My name is on this book, but that is only part of the story. The rest of the story belongs to others, and it is a pleasure to recognize them here.
My first encounter with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was in a course taught by Dr. W. Barnes Tatum of Greensboro College in Greensboro, North Carolina. He passed away in 2016. He was a respected biblical scholar, a generous teacher, and a kind and dedicated mentor. I explored in more detail the Infancy Gospel and the Proto-gospel of James as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My advisor, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman, now James A. Gray Distinguished Professor, encouraged my interest in these unusual gospels in a seminar on early Christian apocrypha. His support at that time gave me the confidence to return to these sources years later.
The writing of this book was aided by research funding from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Religion and Theology. Research funding was also awarded by the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University. I thank Arthur Versluis, chair of the Department of Religious Studies, my home department, for standing behind my applications for research funding. Undergraduate students in my courses at Michigan State University listened to my ideas about the family gospels, and their questions helped me to spot things in the family gospels that I would not have otherwise. One of our best students, Julia Johnson, now a graduate student at Yale University, served as my research assistant, finding and annotating scholarship about family and early Christianity. Colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies, especially Amy DeRogatis, Benjamin Pollock, and Mohammad Khalil, read portions of the manuscript and offered important suggestions.
I presented earlier versions of chapters to thoughtful audiences at meetings of the North American Patristics Society, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the American Academy of Religion. One paper was read at the 2013 International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature at St. Andrews University, Scotland, the school where I had earned a graduate degree two decades before. Time flies. Audiences at Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, and Central Michigan University listened to presentations of my work and asked perceptive questions. In January 2011, I participated in an international workshop on religion and violence, organized and hosted by Kate Cooper of Manchester University, which helped to shape my view of violence in the family gospels.
I have published technical studies of the family gospels in academic journals. Material from these articles is used here by permission. Portions of Chapter 2: “ ‘It Moves Me to Wonder’: Narrating Violence and Religion Under the Roman Empire,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77, no. 4 (2009): 825–52. Portions of Chapter 3: “No Child Left Behind: Knowledge and Violence in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.” Copyright © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press and the North American Patristics Society. This article first appeared in the Journal of Early Christian Studies 17, no. 1 (2009): 27–54. A different version of Chapter 5 appeared first as “Parents Just Don’t Understand: Ambiguity in Stories About the Childhood of Jesus,” Harvard Theological Review 109, no. 1 (2016): 33–55.
I want to thank my editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press, Jerome Singerman, for shepherding the manuscript through the review process. So too I wish to thank his assistant, Hannah Blake, for answering all of my questions. For her patience and expertise during the copyediting stage, I thank Erica Ginsburg. And I am grateful for the support of this project by the Series Editors of Divinations: Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, and Derek Krueger. Anonymous readers for the press pushed me to sharpen my arguments, and I thank them for the nudge.
It took me a while to write this book. During that time, I incurred many debts to friends and colleagues at other schools. Some read parts of the manuscript; others read earlier versions or followed up with me about papers. The list includes Reidar Aasgaard, Ra‘anan Boustan, David Brakke, Virginia Burrus, Bart D. Ehrman, Jennifer Glancy, Andrew S. Jacobs, Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Charles Mathewes, Shelly Matthews, Ellen Muehlberger, Laura Nasrallah, Michael Penn, Judith Perkins, Taylor Petrey, Nathan Rein, Jeremy Schott, Caroline T. Schroeder, Stephen Shoemaker, Gregory Smith, Kristi Upson-Saia, and Steven Weitzman. They did their best to steer me in the right direction. I alone am responsible for veering off course.
Of these colleagues, I want to single out Andrew Jacobs, a friend since graduate school days whose generosity knows no bounds. It was Andrew who first suggested to me the phrase “family gospels.” Suddenly, it all made sense—to me, at least.
I have a set of friends who meet together at least once but no more than twice a year. I don’t know what I would do without them. Thank you, Andrew, Becky, Laura, and Carrie.
My wonderful parents, Tony and Judi Frilingos, are also wonderful grandparents to my children. They host us when we visit, and when they visit, they bring warmth and joy. My brothers, Daniel and Timothy, have both made the mistake of asking, “How’s the book going?” I’m happy to answer that question now.
It is hard to find words to express how I feel about my spouse, Amy, and my children, Emma and Joe. Every day they teach me what family means. I thank them for their patience. I still have a lot to learn.