I am currently reading a book entitled The Lost Books of the Bible. Being interested in Bible history, I thought it might be an interesting diversion, but I was not prepared for what I found. It claims that when Jesus was young, he killed a couple of boys and a schoolmaster because they displeased him. Jesus comes off as an arrogant bad seed in these supposedly ancient texts. My question is: Were these books truly a part of the original Bible, and if they were suppressed for obvious reasons, does the Catholic church, or any church for that matter, acknowledge their existence? How do they explain Jesus’ bad temper? Is this why there is very little about Jesus’ youth in the current Bible? –Dan Olmos, West Hollywood, California
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The portrait of the young Prince of Peace offered by the “lost books” is disconcerting, to say the least. After recounting three murders in two pages, one passage concludes, “Then said Joseph to St. Mary, henceforth we will not allow him to go out of the house; for everyone who displeases him is killed.”
The homicidal-Jesus stories come from something known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. (This is to be distinguished from the better-known but equally apocryphal Gospel According to Thomas, about which more below.) Several versions of the Infancy Gospel have come to light, dating back to about the sixth century AD; all are copies of earlier texts. As near as scholars can make out, the Thomas story originated in the mid-second century AD, subsequent to the four canonical gospels (that is, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Some say it was based in part on Luke; the two books share the story of the 12-year-old Jesus teaching the elders at the Temple. It is one of the few portrayals, spurious or not, of Jesus’ early life, which no doubt accounts for its continued circulation after 1,800 years.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
