Chapter 21

Gospels Galore

The Infancy Gospel of James

Artist depiction of various early Christians in various locations writing gospels

Gospel writing, as an activity, only increased in popularity after 150 CE. Among these new works was a subgenre known as “infancy gospels”, each of which gave an account of events leading up to the birth of Jesus or related tales from his childhood. The earliest such work was written around the same time as the Acts of the Apostles, and is known as the Infancy Gospel of James, which purports to have been written by the disciple James, who is here described as Jesus’s step-brother—a son of Joseph from a previous marriage. Its actual author is unknown, but after its publication it went on to become extremely popular for centuries. Despite the Roman Catholic church’s official denouncing of it in the 300s and again in the 500s, it remained very influential throughout the Middle Ages, adding greatly to the lore that developed around the Virgin Mary, and very strongly influencing depictions of Mary and Joseph as very young and very old, respectively, among medieval artists.¹

Medieval art depicting a multi-decade age difference between Mary and Joseph

The story begins by telling the miraculous birth of Jesus’s mother Mary to her own parents, said to be named Anna and Joachim. The by-now very familiar trope is employed in which this aging devout Jewish couple dramatically mourns their lifelong inability to conceive a child—Mary’s mother even deems her entire life worthless because of this—when lo and behold an angel of the Lord appear to Anna and promises her a child who will become famous. Meanwhile, two angels appear to Joachim while he is away from home, telling him to return to his wife because she is now pregnant. Though it’s not spelled out, the insemination of Mary’s mother is strongly implied to have been divine rather than human.²

Artist depiction of young Mary being presented to the High Priest at the Temple of Jerusalem

After only 7 months of pregnancy, Anna gives birth to a healthy baby she names Mary. When her daughter reaches age 3, she and Joachim take her to live at the Temple of Jerusalem where the priests and all the Israelites adore her, and she is said to eat from the hand of an angel. There she stays until the age of 12, when her impending first menstruation means she must go and live elsewhere so as not to defile the Temple of God.³

Artist depiction of a dove settling on the elderly Joseph’s head

An angel then appears to the high priest of the Temple and instructs him to marry off young Mary to one of the widowers in the land. So the announcement goes out across Judah for all widowers to come to the Temple, each bringing with them a rod. One of these widowers is an old man named Joseph who has several sons from a previous marriage. As soon as he hears about the 12-year-old potential bride, he drops everything, grabs his rod, and heads to Jerusalem. Then when a dove miraculously appears out of Joseph’s rod and sits on his head, the high priest declares that he has been divinely chosen to become the pubescent Mary’s husband.⁴

Artist depiction of Joseph expressing outrage toward young Mary

Not long afterward, while Joseph is away working at a construction site, Mary has her encounter with the angel Gabriel, as depicted in the Gospel 2.5 (Luke), informing her that she will soon become miraculously pregnant and give birth to “the Son of the Highest” who she must name Jesus. When Joseph returns to find his young virgin wife pregnant, he assumes she has been raped, and demands to know why she has “humiliated her soul”. After considering his options, he decides not to report Mary’s condition to the priests, because—on the off-chance that the child she’s carrying is of angelic parenthood—it wouldn’t be right to let her be executed. He resolves to divorce her, but then an angel appears to him and announces that the child is from the Holy Spirit and that he will save people from their sins.⁵

Artist depiction of a young woman drinking from a jug

All seems well for a short while, but then a friend of Joseph drops by, notices that Mary is pregnant, and rushes to the Temple and blurts this information to the priests who then summon Joseph and Mary. “Why have you done this, Mary?” they demand to know. “Why have you humiliated your soul and forgotten the Lord your God?” The priests don’t believe anything Joseph or Mary tell them, and force them to undergo the Lord’s Waters of Refutation—a ritual test, the instructions for which can be found in the Hebrew Bible’s book of Numbers, in which a person must drink a certain bitter concoction which will either shrivel their sex organs if they are guilty or not harm them if they are innocent. Mary and Joseph turn out to be innocent.⁶

Artist depiction of Joseph and Mary having given birth to Jesus in a cave

Released, the couple then makes their journey down to Bethlehem to register for the census, but in this telling, they don’t actually quite make it quite all the way to Bethlehem, and Mary ends up giving birth not in a manger, but in a cave. The narrative then abruptly switches from using the third-person voice to instead being a first-person account by Joseph himself. He describes how time itself miraculously stood still at the moment of Jesus’s birth: people’s actions froze in place and birds stood still in the sky—and then just as suddenly everything began behaving as normal. Immediately after her baby is born, a local woman happens by and acts as a midwife to Mary. Skeptical of Joseph’s claim that Mary could possibly be a virgin, she “inserts her finger to examine her condition” and comes away from the experience a believer.⁷

Artist depiction of the execution of John the Baptist’s father Zechariah

Material from the third gospel’s (Matthew’s) birth narrative is now incorporated, with the Persian magi arriving in Jerusalem, eventually followed by King Herod’s ordering of the slaughter of all babies in the region of Bethlehem. But rather than flee to Egypt, the author uses this plot point to have Mary bring the baby Jesus to a local manger to keep him hidden. In this gospel, Herod is said to be attempting to hunt down not just the newborn savior, but also baby John the Baptist. John’s father Zecharias refuses to tell Herod’s thugs the location of his son, and is immediately murdered. The writing ends with the Gospel 2.5’s (Luke’s) story of Simeon’s blessing the baby Jesus as the messiah at the Temple after Herod’s death. Then James again writes in the first person, vouching for the complete accuracy of what is written in this account.⁸

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

The “magnificent childhood activities of our Lord Jesus Christ” are the subject matter of another gospel that was also written around the same time as the Acts of the Apostles.⁹ It claims to be written by one “Thomas the Israelite”,¹⁰ though it is unclear if it is referencing the apostle Thomas or some other unknown figure. It imagines a young Jesus whose supernatural powers have dangerous effects in the hands of an immature savior yet to develop his later “turn the other cheek” mentality.

Artist depiction of 5-year-old Jesus forming sparrows out of mud

We are introduced to Jesus as a 5-year-old, playing by a stream, moving around the water and dirt using only his words. He then fashions twelve sparrows out of mud. In the sight of other children and his father Joseph, young Jesus states, “Be gone!” and the vivified sparrows fly away. Then a local child approaches him and uses a stick to scatter the pools of water Jesus had formed. Angered, the child Jesus shouts at him, “You unrighteous, irreverent idiot!” and then miraculously “withers” the child such that his skin has the appearance of tree bark, stealing his youth.¹¹

Artist depiction of the neighbors of Jesus whom he struck blind

Not long after, another child is said to be running through the village when he bangs into Jesus’s shoulder, angering him. “You will go no further on your way,” says the 5-year-old Christ, and the child immediately falls to the ground dead. When the child’s parents and other villagers complain to Joseph about his son, Joseph admonishes his little Jesus. But then all those accusing him are struck blind. Seeing this, Joseph grabs his son by the ear, and yanks hard. Irritated, Jesus warns his father, “Do not grieve me.”¹²

Artist depiction of young Jesus bringing a boy back from death to testify to his innocence

After a time, Jesus heals all those he put under a curse, but all his neighbors live in great fear of the boy who can cripple them with a word. Days later, a child falls from a rooftop on which Jesus was playing, and dies. Understandably, Jesus is accused of throwing the child to his death. To demonstrate his innocence, however, Jesus raises the boy from the dead so he can clear his name. Soon after, a young man chopping wood accidentally splits open his foot with an ax, and young Jesus comes to him to heal him. But his use of his awesome powers is still capricious. When Joseph sends him to a teacher at age 6 to learn to read in Greek and Hebrew, his teacher becomes perturbed at Jesus and strikes him on the head. Immediately the teacher falls to the ground, cursed. At this point, Joseph tells Mary, “Don’t let him leave the house, for anyone who angers him dies.” Eventually the teacher is healed.¹³

Artist depiction of child Jesus miraculously extending a wooden board

Jesus’s powers are sometimes put to practical purposes as well. Joseph is presented as a carpenter, making plows, yokes, and furniture. One day when he is fashioning two long cross beams, he accidentally makes one of them several inches too short. But the pubescent Jesus saves the day. Aligning the beams next to one another, he pulls on the shorter one until its length miraculously matches the other.¹⁴

Artist depiction of a young Jesus saving his half-brother James from a poisonous snake bite

James is presented in this story as the son of Joseph from a previous marriage—Jesus’s half-brother. One day while gathering firewood, James is bit by a poisonous snake and falls to the ground, dying. 6-year-old Jesus simply breathes on the snake bite to heal it, and the snake itself is said to “burst”. Jesus’s village must have had an exceptionally high mortality rate, for the young boy is then said to come across a dead infant whom he revives, and a dead man in a local house who he raises as well.¹⁵

The sum of these miracles convince a fair number of his fellow townsfolk that he has the Spirit of God, is a savior from heaven, is an angel, or is somehow even God himself. The narrative ends with Jesus coming to the temple with his parents at Passover as related in the Gospel 2.5 (Luke), thereby limiting itself to filling in a stretch of time not covered by the earlier gospels.¹⁶

Jewish-Christian Gospels

Artist depiction of Ebionite Christian scribes at work

None of the gospels said to be used by the Jewish-Christians known as the Ebionites (“The Poor”) survive, though bits of them were quoted by later Roman church elders in their sensational and scathing denunciations of “heretics”.¹⁷ It is a supreme irony that the Ebionites who trace their lineage back to Peter, James the Just, and John the Baptist—and so, as noted, have by far the greatest claim to carrying on the mantle of the original Christian church—would now be accused of having false beliefs by a church calling itself “orthodox”. But the tactic seems to have had great effect in further marginalizing these original Christians into a fringe faith bordering on irrelevancy outside their own communities. Nonetheless, these communities went right on practicing daily bathing rituals and other customs dating back to their forebears, the Essenes—who referred to themselves with the same moniker, The Poor.

The Roman church elders make reference to a Gospel of the Ebionites, a Gospel of the Hebrews, and a Gospel of the Nazarenes, though it is unclear to what extent these are actually different gospels or merely different names for the same writing. It is further unclear whether there were different sects among the Jewish-Christians of Palestine and Mesopotamia at this time, or whether it is the ignorance of the Roman church writers that is reflected in labeling them as multiple communities rather than one. From quotes and descriptions of these lost scriptures, it is clear that these Jewish-Christian gospels are most closely related to the Gospel 3.0 (Matthew)—often considered the “most Jewish” of the gospels, portraying Jesus as calling for all followers to obey the Law of Moses to the letter until the end of the world.¹⁸

The Gospel of Peter

Artist depiction of Jesus leaving his body behind on the cross

Early elders of the Roman church make mention of a Gospel of Peter in popular use among various communities before the end of the 100s CE. The text of this work came to be suppressed and was eventually entierly lost to history until a fragment of it was discovered in a monk’s tomb in 1887 along with passages copied from the book of Enoch. ¹⁹ The surviving pages begin at the story of the crucifixion, and differ in subtle but key ways from earlier gospels. Jesus is described as remaining “silent, as if he had no pain” until his moment of death, at which he shouts, “My power, my power, why have you left me?” He is then said to be immediately “taken up”, though his body remains on the cross.²⁰

Artist depiction of the Empty Tomb story from the Gospel of Peter

By far, the surviving Gospel of Peter’s most remarkable unique material is found in its retelling of the Empty Tomb story. A great crowd is said to gather at the tomb during the night, and they witness the heavens open up, and two men descend in great splendor. After the stone rolls away from the tomb’s opening of its own accord, three incredibly tall men emerge—two with their heads touching the sky, and one between them whose head is above the sky. A cross then emerges from behind them, and a voice from heaven asks it, “Have you preached to the sleeping ones?” In reply, the cross says, “Yes.”²¹

Artist depiction of Adoptionist theology view of Jesus’s baptism

The surviving fragment breaks off just as it begins to describe a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples. It is impossible to know what the rest of the writing once contained, but scholars have suggested it may have been suppressed by the Roman church for seeming to promote a view of Jesus that was Adoptionist. This was the doctrine that Jesus of Nazareth was an especially righteous but fully human man until his baptism by John, at which point he became a vessel for the heavenly Son of God on earth. According to this view, while Jesus was on the cross, this process was reversed. The Son of God, who can feel no pain, was taken up to heaven, leaving the human Jesus to cry out about losing his power.²² This theology may have been something of a bridge for Jewish-Christians, leading them from their original worship of a heavenly Lord Jesus to the acceptance of a historical Jesus who walked the earth. As such, it would have been an artifact useless to the Roman church, and so eventually targeted for destruction. But ultimately, we can only guess at the intentions of its author.

The Gnostic Gospels

After the writing of The Gospel of Truth—possibly by Valentinus—several more gospels that are gnostic in nature were composed, each offering secret knowledge to the reader necessary to their salvation. Some of these take a similar form in which Jesus, at the end of his ministry—or in a post-crucifixion appearance—is said to single out a particular member among his followers to receive special gnosis withheld from the other disciples.

Artist depiction of Jesus having a private conversation with Mary Magdalene

The Gospel of Mary is such a writing. Though it only survives in fragments, the text makes clear that Mary Magdalene—who has only a marginal role in the New Testament’s gospels—was held by the savior in the highest esteem. Accordingly, after his death, Jesus causes Mary alone to have a special vision. Peter then cajoles her to reveal what she saw, and—though the pages describing the vision no longer exist—she seems to have acquired knowledge concerning how a soul can ascend past the four archons (“ruling powers”) of this world to reach heaven after death. While Peter and Andrew dispute her claimed vision, Levi points out that Peter “has always been hot-tempered” and that Jesus “loved her more than us.” And with that, the apostles go forth to preach and proclaim the gospel.²³

Artist depiction of Jesus speaking privately with Judas Iscariot

Of all the characters from the New Testament one might assume would be least likely to be given their own gospel, the betrayer Judas Iscariot almost certainly tops the list. But the gnostic theologians were no stranger to flipping expectations. Most of them had, by this point, taken the celebrated most high God of the Jews and demoted him to either a vengeful dimwit, or a malicious force of evil in the world, utterly unaware of the ineffable actual God of the gnostics, whom Jesus revealed to humankind. The Gospel of Judas was a writing known only from mentions of it by the ancient Roman church elders, but was completely unknown for nearly two millennia until a copy was discovered among a cache of ancient writings in Egypt in the 1970s. Finally published in 2006 CE, the work is presented as a series of conversations between Jesus and Judas. Here, Judas is the only one among the disciples who has truly understood the savior’s teachings. Rather than being castigated for turning Jesus over to the authorities to be executed, he is praised for assisting Jesus in bringing about his liberation from his fleshly “prison of a body.” The text openly criticizes the Roman church, associating it with the other eleven disciples whose spirits and mortal bodies, we are assured, will perish upon death. The “cannibalism” of the Eucharist ritual is particularly called-out as degrading.²⁴

Artist depiction of Jesus having a private conversation with Salome

Other early gospels with a gnostic bent are known only from surviving fragments, such as The Gospel of Matthias that includes the verse, “Wonder at the things that are before you, making this the first step toward further knowledge.” A work called The Gospel of the Egyptians features the bit character Salome from the earlier gospels. In her conversations with Jesus, he tells her “I have come to undo the works of the female”, apparently opposing procreative sex. Another work known as The Gospel of the Four Heavenly Realms is thought to have been a conversation between Jesus and his disciples about esoteric gnostic cosmology.²⁵

Continue Reading:

Chapter 22: Additional Acts

Footnotes

1
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, USA.
2
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
3
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
4
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
5
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
6
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
7
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
8
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
9
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, USA.
10
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
11
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
12
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
13
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
14
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
15
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
16
Hock, R. F. (1995). The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Polebridge Press.
17
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, USA.
18
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, USA.
19
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, USA.
20
Foster, P. (2010). The Gospel of Peter: Introduction, Critical Edition and Commentary. Brill.
21
Foster, P. (2010). The Gospel of Peter: Introduction, Critical Edition and Commentary. Brill.
22
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, USA.
23
Leloup, J. (2002). The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. United States: Inner Traditions/Bear.
24
Meyer, M. et al. ed. The Gospel of Judas, Second Edition. (2008). National Geographic Society.
25
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, USA.