Jim Davila at Paleojudaica pointed out this review of Reidar Aasgaard's study of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (The Childhood of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009).
I have returned from my trip to the US to photograph a handful of Syriac manuscripts. The work went quite well, with only a few minor problems accessing the material. Here's a brief rundown of the trip.
I arrived in New York City Sunday night. Princeton Theological Society was scheduled for one o'clock the following afternoon. So, after a short stroll through Central Park Monday morning, I headed off to Princeton. When I arrived, a fire alarm was going off in the library (due to construction) and I had to wait a little while for that to be resolved. I speedily photographed the manuscript (Speer Library Cabinet C, Ms. 40). I was under the mistaken belief that this was a copy of a manuscript from Urmia (Urmia 43) that was now lost. In fact, however, it actually is Urmia 43. So, one mystery solved. Documents in the library suggest that the other two Urmia manuscripts (38 and 47) are indeed lost, though the Royal Asiatic Society Ms published by Budge is virtually identical to Urmia 38.
On Tuesday, I made it to Union Theological Seminary to photograph UTS Syr. 32, a fragmentary Life of Mary Ms of only forty or so pages. Upon arrival I was told I needed a temporary library card from Butler library, which was four blocks down the street. Sigh. After a quick run in terrible heat, I was back to complete the job.
And on Friday, I spent a few hours in Harvard's Houghton Library photographing Mss. 168 and 82. Houghton is somewhat more regimented than the other two libraries. Besides the elaborate security one has to get through, I could not use my tripod. I was also slowed down by some hem-ing and haw-ing over the manuscripts. They could not understand why the library itself could not photograph them, despite my insistence that I was told that the library informed me these could not be photographed because they were too delicate. After clearing everything with the curator, I was given the go-ahead. I also got a look at Titterton's very extensive catalogue of the Syriac manuscripts.
And now I am back in Waterloo, cropping and organizing the photographs so that I can print them out in the next few days. I still don't know how valuable the manuscripts will be: Houghton Ms. 168 I have collated already, so it holds no surprises, but the other three may very well be Life of Mary manuscripts that do not contain the Infancy Thomas material, in which case they are not particularly useful to me, but may be for others interested in the text. At the very least they will be incorporated into my description of the Life of Mary manuscripts, which have been terribly confused in previous studies of the material.
On Sunday I will be heading off to the US for a research trip. I have been collecting manuscripts of the two Syriac versions of the Life of Mary: an eastern one edited by E.A.W. Budge in 1899, and a western one still unedited but discussed here and there by a few previous scholars. My interest, of course, is in the material incorporated into these texts from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
The goal, ultimately, is to construct a critical edition of the Syriac tradition of this text. To date only two manuscripts of the Syriac IGT have been published. These two, plus two more, have been collated in my article that should appear in Apocrypha some time soon. Of the western Life of Mary, which incorporates all of IGT as one of its six “books,” there are thirteen known manuscripts. One of these is at Harvard and has not yet been photographed (thus the need for the trip). Of the eastern Life of Mary, which contains some episodes from IGT, there are 23 manuscripts. Two have been published (by Budge), and several are probably lost forever. One is at Harvard, one at Princeton, and one at Union Theological Seminary; all of these have to be photographed.
The US is not exactly Mt. Sinai, but I am excited about the trip, especially since I’ll be incorporating some site-seeing along the way and bringing my two girls for company. It is exciting also because these are probably the last manuscripts I need to finish a project that has occupied much of my time over the last few years. What next? Ethiopic? Um, no thanks.
I have updated the text on my Syriac Infancy Gospel of Thomas page to reflect the work I completed recently on a translation of the unpublished manuscript Vat. Syr. 159, the only manuscript published (well, almost published) to date that includes the full text of the Syriac tradition of this text (previous Mss are all fragmentary). I am working now on another branch of the tradition preserved in eleven known (and unpublished) Mss. And one of these Mss (Mingana Syr. 5) can be viewed on-line at the University of Birmingham's Virtual Reading Room (the text begins at fol. 18).
I was recently e-mailed a link to an article (though it is only on-line and apparently unpublished) on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that suggests the author of the text was a child. Here is the LINK and the abstract (make of it what you will):
Apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Thomas is very controversial apocryphal text of uncertain origin. More authentic recent Czech translation by Petr Pe?áz (Dus, Pokorný 2001) tries to preserve original colloquial style and suggests an idea that the author of this text was not an adult person, but a child – boy at prepubescent age (10 – 12 years) with hyperactive tendencies. All the text represents childish megalomaniac imagination, which helps the child to cope with everyday conflicts with teachers, the father and friends by means of identification with young Jesus. The text had been probably forgotten in child’s lair and revealed a few decades afterwards without recognizing the real childish author. This article illustrates this hypothesis by comparing the gospel’s style with other literal works of similar age children and the Gospel of Mark and tries to depict a plausible psychological profile of the childish author by deliberate classification of his cognitive, emotional, moral, psychosexual stage of development.
My long-awaited (well, by me at least) critical edition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is due to be published this year. Seeing it in print seems a little closer to reality now that it is listed in the Brepols on-line catalogue (and it's a steal at a mere 160 Euros!). The listing will soon be updated with the following product description:
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT), an early apocryphal writing about Jesus’ childhood, was first published from a Greek manuscript in the seventeenth century. At the time, and for several centuries thereafter, scholars believed the text to be the “Gospel of Thomas” mentioned by a number of early Church writers and frequently associated with gnostics. With the publication of the true Gospel of Thomas from Nag Hammadi in 1956 interest in the text waned. A few scholars published editions of various versions of the text—including Syriac, Ethiopic, Georgian, Latin, and Slavonic—but study of the Greek tradition stalled, despite indications of the existence of a number of manuscripts that could greatly improve our knowledge of the text. This edition brings together all known published and unpublished Greek manuscripts of IGT, assigns them to four separate recensions (Greek A, B, D, and S), and presents them in Greek and English translation. Attention is also paid to the versions, particularly the Slavonic and Latin traditions, which are shown to be translations of Greek A and Greek D, and therefore help to establish the original form of those recensions. The early versions (Syriac, Ethiopic, Georgian, and another Latin translation) are discussed also as they inform the text of Greek S, an important new recension which brings us much closer to IGT’s original form and should be considered the new textus receptus for study of the gospel. The edition also features a detailed overview of previous scholarship on the text, and a commentary on the gospel that seeks to situate it in its appropriate theological and socio-historical contexts. Scholars of early Christianity have been waiting centuries for a comprehensive critical edition of IGT. While more work needs to be done on some of the versions of the text, this volume fulfills much of the needs of scholarship by providing a vastly improved edition of IGT in its likely language of composition.
In my neverending work on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I have begun the process of collating copies of the Life of Mary edited by E. A. W. Budge over a century ago. Some of the manuscripts, however, are quite difficult to obtain (indeed, it may be that they are now lost forever). I was hoping some experts in the field might know how to find manuscripts from Diyarbakir, Mardin, Alqosh (specifically the convent of Notre-Dame de Sémances), and Urmia.
I just received my free copy of Cornelia Horn and Robert Phenix’s essay collection, Children in Late Ancient Christianity (Mohr Siebeck, to be published this month). I have a free copy because the book features my essay, “‘Social Viewing’ of Children in the Childhood Stories of Jesus.” The essay is essentially a summary of the last 200 pages of my doctoral thesis on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The book also features a few other Christian Apocrypha related pieces, including Reidar Aasgaard’s “Uncovering Children’s Culture in Late Antiquity: The Testimony of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” and Cornelia’s “Approaches to the Study of Sick Children and Their Healing: Christian Apocryphal Acts, Gospels, and Cognate Literatures.” Congratulations Cornelia and Rob on a fine publication.
Apocryphicity has suffered from considerable neglect lately. There are several reasons for this. For one, I am under review for Tenure, and the file preparation has taken some of my time. Also, I have a heavy course load this semester. And, there has been an illness (and subsequent death) in the family, leading to the abandonment of my SBL paper (see further below) and a curtailing of other projects.
Nevertheless, it’s probably time to put some work into my languishing Blog. I thought I’d begin with some updates on a variety of projects.
1. I look forward very soon to seeing the proofs for my critical edition of the Greek tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The edition is based on my 2001 doctoral dissertation (available HERE) and is to be published in the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum. The editing process has taken a considerable amount of time, but the end product will be much superior to the dissertation. We should see the edition some time in 2010 (hopefully by the l’AELAC Réunion in June).
2. I am following up my Greek edition of IGT with work on the Syriac tradition of the text (for more information see HERE). This was the focus of two presentations last year (at the l’AELAC Réunion and at SBL). The first of these, focusing specifically on the Ms Vat. Syr. 159, is currently under revision. I am supplementing the paper with readings from a second, similar Ms (Mingana 105).
3. This past summer Slavomir Ceplo and I presented a paper on the Syriac tradition of the Legend of the Thirty Silver Pieces (for more, see HERE). We will revise the paper for publication once we finally obtain the last remaining Ms of the text.
4. My paper on Christian Apocrypha in Ancient Libraries (mentioned HERE) for this year’s SBL Annual Meeting has been canceled (due to illness/death in the family). I will continue work on the topic, perhaps resubmitting the paper for next year’s meeting.
5. Much of my time over the summer was spent translating a well-known text from the OT pseudepigrapha from Syriac into English for a top-secret publication that should appear in the Spring or Summer of 2010. It is a lengthy text, and it has never been translated into English (or any modern language) before, so it was a big challenge that strained by still-developing skills in Syriac.
So, you see I am not dead, merely busy and distracted. But I promise that Apocryphicity will be more active for the foreseeable future.
I'd like to congratulate Reidar Aasgaard on the publication of his new book, The Childhood of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. Reidar has been working for several years now on this text; some of you may have seen him present his work at the meetings of the SBL or AELAC. This is the first book devoted solely to Infancy Thomas in quite some time (the most recent being Thomas Rosen's excellent study, The Slavonic Translation of the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas in 1997). Best of luck Reidar. For more information , download the promotional PDF here.