Christian Apocrypha: Jesus as a Kid

#50: “Christian Apocrypha: Jesus as a Kid” by Brendon Wahlberg
Previously, this column has taken a look at a few ancient Christian writings which did not make it into the New Testament, such as the “Acts of Peter”, the “Shepherd of Hermas”, and “The Acts of Paul”. This time, we will examine a once-popular gospel that claims to tell all about Jesus as a kid. It is called the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas” (not to be confused with the very different “Gospel of Thomas”, a controversial collection of Jesus’ sayings) and although it was once widely read and copied into many languages, few people read it today. The portrait of Jesus it contains is simply too hard for modern readers to take seriously. Could you believe a story that presents Jesus as a bratty child who kills neighbor children who annoy him?
If you are familiar with the Gospel of Luke, you know that it depicts the birth of Jesus and a bit of his infancy, and then it skips to Jesus’ twelfth year with this sentence: “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” (Luke 2:40) Around the year 150, an unknown author decided that the brief account in Luke was not enough. Jesus was too important for people not to know more about him. That gap of twelve years had to be filled. Early Christians were hungry for stories about the childhood of Jesus, stories which would show that he was capable of miracles even at a young age. Indeed, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas begins this way:
“I, Thomas the Israelite, make this report to all of you, my brothers among the Gentiles, that you may know the magnificent childhood activities of our Lord Jesus Christ – all that he did after being born in our country.”
Thomas’ first story shows Jesus at five years old on a Sabbath day, playing by a stream, making pools, and purifying the waters in them with a word, perhaps foreshadowing the ritual of baptism. Jesus then takes soft clay and fashions twelve sparrows, but a neighbor complains to Jesus’ father Joseph that the child is violating the Sabbath prohibition against work on that day. Of course, this foreshadows the many arguments which the adult Jesus will have with his fellow Jews over this subject. Joseph chastises his son, but Jesus claps his hands, cries out ‘be gone’ and the clay sparrows come to life and fly away, effectively ending the argument.
It is a reflection of how widespread this story once was, that the miracle of Jesus and the birds made it into chapter five of the Koran. “Then will Allah say: ‘O Jesus the son of Mary! […] Behold! I taught thee the Book and Wisdom, the Law and the Gospel and behold! thou makest out of clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, by My leave, and thou breathest into it and it becometh a bird by My leave…”
A child takes a stick and destroys Jesus’ pools of water. Jesus tells the child that he will be barren and wither away, and immediately it happens. Another child runs by and bumps into Jesus’ shoulder, Jesus tells him that he will go no further, and immediately, the child drops dead. The neighbors are amazed and horrified, and they warn Joseph that he cannot live in the village unless Jesus learns to bless and not to curse, for Jesus is killing the village children. Joseph privately tells Jesus to stop, but Jesus declares that his accusers will be punished, and immediately they go blind. Joseph tries physical punishment, yanking Jesus’ ear, to no avail.
A teacher named Zachaeus promises Joseph to teach Jesus to love, honor, and respect his elders and children his own age, and to teach him to read the Greek alphabet. But Zachaeus is soon frustrated and humbled. Jesus already knows far more than his teacher, and the child lectures the teacher until he is confused and defeated. “Since you do not know the true nature of the Alpha, how can you teach anyone the Beta?” Jesus demands. The teacher gives up, saying, “I beg of you, brother Joseph, take him away. I cannot bear his stern gaze or make sense of a single word. This child is not of this world […] Maybe he was born before the world came into being.” Of course, all this talk of the Alpha, and Jesus being born before the world, clearly reflects the beginning of the Gospel of John.
Jesus laughs and says, “Let the barren bear fruit and let the blind in heart see. I have come from above to curse them and call them to the realm above, just as the one who sent me for your sake commanded.’ When the child stopped speaking, immediately all those who had fallen under his curse were healed. No one dared to anger him from that time on…” Jesus has made his point, and now he reverses the damage he did to the neighbors. Blindness, withering, and death vanish away. Of course, the story of the blind villagers reflects many of the gospel sayings, in which blind people represent those who will not see the gospel truth.
Over the following years, several more healing miracles follow. A child falls from a roof and dies, and Jesus calls him back to life. Jesus next heals a young man’s foot, which had been struck with an axe. Jesus also heals his brother James from a snake bite by breathing on the bite. Jesus touches an infant which had sickened and died, restoring it to life. Some of the villagers begin to want to worship him, saying, “Truly, this child is either God, or an angel of God, for his every word is an accomplished deed.” After yet another raising of the dead, the crowd says, “This child comes from Heaven, for he has saved many souls from death – his entire life he is able to save them.”
At age eight, Jesus sows a single grain of wheat, and harvests one hundred bushels. Then he feeds the wheat to all the poor people. This miracle makes literal some of the agricultural parables of the adult Jesus concerning the great harvest of people in the Kingdom of God. The reader begins to recognize the seeds of the adult Jesus, so to speak.
But Joseph thinks that Jesus still does not know how to read. Joseph tries another teacher, and the result is again a disaster. But the third teacher is wise enough to recognize that Jesus speaks in the Holy Spirit, teaching the Law with great grace and wisdom. This episode leads directly to the ending of the Infancy Gospel, which repeats the same story we find in the Gospel of Luke; at age twelve, Jesus goes to Jerusalem with his parents, gets separated from them, and is finally found teaching the elders in the Temple (Luke 2:46).
The Infancy Gospel was very popular in the Middle Ages, and has influenced much Christian artwork. Translated and copied many times, it comes down to us in a variety of texts with many variations in the details of the story. But of course it is not canonical, and today it is mostly dismissed. Modern readers probably have trouble getting past the image of young Jesus cursing other children to death over minor quarrels. But to be fair, everyone who is cursed or killed in the story is eventually healed or raised back to life. As Jesus grows from age five to age eight, his behavior changes; he is shown to heal many people. He begins to bless and not to curse, just as Joseph and the villagers hoped. The villagers go from fear of him to worship. Is the point here that even the Savior grows and matures? After all, as it says in Luke 2:40, the child grew.
The purpose of such literature is to satisfy the desire to know more about the central figure of a great religion. There are other stories in antiquity like this, in which a famous person is described as a child, and of course in these stories, the famous figure does not act like a child normally would. The point of such stories is precisely that the person was not a normal child at all. How could he have been, when he turned out to be such an amazing adult?
Did the author mean for people to take the Infancy Gospel as a set of true stories? It is hard to say. Beyond an overall sense of humor and exaggeration, much of the content of the Infancy Gospel is, after all, not greatly different from the content of the four accepted Gospels. There are healings and teachings, miracles and enactments of parables. The author apparently tried to make his child Jesus reflect the adult Jesus of the New Testament, in order to teach us something about Jesus. Whether it was “true” was beside the point. Perhaps the best thing we can do with such a story is to let it remain apocryphal while learning the lessons of Christianity which the author wanted to teach to his readers. Jesus was magnificent as an adult and as a child too, the writer teaches us. All his life, even in childhood, Jesus was able to save people. The writer’s Joseph sums it up for us, saying, “I am blessed that God has given me this child.”