оумрѣ. плакашесѧ зѣло
м[а]ти его. Слышавь же ї[соу]сь ѩко плачь и веплъ бы[ст]. тече скоро и
видѣ ѡтрочѧ лежѫще на лонѣ еѫ и прикоснѫсѧ пръсе[х] его. и ре[че] къ
дѣтищоу не оумри нѫ живь бѫди. И иди къ м[а]т[е]ри своеи. Тог[д]а
въсмиасѧ ѡтрочѧ и оусклабисѧ къ немоу. и ре[че] кь м[а]т[е]ри его да жъ
емоу сати и помѣни мѧ. Наро[д] же видѣ и дивишѧсѧ и рекошѧ въ
истинѫ въсемъ ѡтрочѧ ти или б[ог]ъ или аггель прѣбываеть. въ себо
слово еже ре[че] ть или дѣломь готово бываеть. И иде въ домь свои и по-
дроузѣ. А посъ зданїю же творимоу спаде ч[е]л[овѣ]кь ѡ[т] высоты и
оумрѣть. И теченїю бывшии млъвѣ немалѣ. Слыша ѡтрочѧ ї[соу]сь и иде
тамо. И видѣ ч[е]л[овѣ]ка лежѧща мртва. И ѫть его за рѫкѫ и ре[че]
емоу тебѣ гл[агол]ѧ, ч[е]л[овѣ]че въстани и твори дѣло свое. Тогда въставь
и поклонисѧ емоу. Видѣвше же народи и почюдишѧсѧ. и рекошѫ се
ѡтрочѧ б[ог]ь есть. многыѧ бо д[оу]шѫ сп[а]се ѡ[т] съмрти. и свѣт имать
быти въ немь до въсего живота своего. сѫщоу же емоу .ві. лѣть. възыдоста
родителѣ его въ іер[оу]с[а]лимь по обычаю въ празни[к] пасцѣ сѣ дроу-
жиноѫ приемша пасхѫ їѡсїфь же и мариа[м], възвратистасѧ четенїе стго.
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York: Newman Press, 1992.
Upson-Saia, Kristi. “Holy Child or Holy Terror? Understanding Jesus’ Anger in the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas.” Church History 82, No. 1 (2013): 1 – 39.
Van Aarde, Andries Gideon. “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Allegory or Myth – Gnostic or
Ebionite.” Verbum et ecclesia 26, No. 3 (2005): 826 – 850.
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Van Den Ven, Paul. La légende de S. Spyridon, évêque de Trimithonte. Louvain: Institut
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Press, 2014.
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Devillers, and Enrico Norelli, 482 – 505. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011.
Varey, Simon. “Medieval and Renaissance Italy A. The Peninsula.” In Regional Cuisines of
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Bibliographical Society, 1960.
308 Bibliography
Vincent of Beauvais. Speculum quadruplex sive Speculum maius: naturale, doctrinale,

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(1991): 119 – 132.
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Claire Clivaz, Andreas Dettwiler, Luc Edvillers, and Enrico Norelli, 401 – 417. Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2011.
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Revue d’histoire des textes 1 (2006): 317 – 333.
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Narratives of Late Antiquity.” In Approaches to the Byzantine Family, edited by Leslie
Brubaker, and Shaun Tougher, 47 – 74. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
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2013.
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Old Royal and King’s Collections II. London: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1921.
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Manuscripts in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1972.
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Literature and Biblical Record 6 – 7 (1865): 108 – 160, 417 – 448.
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Year 1838 I-III. London: Longmans & Co, 1870 – 1872.
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Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Zhordania, Tedo. Opisanie rukopisei Tiflisskago cerkovnago muzeia I (Description of the
Manuscripts of the Church Museum, Tbilisi). Tbilisi: Gutenberg, 1903.
Index
Aasgaard, Reidar 1, 4, 11, 13, 26 f., 32, 35– Davis, Stephen 1, 3, 35, 37–39, 101 f.,
38, 42, 56, 102, 105 f., 162, 170 f., 205, 188 f., 195, 197, 199, 205, 214, 218
215, 236 f., 239, 256 Deir Al-Surian, monastery 47 f., 93
Anne, mother of Mary 52, 60, 63, 68, 69, Delatte, Armand 33, 36, 236 f.
70, 107, 109 f., 185 Dinkova-Bruun, Greti 17 f., 21, 95
Aquinas, Thomas 8 Doležalová, Lucie 6, 17–19, 41
Augustine 44, 60, 62, 74, 108 Driscoll, Matthew 16
Dušan, Tzar of Serbia 221
Bartlett, Robert 72, 180 Dzon, Mary 8 f., 14, 29 f., 36 f., 39, 61, 69,
Baun, Jane 4, 9, 14, 20, 72, 78 91, 94, 98 f., 166 f., 177, 231, 240
Bernard of Clairvaux 177
Bethlehem 139, 146 Ehrman, Bart 1 f., 4–6, 17, 38, 69, 72, 84,
Betsworth, Sharon 3, 37 f., 42, 166, 171, 101
194 Elliott, James Keith 1, 6 f., 29 f., 36, 61, 63,
Beyers, Rita 8, 26, 28–30, 36 f., 59–62, 69, 73, 75, 84, 97, 126, 184, 188, 205, 231,
72, 91, 188, 239 f. 240
Birnbaum, David 77 f., 80 Esbroeck, Michel van 8, 32, 35, 53–55, 239
Bobbio, monastery 44, 47, 93
Boff, Leonardo 178, 185 Fine, John 79 f., 221
Bogomils 78 f., 82, 221, 223, 226 Foster, Paul 2, 194 f., 200
Bosnian Church 221, 226
Bouras, Charalambos 218 f. Galilee 110, 195
Bulgaria 76–81, 94 f., 98, 196, 198 f., 223, Geary, Patrick 164, 178
226, 228, 230, 234 Genette, Gérard 22–25, 104, 127
Burke, Tony 3–5, 7 f., 10–13, 26–38, 40, 42, Genre 12, 19 f., 40–43, 91, 99, 229, 231
44, 46, 48, 56, 58 f., 61–63, 65, 67, 69, Gero, Stephen 1, 26 f., 37, 95, 101 f., 104 f.,
71, 74 f., 84, 87 f., 90, 92 f., 96 f., 104– 115, 118, 126, 129, 142, 144, 146–148,
106, 111, 116, 118, 123, 125, 127, 150, 205, 239
159, 169 f., 173, 181, 188, 197, 203, 205, Gijsel, Jan 26, 28–31, 36 f., 40, 59–63, 68–
209, 226, 236–240, 256, 261, 266 72, 74 f., 89–91, 110, 130, 169, 239 f.
Gippert, Jost 53 f.
Cana of Galilee 7 Glessner, Justin 178
Capernaum 139
Cerquiglini, Bernard 16 Horn, Cornelia 1, 10, 48–50, 127, 166, 170 f.,
Christ Church, Canterbury 69, 94 179, 193, 199, 203.
Chrysostom, John 7, 51 f., 57–60, 64, 66 f., Hurtado, Larry W. 6, 95, 101 f.
71, 82 f., 85–88, 114, 116
Cistercians 70, 109, 168, 177, 195, 225, 229, Iconoclasm 176 f., 215, 224, 233
233 Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum (Irenaeus of
Colonial studies 15 Lyons) 1, 3, 5–7
Curta, Florin 216 f., 220 Ivan Alexander, Bulgarian ruler 77–80
Cyprus 32, 51, 56–58, 66, 94, 214, 225
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110752786-009
310 Index
James, brother of Jesus 13, 105, 108, 113, Mravaltavi 53 f.

115, 117, 129, 138 f., 143 f., 149, 156 f., Müller, Diana 19
183 f., 203 f., 220, 224
Jenkins, Philip 4, 7, 9, 11 f., 29 f., 36, 61, 73, Narratology 22 f., 103 f., 157, 229.
184, 240 Naumov, Aleksander 98
Jericho 138, 195 Nazareth 138, 178, 247
Jerome 45, 60–62, 68–72, 74 f., 90 f., 96 f., New (Material) Philology 1, 12, 15–17, 22,
107, 109, 184, 230 25, 39, 41, 103, 157, 161, 229, 240
Jews 48, 68–70, 73, 78 f., 84–86, 107, Nichols, Stephen 16–19, 41
110 f., 115, 119 f., 122–124, 131, 140, Notre-Dame de Cîteaux, Abbey 70, 94, 109,
143 f., 146 f., 151, 153, 159, 169, 187, 195, 168, 210
209–215, 225, 232–234
Joachim, father of Mary 52, 60, 63, 70, Palimpsest 7, 20, 24, 27 f., 31, 37, 40 f., 43–
74 f., 110 49, 64, 73, 75, 93, 95–97, 166, 168, 231,
John of Damascus 83, 86, 89 f., 112, 115, 240
159 Parhali, monastery 54 f., 94
Joseph, father of Jesus 2 f., 9, 13, 28, 46, Paul, the Apostle 4, 20, 51, 82
66, 68, 71, 90, 97, 105, 107–110, 112, Philippart, Guy 28, 37, 44–47, 166, 240
115 f., 118, 120–126, 128–130, 134–142, Plato 4, 20
144–147, 149–154, 156–159, 162–169, Pleše, Zlatko 1 f., 4, 38, 69, 84, 101
172–175, 177–185, 190, 192, 194 f., 197,
199, 201, 207, 209 f., 213, 215 f., 220, Reichenau, monastery 60, 94, 210
222, 224 f., 232–234 Restall, Matthew 15
Rosén, Thomas 6 f., 34, 36, 76, 98, 239
Kalavrezou, Ioli 176 Rubin, Miri 73, 168, 211 f.
Laiou, Angeliki 65, 217 Sheingorn, Pamela 29 f., 37 f., 42, 61, 83,
Levi, teacher of Jesus 138, 194, 199 101 f., 166
Loveč, Bulgaria 76–78, 80, 94 Shoemaker, Stephen 49 f., 176 f.
Sigalos, Lefteris 216 f., 219
Martin-Hisard, Bernadette 53, 55 St. Gerasimos in Palestine, monastery 57
Mary, mother of Jesus (Theotokos) 2, 6, 9, St. Nicholas (Vuneš), near Ljubanci, monast-
28–30, 36 f., 47–50, 61, 63 f., 66–68, ery 81–83, 94
70–73, 75 f., 85 f., 90 f., 96 f., 99, 109– St. Nikolaos in Akrotiri, monastery 57, 94
111, 115, 130, 136, 138–141, 147, 155, St. Sabas in Palestine, monastery 57
157 f., 163–170, 172, 176–178, 181–185,
192, 194 f., 199, 209–213, 220, 224 f., Tao-Klarjeti, region 35, 54, 94
230–234, 240 Taylor, Andrew 18, 41
Maximus the Confessor 8 Tischendorf, Constantin von 13, 28 f., 31,
Melikset-Bek, Levon 51, 53, 55 f. 36, 105 f., 120, 236, 240
Miltenova, Anissava 79 f., 83, 98 Transtextuality 23 f.
Miscellany (miscellanies) 17–19, 21, 41, 70,
77, 80, 88 f., 91, 95, 229 f. Upson-Saia, Kristi 208
– Primary miscellany (miscellanies) 21, 41,
95, 230 Vatopediou monastery, Mount Athos 33, 83
– Secondary miscellany (miscellanies) 21, 41, Vavla, village in Cyprus 56 f.
95, 230 Vetus Latina 45 f.
Index 311
Voicu, Sever 1, 4, 9, 27, 37, 56, 58, 63, 126, Wenzel, Siegfried 16–19, 41
159, 164–166, 168 f. Wickham, Chris 216, 218
Vulgate 45
Zacheus, teacher of Jesus 121, 136–138,
165, 194, 199, 210, 213, 245 f., 252

Survival and Success of An Apocryphal Childhood of Jesus: Marijana Vuković

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Marijana Vuković

Survival and Success of an Apocryphal Childhood of Jesus

Reception of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021951143

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

State Historical Museum (Moscow), Bibliothèque municipale (Dijon), Burger-

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was copied in a significant number of medi-

These authors’ opinions were disregarded in the Middle Ages, considering

 Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ, 18.

to comprehend how a text was used, performed, understood, or enacted as a sep-

Barbara Shailor has proposed that “miscellaneous” manuscripts may not be

Composite manuscripts consist of libelli, which independently existed before

In Chapter 3, I combine the methodological framework of narratology with

ing to Genette, only a segment of transtextuality.⁹⁸ In comparing the two textual

Within this framework, Genette studied the relationships between hyper-

sult the earliest manuscripts within a tradition or a particular variant to isolate

 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 144– 45.

complete assessment of the Lt tradition is needed.¹²⁹ The reason is that the Lt

Thomas’ Infancy Gospel also appears in sixteen Slavonic manuscripts from

zählung des Thomas,” in Neutestamentlichen Apokryphen, ed. Edgar Hennecke (Tübingen: J. C.

chronological order so that the inter-lingual connections and the “manuscript

 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 1.

The oldest witness

Late antique Syriac tradition

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas appeared in manuscripts contemporary to the

Eleventh-century Byzantine evidence

 Melikset-Bek, “Фрагментъ грузинской версіи,” 316.

boukleisios was a title given to ecclesiastical chamberlains, priests, deacons, and

Eleventh-century Latin evidence

 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 128.

abbey, probably Reichenau.²⁶³ This abbey was established in 724 in southern

ry.²⁸² Voicu argues, particularly concerning the Lm variant, which is transmitted

 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 148.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the thirteenth-century

given by the cataloguer indicates that this is a collection of sermons or panegy-

This manuscript is a collection of panegyrics, hagiographies, and homi-

Thirteenth-century Latin manuscripts

 James, A Descriptive Catalogue II, 58.

tains only the response of Jerome to Chromatius and Heliodorus.³¹⁰ Further, we

 Gijsel, Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, 118.

At the end of the manuscript, we encounter another Transitus Mariae, writ-

Burke argues that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is followed by a complete

 Burke, De infantia Iesu, 155.

In the Byzantine tradition, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appears as a text

The earliest preserved Slavonic manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of

 Krstev, “Мястото на детство Исусово.”

manuscripts containing monastic and liturgical texts.³⁵² Their presence in mis-

Rulers needed to read Christian ecclesiastical authors of high authority in

 Gagova, “A Study of Groups of Manuscripts,” 155.

Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Byzantine manuscripts

This Byzantine manuscript contains homilies and logoi of John Chrysostom,

In the fifteenth century, the manuscripts containing the Infancy Gospel of

 Halkin, Catalogue des manuscrits, 45.

Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Latin manuscripts

teenth-early-fifteenth-century libellus on folios 95r-126v, containing the Liber de

centuries; some of its features probably could be ascribed to earlier periods,

ierosolimitanorum; fol. 177r-184v: Medical prescriptions (Medicamentorum praescriptiones). See

Apocryphal manuscript geography and the changing genre of

According to the evidence, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas occurred exclusive-

 Dzon, “Cecily Neville,” 266.

 Similar concerns are expressed in Davis, Christ Child, 20.

 Hurtado, “Who Read Early Christian Apocrypha?” 158.