Several months ago I posted an item here on the start of my investigation into the Syriac tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (available HERE). Since then I have made significant progress in obtaining manuscripts and have begun collating them against previously published editions. Inspired by Roger Pearse’s posts on Thoughts on Antiquity (the latest is available HERE) relating to his work on the Onomasticon by Eusebius (edit: the text he is studying is actually Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum or “Gospel problems and solutions”), I thought I would offer this progress report on the project.

I began the project, as many do, with lists of unpublished manuscripts. These were provided long ago by Anton Baumstark (Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluss der christlich-palästinensischen Texte. Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Webers Verlag, 1922, p. 69 n. 12 and 99 n. 4) and more recently by S. C. Mimouni (“Les Vies de la Vierge; État de la question,” Apocrypha 5 [1994]: 239-243). The two lists were subsequently reproduced (and thus came to my attention) by Cornelia Horn in a paper she delivered at the Ottawa Apocrypha Conference in 2006 (“From Model Virgin to Maternal Intercessor: Mary, Children, and Family Problems in Late Antique Infancy Gospel Traditions”). Such lists are provisional; they are based on the bare information provided in catalogues, and some items come from word-of-mouth reports by colleagues. So, it is to be expected that the lists will contain some errors, which can lead to challenges obtaining the manuscripts.

But the first task was to get copies of those manuscripts already published: London, British Library, Add. 14484 of the sixth century published by W. Wright in 1865, and Göttingen, Universitätsbibliothek, Syr. 10 of the fifth or sixth century collated against the first by W. Baars and J. Heldermann in 1993/1994. These were obtained without incident. The British Library has an on-line order form on their web site, and I requested the Göttingen library by e-mail. The manuscripts arrived quickly.  My preference is to order microfilms; I then scan these so that I can print them out on a high-quality printer, and also can have them at hand electronically when I need them. Wright’s collation ended up being quite accurate, but I found a few minor collation errors in Baars’ and Heldermann’s work.

The next order of business was to obtain copies of the unpublished material. Orders were dispatched to the Vatican, Cambridge, the Königlichen Bibliothek in Berlin, the Houghton Library at Harvard, the Mingana Collection in Birmingham, and the Columbia University Library in New York. The Mingana manuscripts were the easiest to get; they came through Interlibrary Loan (and thus were free). The Berlin manuscript was listed incorrectly by Baumstark and Mimouni; so I now have a fiche of an Arabic manuscript that I do not need. The library was helpful in discovering the proper shelf number and dispatched me a copy without delay. The Vatican order took a very long time. This was exacerbated by the fact that the Vatican mailed it incorrectly (orders are faxed and the address was either garbled in transmission or just transcribed wrong). I still await one manuscript from them and fear that order may have been lost. A similar problem occurred with a second manuscript from the British Library. An e-mail was apparently send to inform me that the manuscript was not available on microfilm and I would have to settle for scans. I never got the e-mail so they canceled the order. Cambridge was slow but the order arrived without incident. The Harvard manuscripts involved some extra work on the library’s part because some of them had never been photographed; thus I had to pay for their own microfilms and then copies for myself. The order from Columbia University started off well; again, the wrong shelf number was reported by Mimouni, but the librarian helped to find the correct information and promised speedy delivery. But, almost a year later I still do not have the manuscript and the library is not answering my e-mails. One has to be very patient with the manuscript departments of libraries. They are often understaffed, and delays can occur perhaps simply because their one staff member allocated to filling orders is ill.

Despite these problems, the manuscripts held in European or North American libraries are easy to obtain. Those from the East (Turkey and Iran) are considerably more difficult. Some of these collections have been destroyed due to war, some were moved but their destination is not clear. In a few cases, personal copies of the manuscripts were made by the scholars who discovered them; these copies can be used in their stead.

Another part of the process is to consult the catalogues relating to the manuscripts. When doing so, it is wise to leaf through the entire catalogue. Often you can find additional manuscripts that have gone unnoticed by previous scholars. This was the case for the Vatican Library and for Harvard. In browsing through Syriac catalogues, I also found a listing for a manuscript held at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. Our list of manuscripts of the text is now expanded from what was reported by Baumstark, Mimouni, and Horn.

And what are the results thus far? The Syriac tradition is of three types: IGT found in manuscripts along with the Protevangelium of James and the Assumption of the Virgin, IGT as the fourth book in a Jacobite Life of Mary compilation, and IGT incorporated into a Nestorian Life of Mary compilation.

1.The “Early” Version: this type is found in the earliest manuscripts from London and Göttingen. These are fragmentary—i.e., large sections believed to be original to the text are not contained in the manuscripts (London is missing sections of chs. 6, 7 and 15; Göttingen is missing sections of chs. 4, 5, 7, 19 and all of chs. 14 and 15). A third witness of this type is found in the unpublished Vatican, Syr. 159 (dated1622/1623) of which chs. 5-8 were published (but only in French) by P. Peeters (Évangiles apocryphes, vol. 2 [Textes et documents pour l’étude historique du Christianisme 18], Paris 1914, p. 304-308). IGT is here appended to (but not incorporated into) Nestorian Life of Mary material in Garshuni. This manuscript is more complete than the previous two and seems to be our best source for the gospel in Syriac. I plan to present a collation and discussion of this text at this year’s l’AELAC conference.

2.The Jacobite Life of Mary: this compilation features the Protevangelium of James, the Vision of Theophilus, IGT, and the Assumption of the Virgin. Only the Vision section of this text has been published to date. The manuscripts of this type include: Mingana Syr. 48 (1906, but copied in part from a manuscript of 1757); Mingana Syr. 5 (1790); Vatican, Borgia Syr. 128 (1720), Vatican, Syr. 537 (16th cent.); Vatican, Syr. 561 (1683; fragmentary); and Paris, Bib. nat. 377 (1854/1855). It is not always clear from the catalogue descriptions whether a given manuscript contains this text or the Nestorian text (and Baumstark and Mimouni may be wrong in their assessments). The following likely contain the Jacobite text (but have yet to be evaluated): Cambridge, Add. 2001 (1480-1481); London, Brit. Libr. Or 4526 (1726-1727); the Harvard manuscripts (Houghton Library, Syr. 168 [18th cent], Syr. 35 [16/17th cent.], Syr. 36 [16/17th cent.], Syr. 59 [19th cent.], Syr. 82 [17/18th cent.], Syr. 129 [17th cent.], and Syr. 39 [19^th cent.]); and Columbia University, Butler Library X893.4 B47. The Jacobite text is also extant in two Garshuni manuscripts (Syr. 39 [from 1773] and the more recent Syr. 114) which I have yet to examine. I plan to present a collation and discussion of this text at this year’s SBL conference.

3. The Nestorian Life of Mary: this compilation includes the Protevangelium of James, material incorporated also in the Arabic Infancy Gospel, IGT, episodes from the canonical gospels, the Assumption of the Virgin, and other miracles. The entire text was published from two manuscripts by E. A. Wallis Budge in 1899, though the IGT material was extant in only one of the manuscripts (a personal copy commissioned by Budge but based on a 13/14th century original). The IGT material has been shuffled around in the text; it consists of chs. 4, 6, 7, 11-16. Several of the manuscripts of this type are difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. The following are believed to contain the Nestorian text: Berlin, OrOct 1130 (1814/1815); Cambridge, Add. 2020 (1697); Union Theological Seminary, Syr. 32 (18th cent.); Vatican, Syr. 587 (1917); Vatican, Syr. 597 (17th cent.); Notre-Dame de Sémances 97 (1689/90); Mardin 80 (1728-1731); Diyarbakir 99 (undated); Séert 82 (16th cent.; a copy of this is available from the H. Hyvernat collection at the Catholic University of America); Teheran, Issayi 18 (1741/42 based on an original from 1243/44), and three manuscripts (probably now lost) from Urmia (43 [1813] perhaps identical to Cambridge, Or 1341 [1863] and a manuscript at Princeton’s Speer Library [Clemons 346]; 38 [1885]; and 47 [1885]. I am still in the process of obtaining many of these manuscripts.

So, that is the state of research on the Syriac tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Already some advances have been made: the published manuscripts have been re-examined, several unpublished manuscripts have been evaluated and their contents clarified, and the list of known sources has been expanded. There is much work yet to be done, but come June at least one very important witness will be available to those interested in the text.

Last week’s New Testament Apocrypha class focused on Matthew and Luke and related apocrypha—namely, Jewish-Christian gospels and infancy gospels.

The Jewish-Christian gospels are important texts, not least because their very Jewishness suggests that they may be early—Jesus was Jewish, his followers were Jewish; so, perhaps these texts record Jesus’ teachings and mission more faithfully than the more Gentile gospels of the NT. Except for the Gospel of the Ebionites, that is, which shows clear evidence of harmonization of the Synoptic gospels. The students were struck by the different dates assigned to the remaining two Jewish-Christian gospels (Hebrews and Nazareans) by the authors of the two textbooks we use. Bart Ehrman dates the two to the late first century, while Klauck to the early or middle of the second century. There seems to be no reason for Klauck’s late dating other than a need to keep the canonical gospels primary—i.e., no non-canonical gospel can be earlier (and therefore “better”) than the NT gospels. But it is a real possibility that these gospels are indeed early, and we should remain open to that possibility.

To add to the introductions to the texts provided by Ehrman and Klauck I discussed two lesser-known witnesses to Jewish-Christian traditions. The first is Ahmad ibn Abd al-Jabbar’s Confirmation of the Proofs of Prophethood of Our Master Mohammed which Shlomo Pines (“The Jewish Christians of the Early Centuries of Christianity according to a New Source,” 1968) claimed drew upon an anti-Christian polemic composed in Syriac by Jewish-Christians around the fourth to sixth century. The text criticizes Gentile Christians for failing to obey the Mosaic law and for giving up Hebrew (Hebrew was Christ’s language and the language of the original and true Christian gospel). Paul is criticized for denying the validity of all of the Mosaic laws, and is killed by Nero for encouraging the Romans to practice a religion opposed to the true religion of Jesus. Pines’ argument was countered by S. M. Stern (“Abd al-Jabbar’s Account of How Christ’s Religion Was Falsified by the Adoption of Roman Customs,” 1960), and the exchange between the two scholars grew heated. Now some decades later, perhaps it is time to revisit the evidence.

The other lesser-known witness is the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew found in Even Bohan, a fourteenth-century Jewish treatise written by Shem-Tob Ibn Shaprut of Aragon. George Howard (Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, 1995) claims it is a version of Matthew preserved in Jewish rabbinical circles that predates the Greek version of Matthew in the NT. I first read about the text in James Tabor’s The Jesus Dynasty (2006)—he considers it a valuable source for the early decades of Christianity. Howard’s book was brutally critiqued by William Petersen in 1998 (available HERE); Howard countered the review a year later (available HERE).

The distinction between orthodoxy and heresy again crept into our discussion. The Gospel of the Hebrews apparently contained a version of the woman caught in adultery from John 7:53-8:12. Though it cannot be determined that Hebrews was the original source of the story, certainly the story was not original to the Gospel of John. In a sense, the story is non-canonical—it should not be in the Bible; yet it remains. Childhood stories of Jesus also straddle the canonical/non-canonical divide as images from them appeared regularly in medieval art and iconography. And the Protevangelium of James was virtually canonical in the Greek East; some of its traditions (e.g., the names of Mary’s parents, the perpetual virginity of Mary) even became accepted teaching in the West.

To take this discussion a little further, some early CA scholars identified the texts studied in this course as “orthodox apocrypha” (Gnostic apocrypha, which had not yet been discovered, presumably would have been considered “heretical apocrypha”). All of these texts continued to be copied over the centuries and influenced art and literature. Since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library and other Gnostic texts, the orthodox apocrypha have been somewhat neglected. Yet they form a compelling corpus of texts that is situated on the spectrum of Christian literature just lower in esteem than the Apostolic Fathers.

The class came full circle with a few comments on Jean-Daniel Kaestli’s claim that a class of late Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew manuscripts contain material from the Gospel of Nazareans (“Recherches nouvelles sur les ‘Évangiles latins de l’enfance’ de M. R. James et sur un récit apocryphe mal connu de la naissance de Jésus.” Études Théologiques et Religeuses 72 [1997]: 219-233). Similar claims of earlier sources have been made for the Protevangelium of James and of the Latin version of Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Such claims attract attention to the infancy gospels; as in the search for sources for the historical Jesus, the earlier the text or tradition the better. But these texts deserve to be studied in their own right as examples of popular Christian piety on the periphery of the New Testament.

Recently I finished reading Reviel Netz’s and William Noel’s The Archimedes Codex: Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Greatest Palimpsest. The book details the acquisition of a thirteenth-century Christian prayer book that contains, as its underwriting, several works by the third-century BCE Greek mathematician Archimedes. One of these works, Floating Bodies, is found in no other source. But in some places the underwriting is incredibly difficult to read. The Archimedes Codex describes the pioneering scientific efforts to recover Archimedes’ works.

The book led me to thinking about palimpsests of CA texts and the possibility that advances in reading palimpsests could aid in recovering our texts. I am aware only of one such palimpsest: Vindobonensis 563, an eighth-century manuscript written over a fifth-century collection of the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and selections from the Gospel of Matthew. Constantin von Tischendorf was the first scholar to see the manuscript and was able to decipher much of it; Guy Philippart (“Fragments palimpsestes latins du Vindobonensis 563 [V^e siècle?]: Évangile selon S. Matthieu, Évangile de Nicodème, Évangile de l’enfance selon Thomas”, AnBoll 90, p. 391-411) revealed more of it in 1972.

The manuscript is important for the study of Infancy Thomas as it is the earliest known source we have for the text; unfortunately, only a handful of pages from the original manuscript were used by the eighth-century recycler. Virtually all of this material is readable (save for a few lines on two folios). The Gospel of Nicodemus material is far more extensive, stretching over 35 folios. Philippart was able to read more of the text than Tischendorf but did not include the new readings in his article—he believed it needed an edition all its own. I am not aware of such an edition, though the AELAC team working on an edition of Nicodemus may be using it.

Are there other palimpsests of CA texts? Is it possible to use the new technology to recover their contents with greater accuracy?

In Fall 2008 moviegoers will be able to see a film adaptation of Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (read the press release HERE). I read the book soon after its release and made some notes on its use of Christian Apocrypha. This is as good a time as any to share those notes. 

The book tells the story of the Holy Family’s return from Egypt to their hometown of Nazareth. The story is told from Jesus’ perspective, but as an adult reflecting on his childhood. It opens with a seven-year-old Jesus in Alexandria, surrounded by his family, which includes Mary and her brother Cleopas, Joseph and his brothers Alphaeus and Simon, Jesus’ aunts Salome, Esther and Mary, Jesus’ cousins Little Joses, Judas, Little Symeon and Salome, and big brother James, the child of Joseph from a previous marriage (recalling the explanation for the brothers of Jesus given in the Protoevangelium of James).

Joseph and his brothers are employed in Egypt as carpenters. After Joseph completes a project for Philo, the famous teacher meets Jesus, who he calls “the most promising scholar he has ever seen” (p. 14). But things go wrong for the family when Jesus curses a boy, Eleazer, in the marketplace. The miracle echoes Infancy Thomas ch. 4, though in the gospel Jesus is five, not seven, and in Nazareth, not Egypt. Infancy Thomas is employed again when James recalls having seen Jesus make birds from clay on the Sabbath (Infancy Thomas ch. 2-3) and perhaps in the description of Jesus’ and James’ teacher, who teaches the boys Greek (Infancy Thomas 6 and 14). Breaking from the gospel, Rice’s Jesus revives the boy and is confused about the origins of his powers; indeed the curse was accidental in Rice’s book.

As the family journey home, the young Jesus takes up a journey of discovery as he tries to learn the mysteries of his birth and infancy. The family seeks to insulate him from the horrors of the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem, and to keep a low profile to avoid other attempts on the boy’s life. As they head toward Nazareth, the family finds themselves part of several key events in first-century Judean history, including the riot in the Temple instigated by Archelaus, and the rebuilding of Sepphoris after the rebellion of Judas the Galilean. They also encounter some significant figures, many of whom are related to Jesus, including Elizabeth and John the Baptist (who here is revealed to be on his way to join the Essenes), Zebedee (who is married to Mary’s cousin, Mary Alexander), and Caiaphas (an uncle of Jesus).

As Jesus learns more about his origins, he learns also details about Mary’s life, details derived from the Protoevangelium of James. Mary is said to have been born in Sepphoris to her parents Joachim (a scribe) and Anna. Cleopas says of Mary: “A virgin child, a child in the service of the Temple of Jerusalem, to weave the great veil, with the other chosen ones, and then home under our eyes” (p. 46) (PJ ch. 10). As in Prot. Jas. a woman named Salome serves as midwife at Jesus’ birth, though Rice’s Salome is Mary’s sister and there is no gynecological exam (PJ ch. 19-20). And this birth takes place in a cave (PJ 18:1). Prot. Jas. also provides details about John the Baptist’s life. Elizabeth tells the story of the death of Zechariah (PJ ch. 23-24), at which time she and the child hid in the mountains (PJ ch. 22), though these mountains are said to be near the Essenes who helped the two fugitives by providing them with food.

In an appendix (“Author’s Notes”) Rice reveals the inspiration and intentions behind the book. She discusses her Catholic upbringing and long-standing interest in the origins of Christianity. In 2002 she came to a realization: “I wanted to write the life of Jesus Christ. I had known that years ago. But now I was ready. I was ready to do violence to my career. I wanted to write the book in the first person. Nothing else mattered. I consecrated the book to Christ” (p. 309). So Rice went to work on research. She was surprised at the variety: “I had no idea I was entering a field of research where no-one agreed on anything” (p. 310). She began with the skeptics but found that their arguments “lacked coherence,” “were not elegant”, “were full of conjecture”, and “absurd conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all” (p. 313). She cautions that these scholars “detest and despise Jesus Christ” (p. 315) and the reader should beware. She preferred conservative scholars such as Martin Hengel, Richard Bauckham, and N. T. Wright; she also found appealing the arguments of John A. T. Robinson on dating the gospels.

On the use of Christian Apocrypha, Rice says that she sought to write about the Jesus of the Gospels but was fascinated also by the apocrypha. “Ultimately,” she writes, “I chose to embrace this material, to enclose it within the canonical framework as best I could. I felt there was a deep truth in it, and I wanted to preserve that truth as it spoke to me. Of course that is an assumption. But I made it. And perhaps in assuming that Jesus did manifest supernatural powers at an early age I am somehow being true to the Council  of Chalcedon, that Jesus was God and man at all times” (p. 320).

Rice’s book is striking for its use of the CA despite the author’s Catholic background and appeal to conservative scholarship. Likely, neither fellow Catholics nor the scholars she values would think highly of her book. For CA scholars the book illustrates some of the motives behind the creation of the CA. First, Rice felt the need to appeal to the infancy gospels in order to fill gaps left by the canonical texts, a need felt also by the gospels’ authors. And Rice invented some stories of her own. Second, Rice expanded the canonical Jesus story out of piety (a motive often ascribed also to the infancy gospel writers), not to intentionally mislead believers nor to introduce heretical Christology. Rice, like other modern apocrypha creators (Mel Gibson anyone?), seems oblivious to the fact that she has created an apocryphon, i.e., that she has altered and expanded the canonical Jesus story by drawing upon old traditions and creating new ones. Perhaps the infancy gospel writers felt the same. Also Rice’s selectivity with the infancy gospels recalls the practice of copyists of the texts who certainly valued the gospels but transformed them to be less objectionable—for example, earlier forms of Infancy Thomas did not have Jesus revive those he cursed, nor did they have the beneficent miracles of chs. 10, 17 and 18.

Christ the Lord is not a sophisticated, nor a challenging treatment of the Life of Jesus. The film, if and when it is completed, will serve us best as a classroom tool to show contemporary use of apocryphal traditions. It may also stimulate discussion of the CA in popular forums. Until then, we can occupy ourselves with Rice's secondvoluyme in the life of Jesus: Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, to be released in March 2008.

As part of my efforts to unravel the complexities of the transmission history of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I have begun the process of collecting and collating the various Syriac manuscripts of the text. The Syriac tradition of IGT is very important—it is among the earliest evidence we have for the text (two manuscripts are from the 5/6th century) and it is the best witness for the “short” version of the text, a version that is likely to be closer to the original than the longer versions we have in the Greek manuscripts.

The evidence for Syriac IGT comes in three forms:

1. Two manuscripts featuring a compilation of the Protevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Assumption of the Virgin. One of these (London, British Library, Add. 14484 of the sixth century; =SyrW) was published in 1865. The second (Göttingen, Universitätsbibliothek, Syr. 10 of the fifth or sixth century; =SyrG) was collated against the first in 1993/1994. I have obtained copies of both manuscripts and confirmed their contents. Both contain apparent omissions (that is, when compared with what is known about the short version from other witnesses): SyrW is missing sections of chs. 6, 7 and 15; SyrG is missing sections of chs. 4, 5, 7, 19 and all of chs. 14 and 15.

The Infancy Gospel of James is featured prominently in a new book by Frederica Mathewes-Green, The Lost Gospel of Mary: The Mother of Jesus in Three Ancient Texts from Paraclete Press. An interview with the author is available here. The title is somewhat misleading (Infancy James has never really been “lost,” and calling it the Gospel of Mary leads to confusion with the Gnostic text of the same name). The following excerpt from the interview reveals which texts Mathewes-Green examines:

The first text, the “Gospel of Mary,” shows us Mary as an adorable little girl, and then as a teenager coping with a “crisis pregnancy” that could cause her execution as a suspected adultress. This was an extremely popular work among Eastern Christians (that is, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern) in the second century. Many of the stories here made it to Europe, but the intact text did not. A 16^th-century scholar who translated it into Latin named it “the Protevangelium of James;” this is how scholars know it today, but it’s not the original title (no one title stuck, actually). In this work, Mary is steadfast under this trial, and teaches us much about courage.

The other two texts illuminate other aspects of Mary’s role. The second is a very short prayer that was found on a scrap of papyrus in Egypt in 1917, and dated 250 AD; it is the earliest prayer to Mary. It begins, “Under your compassion we take refuge…”, and it’s still in use East and West (Roman Catholics know it as “Sub Tuum Praesidium.”) This second text shows us that early Christians believed that she (like all the saints) are alive in Christ’s presence and continually in prayer, so we can call on her as a prayer partner. The third text is a beautiful and intricately complex “sung sermon”, written around 520 A.D., which explores the mystery of the Incarnation and all the ways that Mary’s role is foreshadowed in Scripture.

I have made some changes to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas section of my web site. When I set up the site about six months ago I intended to make available new translations of various versions of the text. I have been slow to do so as the work on these translations has been progressing hand-in-hand with the revisions I am completing on the published version of my Ph. D. thesis. Much of the text-critical work on the book has been completed, so I will be adding new texts to the site within the coming days.

Today I added a new translation of the Syriac manuscripts, the Georgian text, and an English translation of the Ethiopic version graciously provided by Paul-Hubert Poirier. I have also added links to Ron Hock’s translation of the text and a few links to other sites hosting information on the gospel.

More to come…