One of the biggest missing pieces in the biblical accounts of the life of Jesus It’s his childhood. But apocryphal stories, such as Gospel of Thomasspeak of the supposedly miraculous first years of Jesus.
The oldest known version of this book is a codex from the 11th century AD, but a new papyrus fragment appears to contain an even older part of the textone dating to the 4th or 5th century AD, which is much closer to its origin around the 2nd century AD
Not only does this offer an intimate view of the stories that attempt to depict the childhood of the religious figure of Jesusbut also shows how these stories spread over the centuries.
Although Jesus He is one of the most influential figures who ever lived, theologians and scholars know surprisingly little about his childhood. He Gospel of Luke mentions a transfer to Jerusalem when Jesus He was 12 years old, but it is difficult to find other details about his early years.
Of course, that doesn’t mean those stories don’t exist. Although the Bible represents the biblical canon of the Christian faith, there are many other stories, also known as apocryphal, ranging from texts with potential historicity to what is probably some type of religious fiction. Hidden among this collection of apocrypha, which passed Unnoticed for decades in the Carl von Ossietzky State and University Library in Hamburg, was a fragment of papyrus originating in Egypt known by its inventory number “P.Hamb.Graec. 1011″.
Analyzing this fragment, which measured approximately 10 by 5 centimeters and contained only 13 Greek lines (with about 10 letters per line), papyrologists Lajos Berkes of the Institute for Christianity and Antiquity of the Humboldt-University of Berlin and Gabriel Nocchi Macedo of the University of Liège in Belgium They discovered that it is actually the oldest example of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, an apocryphal book that was popular during ancient times and the Middle Ages. The results of the study were published in the journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
“It was thought to be part of an everyday document, like a private letter or a shopping list, because the handwriting looks very clumsy,” he said. Berkes in a press release. “First we notice the word Jesus in the text. Then, comparing it with many other digitized papyri, we deciphered it letter by letter and quickly realized that it could not be an everyday document.”
Until this discovery, an 11th century codex was the oldest version of the Gospel of Thomas. But this fragment suggests that it dates back to sometime around the century IV or V ADalthough it is believed that the original text was written around the century II AD
The two papyrologists theorize that the fragment was probably a writing exercise in some school or monastery, since the writing and construction of the lines are particularly clumsy. The text itself is the beginning of a story called the “vivification of the sparrows” where, as his second miracle, Jesus molds sparrows out of clay near a rushing river.
“The fragment It is of extraordinary interest for research“, said Berkes. “On the one hand, because we were able to date it between the 4th and 5th centuries, which makes it the oldest known copy. On the other hand, because we were able to obtain new knowledge about the transmission of the text.”
This new find opens a unique window into early representations and legends about Christianity’s central figure, potentially providing new insight into the stories of his childhood and how these were passed down through the centuries.
