Aasgaard, Reidar. The Childhood of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009.

Aasgaard is Associate Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Oslo, Norway. Among his publications is “My Beloved Brothers And Sisters!”: Christian Siblingship In Paul . The publisher of his new book provides the following blurb:

The mid-second-century apocryphal infancy gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, which deals with the childhood of Jesus from age five to age twelve, has attained only limited interest from scholars. Much research into the story has also been seriously misguided—especially study of the story’s origin, character, and setting.

This book gives a fresh interpretation of the infancy gospel, not least by applying a variety of new approaches, including orality studies, narrative studies, gender studies, and social-scientific approaches.

The book comes to a number of radically new conclusions: The Gospel of Thomas is dependent on oral storytelling and has far more narrative qualities than has been previously assumed. The narrative world depicted in the gospel is that of middle-class Christianity, with the social and cultural ideas and values characteristic of such a milieu.

The gospel’s theology is not heretical—as has often been claimed—but mirrors mainstream thinking rooted in biblical tradition, particularly in the Johannine and Lukan traditions. Jesus is portrayed as a divine figure but also as a true-to-life child of late antiquity.

The audience for the Gospel of Thomas is likely to have come from the rural population of early Christianity, a milieu that has received little attention. A main audience for the story was children among early Christians, making this—at least within Christianity—the oldest-known children’s tale.

The book provides a Greek text and a translation, and several appendixes on the story, along with other early Christian infancy material.

The book has received some strong endorsements as well, most notably from Bart Ehrman:

Although the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has long been enjoyed by readers interested in the Gospels that did not make it into the New Testament, there has been a dearth of scholarship on most of the pressing textual, historical, and theological issues it raises. Reidar Aasgaard has done the scholarly world a real service by presenting a full, interesting, and informed discussion of all these major questions. Scholars will now turn to this study before any other when they want to explore the Infancy Gospel and its traditions.

I concur with that assessment and look forward to picking up my own copy. The book is currently available from amazon.com for $33 (a very reasonable price for books of this nature). However, amazon’s delivery time is listed as “usually ships within 1 to 3 weeks.” So, I’d probably recommend picking your copy up direct from the publisher, who currently has the book on sale for $26.40 in any event.

I’ve added Aasgard’s book to Other Early Christian Gospels Resource Center.

The history of the transmission of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is complex; it has come down to us in significantly different rescensions. Since the mid-1800s, scholars have relied largely on the work of Constantin von Tischendorf for their knowledge of the gospel. Tischendorf prepared three different editions of the gospel based on the manuscripts available to him: Greek Text A, Greek Text B, and Latin Text (these are available online from Google Books in Tischendorf’s Evangelia Apocrypha). Many know the gospel only through the somewhat antiquated English translations prepared by M.R. James in the early twentieth century (these are available online courtesy of the Wesley Center for Applied Theology: Greek Text A, Greek Text B, Latin Text). An English translation and a provisional revision of Tischendorf’s Greek Text A were also published by Ronald Hock in the mid-1990s in his book, The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas (the translation is currently available online here). However, Burke has significantly improved our knowledge of the text.

Burke provides a clear, concise overview of the nature of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the history of its transmission on his website. He also includes introductions to and English translations of four recensions of the text:

• Greek Text A (Burke’s critical edition of the recension most closely resembling Tischendorf’s Greek Text A)
• Greek Text B (Burke’s slightly revised version of Tischendorf’s Greek Text B)
• Greek Text D (A recension resembling Tischendorf’s Latin text but based on Greek manuscripts)
• Greek Text S (An edition of Ms: Cod. Sabait. 259, the earliest Greek witness to the gospel, that was first published in Burke’s dissertation)

In addition, Burke includes English translations of versions of the gospel that have survived in different languages:

• Syriac
• Ethiopic
• Old Latin
• Georgian
• Irish
• Slavonic
• Late Latin

Finally, Burke includes his own critical edition based on his extensive research. It is worth pointing out that there is other material (not related to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas) on Burke’s site that may be of interest to readers of this blog.

I have added Burke’s blog, Apocryphicity, to my Blog Roll and posted links to his site and translations in the Other Early Christian Gospels Resource Center.

I greatly appreciate Dr. Burke taking the time to let me know about his work.