The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: The text, its origins, and its transmission

grantor: University of TorontoThe 'Infancy Gospel of Thomas' (IGT), an early apocryphal writing about Jesus' childhood, has been known in the West for centuries--IGT was first published in the seventeenth century--yet after all this time, scholars interested in the text remain focused on recovering its earliest form and on situating it in the spectrum between heresy and orthodoxy. Such efforts have overshadowed the need to situate this text in the history of literature. Only by identifying its literary affinities can IGT truly be understood. Upon IGT's discovery scholars immediately identified the text as the "Gospel of Thomas" mentioned by a number of early Church writers and frequently associated with gnostics. The absence of anything remotely gnostic in the text led to the creation of an expurgation theory which holds that gnostic discourses must have been removed from the text by a Catholic reviser. With the publication of the true 'Gospel of Thomas' from Nag Hammadi in 1956 both the association with Gnosticism and the expurgation theory should have come to an end; yet many scholars continue to claim that gnostic sayings have been removed from the text. This dissertation seeks to correct these ideas. Recent work on IGT has shown that the text has been lengthened over the centuries, not shortened, with material having been added to the text in order to harmonize its portrayal of Jesus with that of the NT gospels. New Greek manuscripts of the gospel, edited and published here for the first time, help to bolster this shorter text theory and aid in tracing the text's transmission. They also set IGT on a firm text-critical foundation for the study of its contents. A critical analysis of these contents reveals that IGT was never more gnostic at all. In fact, the conventions employed in ancient biographical literature dictate that childhood portrayals of eminent adults are intended to foreshadow their later career. IGT's irascible wonderworker, therefore, is based not on gnostic contempt for the world but from the author's belief that the 'adult ' Jesus was just as likely to curse as to bless. These conventions reveal also that IGT's Jesus is wise and mature not because he is meant to be understood as a gnostic Redeemer figure but because, in antiquity, these qualities often were celebrated in praiseworthy children. The ancients valued their offspring only when they approached adulthood, for in adulthood they were needed to care for their parents and carry on the family name. It was in adulthood too that a person attained reason, the requisite virtue for becoming truly human. The Jesus of IGT, therefore, is far more ordinary than previously thought. He is temperamental, not because he represents gnostic contempt of the world, but because the author believes his young Jesus is consistent with the Jesus, and the apostles, of the NT. He is mature and wise not because he is not really human--neither gnostic Redeemer nor god-child--but because in the eyes of the text's author and audience, these things make him human.Ph.D