This particular book is directed at a popular audience. The goal of it is primarily to provide a readable version of the text. The introductory materials, then, are somewhat sparse but are enough to set the text in its historical and literary contexts. Brent also adds some details about how he came to be interested in the text and his efforts to discover more about it.

He notes that the canonical story of the Magi, from the Gospel of Matthew, leaves readers with many questions about these enigmatic figures. Where exactly are they from? How did they come to know about the prophecy of the star? What are their names? How many Magi are there? And why are they called “magi”? The Revelation of the Magi answers all these questions.

Among the “revelations” found in this text is the Magi’s origins in the land of Shir. They derive ultimately from the line of Seth, the son of Adam. The prophecy of the star comes from Adam himself who bequeathed it to Seth, according to a testament of Adam embedded within the narrative. Also of interest is the notion that Christ was the source of numerous revelations to various cultures throughout human history. The text’s ecumenism is attractive theology for our day and age (though still essentially supersessionist). Revelation of the Magi concludes with a legend of the apostle Thomas arriving in Shir where he relates the events of Jesus’ life and baptizes the Magi.  

The Revelation of the Magi is extant in a single eighth-century Syriac manuscript from the Vatican library. Brent believes the text was composed sometime in the late second or early third century, primarily because the Thomas legend is likely a third-century addition to the text. The Revelation was also known to the writer of a fifth-century Latin commentary of Matthew known as the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum; Brent provides a translation of the relevant section of this text in an appendix.

This is an excellent little book for anyone interested in the CA, particularly infancy traditions. It is great to see also the interest shown by Harper Collins in disseminating this text to a wide audience.

James McGrath via Mark Goodacre drew my attention to The Young Jesus Chronicles, a cartoon collection by Spencer Smith and Mark Penta. You can preview the book at their homepage.

And behold, he happily taught the alphabet with joy. And hearing him, the teacher….his hand was withered up to where it touched his fringe, and suddenly he was healed. And filled up with strength again, he dug by a word and commanded the flowing water to divide into twelve streams. And he formed birds of clay on the Sabbath day. And the priests, seeing and being angry, wished to destroy them. But, clapping his hands, he said: “O melodious birds, behold, in the presence of the priests I say to you: become flesh, receive form, become animated, become winged and fly to the entire world. Do not fear the archer, be careful of traps and tortuous snares, fly not toward the ground. And take care of your young in heaven above. And at once the announced deed became a thing manifest for, singing sweet music through the voice, the birds went away crying: “O holy child of a heavenly father and earthly mother… And grace has shone on us, Christ. And we have returned to you again so that you may know that we believe in your father.” And he said to the priests: “You are despising, and are like the clay that was formed by the hand of the craftsman in the form of the birds, which now also have been given form. And you, oh priests, who until now were without form regarding life, through the water, you have been made known to God and are fleeing from the threat of the Law and receiving the grace of life.

And the child Jesus, playing, went upon a roof with his children friends. And one of the children fell and died at once. And when his father and also his mother raised a clamour because of the one who was dead, and when everyone fled, the boy Jesus remained alone. And placing his hand on the one who was dead, he said: “Did I kill you?” And the boy, rising as if from sleep, looked up and saw Jesus and said: “No Lord, but you raised me from the dead.” And then the parents of the one who was raised ran to the temple and reported all that Jesus had done to the high priests of the Law. And they said: “truly this is the messiah, the one born of Mary the holy virgin, and truly she is a virgin still.” And again they (the high priests) said: “Beelzebul, ruler of the demons, he does these things. For who has heard that a virgin has given birth?” And the parents of the boy who was raised were saying to the priests: “Why do you, who read the Law, not recognize Jesus the Messiah in the Law?” The high priests said to them: “Babouberbeth, who is called Accursed, are you teaching us?” And they ordered them to be banished from the synagogue. But they laughed. Then the high priests said: “Why did you laugh?” And they said: “We did not laugh (at ourselves), rather we laughed at you, because from now on we have forsaken you for, having gone away, we will follow Jesus. For if our son Zeno was raised from the dead, he is able to raise us after death also.” And at once they left the temple and came to where Jesus was.

And the high priests called for Joseph, the father of Jesus, and said to him in Hebrew: “Nathazareth and Boum.” And they said: “The god of your fathers, in fear give him praise. Is the child Jesus your son?” Joseph said: “If he is my son, I do not know, for the virgin Mary, who you had given to me from the house of the Lord to protect her, gave birth to him and she is a virgin still.” The high priests said: “No small wonder, that having brought forth she is still a virgin.” And they said to him: “Call Mary, your wife, so that we may see if, after giving birth to the boy Jesus, she is still a virgin.” Joseph said: “I said to you that I took her from the holy house after she conceived from the Holy Spirit there in the temple of God with the virgins spinning the purple and red and the gold embroidery into the curtain for the glory of the Lord. But I am alone in my house, and the child Jesus.” They said to him: “How old is the child Jesus?” He said to them: “Why do you accuse me so, in contentiousness? For the child Jesus is three years old. And he speaks from the beginning so that often also I see him greater, above my height. And also frequently he watches over and considers and prays and does wonderful things, such as the prophets did not do, nor Moses, no Elijah. And he says God is his own father.”

And the high priests said: “Dachodoreth, Samouth, who is called Excellent, Joseph…[Joseph said:] “Why do you accuse me so and talk idly so much? Listen, because Zeno was raised from the dead and two birds molded from clay; animating them and giving them wings, he sent them out to the whole world. He is to me a support and all my nourishment is from him; for when I do not have wood, he commands and a great amount appears. And when I began an evening’s work, he came at night and he observed, and in the morning it was finished. And when it was time for a meal and having nothing to eat, he came to the table and immediately the table became full of bread and good things of all sorts. And drawing water from the well, he offered it to drink and it was found to be fine wine. And as I was eating, he came out from my house and he calls to the neighbours from the street and the poor and those he found to be lame, blind, half-withered, crippled, and thrown on the dungheap and said to them: ‘Rise in full health and come into the house of my father Joseph and eat the bread and drink the wine to filling.’ On the whole, his word is a true deed. And he has a great crowd of disciples. And the Sabbath, he says, was made for man. And he said to the teacher: ‘Why do you strike (me) for not breaking the Sabbath?’ And in striking him, he whipped him and immediately his right hand withered. And running he fell at his feet and it was healed. And everyone in the schoolroom worshipped him as God.”

And the high priests were amazed at what he said. And they said to him: “What can we give you to kill him during the night?” And he said to them: “How could I kill him? I said to you that he never sleeps but he watched and considers and prays, and a great crowd of angels respond: Alleluia.” And the high priests became silent and said to Joseph: “Go to your home and say nothing in arrogance to the child, do not be angry with us and kill us. Go home, Joseph, bless you. Bless also the child Jesus.”

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.

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.

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?