Stephen J Davis In Christ Child: The Infancy Gospel Of Thomas

For two thousand years authors and orators have attempted to fill the gaps of biblical narratives with short stories, letters and gospel-esque works. Such attempts include narrative traditions about the life and teachings of Jesus, his family and his apostles. These writings were embraced by early and medieval Christian groups who made the writings their own. Often using and altering them according to Christian interests or concerns at the time. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is an apocryphal text that depicts the life of child Jesus and his cursings, miracles and lessons. No matter how ruthless or moral the cursings and miracles, these stories are a testament to Jesus’ divine origin. All the while, they bring in aspects of everyday life in

Due to this, Joseph brought Jesus to be taught by Zachaeus yet the teacher failed, later a second teacher Jesus cursed dead and the third saw Jesus’ wisdom. Jesus then brought a boy back to life so that he could prove his innocence. Then another set of miracles occur in which Jesus carries water with cloth, produces an enormous amount of grain from little and lengthens a wooden board. The last episode features a twelve year old Jesus in which he spends three days among the teachers in the Temple learning and asking thoughtful questions. Stephen J. Davis in Christ Child: Cultural Memories of a Young Jesus explores in particular the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, or Paidika, stories of the sparrows, cursing of the boy who bumped into Jesus and the lessons on the alphabet. In part one, Davis gives a textual history and interpretations of the Paidika and gives insight on the cultural memory theory he will later apply. The second part Davis gives three case studies from stories in the Paidika, the sparrows, the cursing and the lessons. Lastly, readers are subjected the interreligious controversy and encounters in which the Paidika stories were caught up . Davis’ Christ Child remarkably interprets how the individual stories of the Paidika would have served as sites of memory for early Christian readers of the

This name change is suitable because this text of childhood stories was not originally paired with Thomas, a medieval intervention, or called a Gospel nor is it really telling of the infancy of Jesus but rather the childhood. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a name given to the text by early modern scholars. Previously, scholars have attempted to prove that the Paidkia was written for children. Reidar Aasgaard in “Uncovering Children’s culture in Late Antiquity: The Testimony of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas” argues that the world one sees in the text is for the people of the same world. In the Paidika’s case this would mean that setting in a children’s world is specifically chosen to appeal to an audience of children rather than adults. However as Tony Chartrand-Burke criticizes, Aasgaard fails to present any comparative literature from antiquity that clearly shows they were written for children as well. Although, an enticing argument for Aasgaard is that the Paidka does have one superbly clear message. One of the reasons why this text could be for children is because it has a simple point: Jesus is God. The text says this over and over which children would pick up on despite having fairly short attention spans. While Aasgaurd has an