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Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 1

Sep 22, 2023, 4:49 PM

The Infancy Gospels

Gospel means “Good News.”

You may have heard of at least four famous ones, but in fact there are a lot more. More than 50 were written in the few centuries right after Jesus’s death, and more even after that, right on through medieval times and even into modern times. For instance, the Book of Mormon is considered a gospel. Telling the good news of Jesus’s arrival in America, after he left the Middle East.

People like good news, and a LOT of people have been impacted and influenced by Jesus. So naturally, they to wanted to know more about him and his life. Just who was this guy?

For the first 300 years after Jesus lived, lots of people used those 50ish gospels in their worship. Image having to memorize the names of even 20 gospels in Sunday School instead of 4. That would be a chore.

Back in 300ish AD there was no New Testament, so which of those 50ish gospels was more valuable than another was up for debate. Who was to say the Gospel of Appelles was any less instructive for teaching than the Gospel of Mark? Or the Acts of Paul and Thecla any less valuable than the Acts of Paul by himself?

From the Gospel of Judas. I’ll bet that’s an interesting perspective to read.

In time though, the list of gospels got whittled down, sometimes peacefully and sometimes contentiously. One of the first persons to do some of this whittling, indirectly, was Constantine. In 331 AD he ordered the leading bishops of the day to make 50 bibles for his church, in his town, Constantinople.

Constantine’s city. The Big Apple of the 4th Century.

Constantine’s church, the Hagia Sophia, or “Holy Wisdom”

His church was so famous that it once made an appearance before Mary and the baby Jesus themselves.

Constantine effectively said, “take all your stuff about Jesus, your 50ish Gospels and all your assorted letters and correspondence and scrolls and parchments and whatever, and make me something portable and manageable out of it all.”

So, short of having a book the size of a steamer trunk, they made some cuts and came up with this.

The bishops didn’t have to start from scratch, however. The New Testament had begun to take form long before Constantine. Each of the major churches in the Mediterranean had its own collection of favorite writings they used long before Constantine ordered books for his church.

“Although a number of Christians have thought that the Ecumenical Councils determined what books were to be included in the biblical canons, a more accurate reflection of the matter is that the councils recognized or acknowledged those books that had already obtained prominence from usage among the various early Christian communities.”

And each of these church’s collections might vary. So, the church at Alexandria might have used texts A, B, and C. They church at Antioch maybe used A, B, and D, and the Church at Rome used B, C, and E. Who knows? And over time, the collections and the philosophies they taught, varied. We’ll get to that in later posts.

The gospels that survived the chopping blocks became known as orthodoxy. And the people that read all that other stuff sometimes ended up like this.

But not always. Sometimes, texts were valuable, just not valuable enough for prime time. Those gospels and books are usually called Apocrypha.

Apocrypha are usually works that are not completely bat-sh** crazy, but also aren’t completely essential to the central message of the New Testament. They’re sort of like semi-divine addenda, or sacred footnotes, etc.

They also might be works that some people subscribe to but not others, so no consensus on their use could be obtained. But some person, or group, wrote them and used them, so they must have believed them. They just had problems convincing others of their full value. People used the stuff they wanted to, and left out the rest.

All of which brings us to this post. One of the glaring omissions in the canonical New Testament is the infancy of Christ. There are infancy gospels out there, it’s just that none of them made it into the NT. Jesus’s birth is covered fairly well. But what happened next?

The people wanted to know. What did Jesus do up to say, age 12? What was he like as a toddler? As a pre-adolescent? And so answers were provided. Let’s take a look at what’s out there, in the Apocrypha, and beyond, to fill in some of those gaps.

The Infancy Gospel of James was a very early account of Mary’s life as a Temple virgin, and later, as Jesus’s mom.

No, not Mary.

No, not Mary.

Jewish Temple virgins weren’t prostitutes, but they did sewing, and weaving, and tasks related to daily Temple functions. And they had to leave by age 12 because the Temple could not be polluted by womanhood.

But the texts say she did work in the Temple in her youth, and that Mary was a bit of a miraculous birth herself, being born to a barren woman named Anna, and at only 7 months.

St. Joachim and St. Anna, Mary’s parents, and the baby Mary

The Infancy Gospel of James is referenced in other works written about 150 AD, so it had to exist before that. That puts it in close proximity to the 4 Synoptic Gospels, written from about 50 AD to 100 AD. There are over 100 copies still in existence today, so it seems to have been extremely popular with some congregations. It just got squashed by the powers that be.

Looking at you, St. Jerome

Church theologian Jerome apparently disagreed with the Gospel of James’ assertion that Joseph was not a virgin like Mary. Jerome wanted their other children to be called “cousins” instead of “brothers.” That would make Joseph seem a bit less promiscuous.

Later, in 400ish AD, Innocent I, the 40th Pope, condemned the work. And a second head shot came in 500ish AD, when Gelasius I, the 49th Pope, flat out rejected it.

Pope Gelasius. He just looks like he’s waiting to say “NO” to the first new book you want to add to the Bible, doesn’t he?

But even a hard “no” from the Pope did not sway some faithful believers, and so The Infancy Gospel of James lived on even beyond 500 AD. In fact, the Eastern Orthodox Church still stays Jesus’s kin were brothers, not cousins.

Onion domes and crazy crosses. What’s not to love about the Eastern Orthodox Church?

The Infancy Gospel of James is also quite explicit about Jesus’s birth and Mary’s virginity. At the time, there were various early Christian sects that said Jesus descended directly from heaven, or that he was a natural birth and then later adopted by God after his birth. The Gospel of James sought to put those ideas to rest and establish that 1) Jesus was born, not descended, and 2) Mary was a virgin the whole time.

“Chapter (18) And the midwife departed from the cave and met Salome and said to her, "Salome, Salome, I have to describe this new miracle for you. A virgin has given birth, although her body does not allow it." (19) And Salome said, "As the Lord my God lives, unless I insert my finger and investigate her, I will not believe that a virgin has given birth."

Did I mention, quite explicit?

“CHAPTER 20 (1) And the midwife went in and said, "Mary, position yourself, for no small test concerning you is about to take place." (2) When Mary heard these things, she positioned herself. And Salome inserted her finger into her body. (3) And Salome cried out and said, "Woe for my lawlessness and the unbelief that made me test the living God. Look, my hand is falling away from me and being consumed in fire."

Whoa.

It all works out Ok in the end. An angel appears and puts out the fire.

Sometimes you just have to be blunt. How much more clearly can one silence the skeptics than that?

Mrs. Fordt has a story of one of her kindergarteners, from a mixed-marriage, waiting in the library after school. The librarian is approached by a white woman to pick up her black child, and the librarian says “Who are you? That’s not your child.” The mom says “Excuse me?”, as the child runs over and hugs her. But the librarian, a skeptic, persists. “That’s not your child.” Things get heated, and finally the mom says. “Let me make this clear. She. Came. Out. Of. Me.” The librarian, finally connecting the dots as dad walks up…skulked away.

Blunt.

Anyway, after the virginity test, the story picks up with the usual programming of the Magi, and Herod and the Massacre of the Innocents, etc.

Bad King Herod. Put those babies down!

We know where you live Herod! Or at least, where your family tomb and sarcophagus are.

It’s at a place called Herodion, about 7 miles outside of Jerusalem. Herodion was a fortress Herod built for himself as a save haven against public riots, and it ended up being his eternal resting place. Safe until someone dug him up.

But Jerome, and Innocent, and Gelasius condemning and rejecting the Infancy Gospel of James, and probably destroying every copy they could find, only left a void. People love babies, and they love Jesus, and they really love baby Jesus. The people were outraged.

“Where’s the transparency? What are you hiding about Jesus from us, Church?”

So the problem was that Jerome and the 2 Popes had taken away something that the people of the Western Church really wanted. Something that had been read and used in some congregations for 150 years or more. And that void needed to be filled, or who knew what the consequences might be?

So the story is that a pair of bishops later appealed to Jerome to translate a mysterious Hebrew text written by Matthew himself some centuries earlier. The text was about Mary and Jesus, and astonishingly, nobody had ever bothered to translate in 300 years.

Jerome, always looking to clear up any confusion about Mary and Joseph, was happy to oblige. And so, while the people lost The Infancy Gospel of James as a church approved document, they gained the Infancy Gospel of Matthew as a replacement. Sometimes, people don’t like replacements. My F-I-L told me many times he’d take his old M-14 rifle over an M-16 replacement any day of the week. He called the M-16 a “plastic toy.”

M14, phased out about 1967

M16

But the Infancy Gospel of Matthew, even though it was a replacement like the M-16, did turn out to be very popular, even up till medieval times. Here’s a medieval illumination from The Infancy Gospel of Matthew from the 1300s. Jesus is the guy with the halo.

But earlier, from the minute Jerome received the untranslated text, he had a few reservations. He replied in a letter to the 2 bishops that “If Matthew chose not to publish this in his lifetime, maybe there was a reason.”

And once he got into it, he had more reservations. So many that after he finish translating, he put a disclaimer at the front of the gospel that basically said, “You guys said you wanted me to translate this, and I did, word-for-word, without additions or deletions, so here you go. Matthew’s words, not mine. You asked for it.

“I say freely-- and I think none of the faithful will deny it -- that, whether these stories be true or inventions, the sacred nativity of St. Mary was preceded by great miracles, and succeeded by the greatest; and so for those who believe that God can do these things, they can be believed and read without damaging their faith or imperiling their souls.” Gulp.
– Jerome, on the Infancy Gospel of Matthew

Translation

And so with that cliffhanger, we’ll continue the story in The Infancy Gospels, Part II, with the Infancy Gospel of Matthew.

The Infancy Gospel of James
Infancy Gospel of James — Gospels.net

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All true.

>but for what they were, or couldn't be shown to be.

I don't want to spoil anything for our dear readers (I'm working on my Saturday Movie Matinee Cliffhanger Creds, lol), but there was a pretty rigorous vetting process, eventually, for all this stuff.

This one in particular was a pretty late arrival, and as far I as know, though it was never fully accepted, it was also never fully rejected. That really surprises me if true. I'm researching it in the background as I type this.

I suppose because of the fanciful nature, it was never theologically threatening, which other documents clearly were. Or, the readership was so minimal it was simply discounted. But Arianism, Marcionism, etc., and the documents related to those movements, were serious threats, and met with harshly by th e orthodoxy.

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