He was going to be a superstar.
As a boy in first-century Jerusalem, he took education seriously. His dedication to the life of the mind soon attracted attention. The leading men of Jerusalem sought him out. They admired the boy’s love of learning and put to him questions about the Jewish law. Who is this child? Some readers may guess that it is Jesus, the twelve-year-old prodigy whose insight “amazes” the teachers in the temple of Jerusalem. But this profile in childhood smarts does not belong to Jesus. It comes from a firsthand recollection by Yosef ben Mattityahu, the man known to most historians as Josephus. He gives the following account of his childhood in The Life: “While still a mere boy, about fourteen years old, I won universal applause for my love of letters; insomuch that the leading men of the city used constantly to come to me for precise information on some particular in our ordinances.”1
Modesty may not be one of Josephus’s virtues, but he should not be judged too harshly for adopting a self-regarding pose. For one thing, Josephus wrote The Life as a defense against critics.2 For another, childhood, as it is defined in ancient biography, is the time when great people, mostly men, begin to show what they were made of. Luminaries of the classical Greek past, Plato and Aristotle, were, as children, quick witted and eager to learn. Philo, the Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, encouraged his readers to see Abraham and Moses, the great ancestors of the Jewish people, in a similar way. That Josephus remembers himself as a child of precocious intelligence is in keeping with the spirit of the genre of ancient biography.
I begin this chapter with Josephus because this nugget from his childhood calls to mind the childhood story about Jesus in the temple in the Gospel of Luke (2:41–52). Equally important, a rendering of the Lukan story forms the conclusion to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (17.1–4). Like Josephus’s account, the story about Jesus illustrates the superior intelligence of the youth. That it takes place in the temple of Jerusalem is another intriguing point of contact with The Life. If Rome is depicted as obsessed with collecting information about the subjects of empire in both the Gospel of Luke and the Proto-gospel of James, the city of Jerusalem serves as the destination for those who seek truth in both The Life of Josephus and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.3
But is the childhood story only about the wisdom of the twelve-year-old Jesus? Is this the sum of its meaning? The Christian story as it appears in both the Gospel of Luke and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas differs from The Life in the foregrounding of family dysfunction. The young Josephus wins “universal” acclaim for himself, to the delight of family and friends alike. The adolescent Jesus, as we shall see, causes his parents distress and seems to dispute Joseph’s claim of paternity. It is an account of the breakdown of communication and comprehension between a child who is a riddle and parents that just don’t understand. Where the young Josephus basks in the glow of admiration, the performance of the child Jesus baffles the two people who are closest to him.
The contrast with The Life reveals flaws in recent proposals about the Infancy Gospel. One is the notion that the Infancy Gospel “improves” the Gospel of Luke by bringing it in line with the conventions of ancient biography.4 The claim is that ancient readers expected to encounter childhood stories in the lives of great men. Absent such tales, the Gospel of Luke, a kind of ancient biography, would have been viewed as deficient.5 The Infancy Gospel adds childhood stories to address the lack. “Improvement” is of course in the eyes of the beholder, but even if we grant improvement in this case, the idea does not bring us any closer to understanding why the Infancy Gospel, from beginning to end, depicts familial strain. Other scholars contend that the tales send a positive message about Mary and Joseph and that they gradually come to understand their child.6 Still others suggest that the Infancy Gospel is designed to respond to critics of the Christian faith by presenting the anger and aloofness of the child Jesus in “justifiable” terms.”7 All of these proposals miss the mark because they do not account for the anxiety and confusion of the parents in the conclusion to the Infancy Gospel.
Like the last one, this chapter proposes that confusion and ignorance serve as the framework for a choice. If Jesus was hard to parent as a twelve-year-old, what were things like when he was younger—at five, eight, and ten years old? This chapter will discuss both the feats of the child Jesus and the ways that these signs are missed, ignored, and not understood—especially (but not exclusively) by his parents. It will further suggest that instances of unknowing in these family stories likewise were disquieting moments for early Christian readers. They, like Mary and Joseph, are brought close to demonstrations of divine power only to be confounded by it. The Infancy Gospel presents a family in distress, and the cause of the turmoil is the unpredictable child Jesus. By including other strange stories about the childhood of Jesus, the Infancy Gospel offers a new perspective on the decision that lies before the members of the holy family when, after being separated, they reunite in the temple precincts. Will the parents accept what they do not understand about this strange child? Will Jesus opt to stay in the temple, doing “the things of his father,” or will he choose instead to return with Mary and Joseph—the two people who know him the best, which is to say, not at all. Will they choose, in other words, to be a family?
Because so much of the argument of this chapter depends upon seeing the Infancy Gospel as an elaboration of questions hinted at in the Lukan account of the twelve-year-old Jesus, it begins there. An important point is how Luke 2:41–52 stands at odds with what precedes it, a tension that, as we saw in Chapter 1, early Christian interpreters like John Chrysostom sought to resolve. In the Lukan infancy narrative, a series of miracles together reveal and confirm for Mary and Joseph the significance of their newborn baby. These earlier episodes suggest that miracles teach human beings about divine purpose. Yet, when they confront the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, Mary and Joseph cannot understand what he is doing there or why he is doing it. The second section turns to the nearly toxic brew of harmful and benevolent wonders in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to show how these tales amplify the familial strain depicted in its source material. These unpredictable demonstrations of power inevitably distance the child Jesus from neighbors, friends, and family. All of this confusion adds weight to the choice that lies before the members of the holy family. In the end, the parents choose to remain with the child, and he chooses to remain with them.
The Gospel of Luke dedicates most of the first two chapters to the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. At the tail end of the Lukan infancy narrative comes the account of a twelve-year-old Jesus. His intellect amazes the religious experts of the great temple of Jerusalem:
Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it (ouk egnōsan). Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know (ouk ēdeite) that I must concern myself with the things of my father?” But they did not understand (ou synēkan) what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.8
Synopses and commentaries sometimes refer to the episode as the “Finding of Jesus in the Temple” because Mary and Joseph lose track of where he is.9 It begins with a family pilgrimage. Mary and Joseph take Jesus to Jerusalem for Passover. After the observance, Mary and Joseph turn back for home. Jesus decides to stay behind in Jerusalem, without asking permission: “but his parents did not know it” (2:43).10 When Mary and Joseph realize what has happened, they begin the search. “After three days” they find Jesus, safe and sound, in the great temple of Jerusalem (2:46).11 There he sits among the elders, asking questions and amazing all with his “understanding” (2:47).12 Reproaching her son, Mary asks, “Child, why have you treated us like this?” She and Joseph have been worried sick, searching for Jesus “in great anxiety” (2:48).13 “Why were you looking for me?” Jesus replies. “Did you not know that I must concern myself with the things of my father?” (2:49).14 His questions confuse Mary and Joseph: “But they did not understand what he said to them” (2:50).15 The family returns to Nazareth, where Jesus “was obedient to them” (2:51), a noteworthy detail in a story that seems to recount a mildly wayward moment from Jesus’ youth.
Three times in eleven verses Mary and Joseph are exposed as having some degree of ignorance (Luke 2:43, 49–50). The Greek text employs three different terms for “knowing” and “understanding” and adds to them the negative Greek particle.16 Mary and Joseph do not know many things about their child. In this case, they do not even know his whereabouts. Jesus meets his mother’s reprimand with a reproach of his own: “Did you not know?”17 The implied response is, no, Mary and Joseph do not know. They do not know that the twelve-year-old had earlier made up his mind to stay behind in Jerusalem or that he is now preoccupied with “the things of my father,” whatever that may mean.18 Mary may “treasure” what has happened in her heart, but she does not understand the events.19 If this is what the domestic situation was like, it is little wonder that the earliest gospels mostly skip over the growing-up years of Jesus. In the coda, Jesus returns to Nazareth, remains obedient to his parents, and increases in wisdom (Luke 2:51–52).
What is the point of this story? Is it to show off precocious intelligence of the twelve-year-old Jesus? Or does it lie elsewhere, in the breakdown of communication between parents and child? If nothing else, Luke 2:41–52 is a story about a family trying and failing to understand one another. There is a palpable tension in the relationship between Jesus and his parents. Domestic harmony is upset. The teachers of the temple recognize the genius of the boy, while his parents are left in a state of uncertainty. If a divine lesson is being taught to Mary and Joseph, they seem unable to grasp what it is (much less learn the lesson for themselves).20 Does he understand them? Meanwhile, readers acquainted with the biblical reports about the otherworldly nature of the birth of Jesus might also be confused by the strange ignorance of Mary and Joseph. Why, twelve years later, should Jesus’ remark about the “things of my father” fly over their heads? What does Jesus mean by “the things of my father”?
Parents just don’t understand: the message is loud, but the meaning is unclear. Luke’s tale of conflict between a willful twelve-year-old Jesus and his parents marks one of the most jarring transitions in the New Testament. Much of the first two chapters of Luke features Mary and Joseph as thoughtful recipients of information about Jesus. Prior to the “Finding of Jesus,” Mary is present for multiple predictions of her son’s future greatness. Gabriel and other angels visit her, and relatives and strangers prophesy about the child. When Gabriel gives Mary the news that she will soon conceive, the angel alludes to “future greatness”: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:30–33). Mary’s initial reaction is skepticism: “How will this happen,” she asks Gabriel, “since I have not known any man?” (Luke 1:34).21 Gabriel reassures her, declaring, “For nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37), and Mary accepts her fate. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” she says to Gabriel, “let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
If Mary has any lingering doubts, they are soon overcome. Elizabeth, Mary’s relative, feels the child in her own womb leap when she greets Mary. “Blessed are you among women,” Elizabeth says to her cousin, “and blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 1:42). Mary sings about the miracle in what is now known as the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name” (Luke 2:46–49). A choir of angels appears over Bethlehem when Jesus is born; one of the host speaks to a gathering of shepherds: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:10–13). The shepherds pay a visit to the holy family and report to Mary and Joseph what they had heard and seen (Luke 2:17). When the time comes to name the child, the parents obey the command of Gabriel and choose the name Jesus (Luke 2:21; see 1:31). Events unfold according to a heavenly blueprint in Luke 1–2, and Mary and Joseph seem content to stick to the plan.
Two other unusual figures confirm the importance of the newborn. Soon after naming and circumcising their child, Mary and Joseph bring the baby to the temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2:22–24). There they meet Simeon, a prophet, who for years has been waiting this day to come: “It had been revealed to [Simeon] by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah” (Luke 2:26). Taking Jesus in his arms, Simeon cries out to God, “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation” (Luke 2:29–30). Mary and Joseph’s reaction to Simeon is hard to pin down: “And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him [i.e., Jesus]” (Luke 2:33). “Amazed” translates thaumazō, a term that suggests astonishment, even shock.22 Are they pleased by what they hear, or are Mary and Joseph stunned by the words of Simeon? More ambiguity follows in Simeon’s aside to Mary: “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34–35). A moment later, another prophet, Anna, spreads the news about the baby’s significance: “[She] began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).
Years later, what would Mary and Joseph have remembered from this first trip as a family to Jerusalem? Did they remember the “amazing” words of Simeon and Anna? Did they recall the morbid spectacle of a stranger talking about his own death while holding their newborn baby? What about earlier events—did they remember the remarkable circumstances of their baby’s conception and birth? These are questions left open by Luke’s narrative, and without any clues, they are unanswerable. But the prophecies of future greatness (and future tragedy) in the first trip to Jerusalem, I think, linger in the mind when one, just a few transitional verses later, comes to the story of the second trip to Jerusalem.
For many commentators, the strange “Finding of Jesus” episode (2:41–52) undermines any claim of narrative coherence in Luke 1–2. Given all of the signs and wonders that attend Mary’s pregnancy, how is it possible that Mary and Joseph would later be puzzled by the speech and behavior of their twelve-year-old son? “Such a failure is surprising,” Raymond Brown dryly observes, “after the annunciation to Mary in 1:26–38, after the prediction of Simeon in 2:21–40.”23 Some, like Brown, have cautiously accepted the hypothesis of a pre-Lucan source for 2:41–52.24 An episode about the clueless parents of Jesus from a different source was spliced onto the infancy narrative of Luke 1–2. This result is an uneven narrative that includes both “a multitude of the heavenly host” and what seems to be a bout of amnesia twelve years later in the temple of Jerusalem. In other words, clumsy editing takes the blame for the strange ignorance of Mary and Joseph. Luke, in adopting the source, fails to reconcile the strange ignorance of the parents with earlier moments in which they are showered with information about their unusual child. Yet, this solution runs headlong into an obstacle, as Brown himself concedes: “If there was a pre-Lukan story, one must recognize that Luke has thoroughly rewritten it.”25 The vocabulary and structure of the story bear all of the hallmarks of Lukan composition. Why would Luke throw his back into revising the story and not also “fix” the forgetfulness (or sudden obtuseness) of Mary and Joseph? Whatever the reason, one is left with a strange narrative arc. In one chapter, Mary sings the Magnificat, while in the next, she is bewildered by her adolescent son’s sense of purpose.
The confusion of the parents is confusing, a state of affairs that at first may not strike many readers as much of a problem. Friends and family regularly misunderstand and underappreciate Jesus across the canonical gospels. Still, the multiple references to parental unknowing in the “Finding of Jesus” invite scrutiny. Even the coda of the pericope, which may at first glance seem to resolve the familial tension, is ambivalent. According to Luke, the twelve-year-old Jesus returns home to Nazareth and was “obedient” to Mary and Joseph (Luke 2:51). Commentators typically greet this verse with relief, pointing out that Jesus, like a good boy, fulfills the commandments.26 But why, we may ask, does the twelve-year-old Jesus show such brazen disregard for the authority of his parents in the first place? And why, afterward, does Jesus go on to submit to the interfering adults who interrupt his service to “the things of my father”?
The Gospel of Luke sets the agenda for the Infancy Gospel not only by what it leaves out—that is, gaps in the childhood of Jesus—but also by including the extraordinary story of Jesus and his parents in the temple. The “Finding of Jesus” is the hinge that joins the Infancy Gospel to its Lukan source material.27 The Infancy Gospel of Thomas includes a longer version of this story as its conclusion. I am of course not the first to suggest that it was the Lukan pericope that inspired the Infancy Gospel. Raymond Brown argues, “The unknown period of his boyhood could best be filled in through a creative use of what was known from his ministry. I contend that this same instinct has been at work in Luke 2:41–52; and it is no accident that, at the end of his sequence of apocryphal ‘hidden life’ stories about Jesus, the author of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas presented an adaptation of Luke 2:41–52. He has recognized kindred material.”28 Brown’s good point about the “kindred material” of Luke 2:41–52 and the Infancy Gospel nevertheless skirts around the problem of unknowing in the “Finding of Jesus,” the “surprising failure” of Mary and Joseph. Rather than projecting adult activities back into the childhood of Jesus, the Infancy Gospel gathers together stories that create a context for understanding the dysfunction of the “Finding of Jesus” episode.
I contend that the childhood tales of the Infancy Gospel anticipate the crisis triggered by the twelve-year-old in the temple in Jerusalem. Viewed in this light, the Infancy Gospel appears as a narrative organized around two questions: what did the parents of Jesus know about him, and when did they know it? As we saw in Chapter 1, early Christian interpreters were drawn to these same questions. Irenaeus, in his dispute with the “Marcosians,” rejected both their use of “apocryphal and spurious writings” and their interpretation of the “Finding of Jesus,” namely, that the twelve-year-old Jesus taught Mary and Joseph about the “unknowable God.” What did Irenaeus himself think about the story? For all of his contempt for the Marcosians, he does not offer an alternative interpretation.29
A century and a half later, John Chrysostom would fill in the space left open by Irenaeus. Is it credible to think that Jesus was raised in obscurity? That even his family shrugged off the angelic fireworks in Bethlehem and went on with their lives as if nothing extraordinary had happened? Yes, it is credible, according to John Chrysostom. It took the Baptist’s declaration about the adult Jesus at the Jordan River to bring him to the attention of the public. Those that lived closest to him, including and especially Mary, saw an ordinary boy. His low profile was due to the absence of childhood wonders, which, in turn, was part of a deliberate strategy of secrecy on the part of young Jesus. All of a sudden, at the age of thirty, Jesus outgrew the need for withholding: he performed the miracle of changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana, and his reputation exploded. It was no longer plausible to deny the power and status of Jesus. Prior to the performance of the adult Jesus in Cana, there was nothing. The “Finding of Jesus” episode, according to John Chrysostom, was a single blip on the radar.
Although they differ in their interpretations, Irenaeus, the “Marcosians,” and John Chrysostom share an interest in questions about what Mary and Joseph did and did not know about their child. To this network of interpretation of the childhood of Jesus, add the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The Infancy Gospel extends the ambiguity of the Lukan childhood story and, in so doing, offers a compelling interpretation of the holy household, one that finds meaning in familial strain. Against the background of other early Christian readings—from the Marcosians to John Chrysostom—we can see that the Infancy Gospel implies a distinctive theory of household dysfunction: Mary and Joseph do not understand their child because he is hard to understand—ambiguous in speech, deed, and identity. The narrative enactment of this theory in the Infancy Gospel represents the opposite of John Chrysostom’s approach. If his sermons try to close the door to thinking with the childhood of Jesus, then the Infancy Gospel lets it swing wide open.
In the Infancy Gospel, readers learn why Mary and Joseph (not to mention all of the neighbors) are so confused by the twelve-year-old Jesus. The family gospel responds to the Gospel of Luke by anticipating the familial dysfunction of the “Finding of Jesus.” Consider Mary’s question to her son: “Child, why have you treated us like this?” (Luke 2:48). For the author of the Infancy Gospel, Mary’s question is not, as the Marcosians had it, meant to imply an unknowable deity. Nor is it, as John Chrysostom believed, the by-product of an economy of deniability, put in motion by the absence of childhood wonders, Mary’s lack of confidence, and Jesus’ self-veiling. It is instead evidence of how little the parents understood about their child. Rather than solving the riddle of the “Finding of Jesus,” the Infancy Gospel shows the events that led to Mary’s heartbreaking question. In so doing, the Infancy Gospel turns on its head John Chrysostom’s theory of an absence of childhood wonders. Instead of an absence of wonders, the Infancy Gospel includes an abundance. What if, the family gospel asks, Jesus had performed miracles as a child? Would they have been understood by those closest to him? Or would they have left even Mary and Joseph in a state of confusion?
All great literature involves conflict: tradition against innovation, gods against humans, men against women, or a woman against herself. While no one would mistake the Infancy Gospel for great literature, the conflict is easy to spot: everyone who meets Jesus either hates or misunderstands him. The Infancy Gospel begins with a story of Jesus at play. “The child Jesus was five years old and, after a rain, he was playing at the ford of a rushing stream.”30 The idyllic scene is quite unlike anything in the gospels of the New Testament. In those books, every word and deed is swollen with portent, and there is no time for play. By contrast, in the Infancy Gospel, Jesus plays like any other five-year-old. But charm gives way to demonstrations of unusual power. The river is silty, and Jesus miraculously makes the water pure. No one else in the text sees this marvel; the reader alone is invited to picture the scene and, in the light of unfolding events, to recognize the allusion to the accounts of creation in the book of Genesis. Next, Jesus shapes twelve sparrows from the dirt. An onlooker, offended, goes and confronts Joseph: “Behold your boy is at the ford of the stream and has taken mud and fashioned (eplasen) twelve birds with it, and so has violated the Sabbath.” When Joseph scolds his son—“Why are you doing these things on the Sabbath?”—Jesus responds with a second miracle. The boy claps his hands, and the clay sparrows turn into real birds and fly away.31
This brief episode has at least three noteworthy aspects. First, it relates the stories of the Infancy Gospel to the Jewish scriptures. Second, it shows the power of the child. Jesus’ miracle of creation repeats, playfully, the creation of Adam.32 Third, we see that Joseph does not understand his son. From the start, then, the Infancy Gospel decouples not only miracle and knowledge but also nearness and knowledge. Should not the people closest to Jesus know him the best? Joseph may live with Jesus, but he does not or cannot grasp the whole truth about his son.
For all of the serious aspects of the story, we should not overlook the humor of the scene. When Jesus is accused of violating the Sabbath in earlier gospels, the atmosphere is tense. In the Infancy Gospel, a burst of comedy changes the climate. The Infancy Gospel not only shows Jesus at play but is also a playful account. Most will chuckle when Jesus, like any other child, tries to cover up his mistake. The story is told with a wink and a nod, adding a ludic “second accent” to the serious portrait of Jesus in the Synoptic tradition. Daniel Boyarin has recently traced a “second accent” alongside the serious “first accent” of Hellenistic philosophical traditions. This intellectual legacy was both embraced and interrogated in surprisingly similar ways by Greek-speaking satirists (such as Lucian) and the compilers of the Talmud. “Menippean satire,” a rather amorphous style dedicated to the combination of incongruous elements, of first and second accents, is the name that Boyarin gives to this form of inquiry.33 In the broadest sense, the Infancy Gospel acts as a Menippean satire of the Synoptic storytelling that it absorbs and extends. Similar to other examples, the Infancy Gospel develops a “seriocomic” (spoudogeloion) tone and purpose.34 In the rough play of the child Jesus, inherited practices and claims of knowledge come under scrutiny.
Along with comedy, the Infancy Gospel adds uncertainty to the Synoptic tradition, a sense of confusion that grows not despite but because of Jesus’ childhood acts of power. As soon as one is ready to tag these stories as lighthearted, the mood darkens. In the following scene, the son of Annas (a religious expert) drains the water that Jesus had gathered into pools. Jesus lashes out, “Your fruit shall be without root and your shoot dried up like a branch scorched by a strong wind.”35 Immediately, the son of Annas withers, and Jesus returns home. Next a boy runs past Jesus, banging him in the shoulder.36 In response, Jesus curses the child to death: the boy’s parents beg Joseph either to take his family and leave or, at least, “teach him to bless and not to curse; for we have been deprived of our child.”37 Joseph’s second rebuke of Jesus is more urgent, even desperate: “Why do you say such things? They suffer and hate us.” Jesus does not yield: “Since you know wise words, you are not ignorant of where your words come from.”38 When Joseph, detecting sassiness in these words, grabs Jesus by the ear, the boy sounds an ominous warning: “Let it be enough for you to seek and find me, and not, in addition to this, torment me by having a natural ignorance. You have not seen me clearly, why I am yours. Behold! You know not to upset me. For I am yours and have been handed to you.”39
Not only does Jesus reject Joseph’s admonishment, but he also underscores how little Joseph knows about the most basic familial elements. Whatever Joseph thinks is the nature of his relationship to Jesus is wrong. Is he Jesus’ father? Is Jesus his son? What is the meaning of all this? The conflict raises the problem of knowing. When Joseph questions his son, we see a father trying to act on what he knows—biblical precepts about the day of rest and honoring one’s parents.40 Joseph does what he is supposed to do. Meanwhile, Jesus’ childlike reenactment of Genesis, while telegraphed to the reader, is missed entirely by the father. The contrast of what the reader sees, on one hand, and what Joseph fails to see, on the other, seems crucial to the Infancy Gospel. It must be by design that Joseph, at the beginning of the Infancy Gospel, asks the same question that Mary will ask at the end: “Why?” Joseph and Mary do not understand the boy, nor does anyone else.
If we neglect the back and forth of knowing and not knowing, the early stories of the Infancy Gospel can seem all too predictable: the fight between the “son of Annas” and the son of Joseph “is meant to foreshadow Jesus’ later meeting with the High Priest himself.”41 This is likely at least part of the purpose. Yet, to reduce events in the Infancy Gospel to mere childhood prototypes of adult episodes does not do justice to the narrative.
Let us consider a different episode from the Gospel of Luke as a comparison rather than as a kind of foreshadowing: the story of Zechariah, priest and father of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5–80). Here again the strain is between fathers and sons, and the conflict turns on the axis of epistemology. When the angel Gabriel announces the pregnancy of John the Baptist, Zechariah scoffs at the plan: “How will I know [gnōsomai] that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” “I am Gabriel,” the angel replies, “I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur” (Luke 1:18–20). The angel Gabriel curses Zechariah, leaving him mute, and the people are left to wonder why. Once the child is born, Zechariah expresses conviction and belief by writing down the name of the boy, John—the name commanded by Gabriel. The curse is lifted and Zechariah is again able to speak. Here is a contrast between the sweeping nature of divine vision and the limited perspective of Zechariah.42 He suffers for a lack of imagination, believing that his advanced age will keep him from becoming a father. Even so, Zechariah and the readers learn from his suffering.43
We might speculate that the Infancy Gospel pursues the same goal: to magnify divine knowledge at the expense of feeble-minded humans. Yet, even if the promise and proof of divine power is apparent to readers, the blindness of characters remains unsettling. By contrast, the reason for Zechariah’s punishment is unmistakable: how dare a mortal question the designs of God! The Infancy Gospel goes a step farther, giving with one hand while taking away with the other. The reader may know more about Jesus than Joseph does—he or she has seen the child playfully mimic the creation of the world—and yet be left, like his parents, in the dark about the meaning of Jesus’ curses and declarations.
Without guidance from the characters, the audience must on their own contemplate the riddle of the child’s intentions. When Zacchaeus, the first teacher of Jesus, admits defeat, he asks, “What kind of belly bore him? What kind of womb nourished him?”44 Readers know to whom the belly and womb belongs; they also know that the parents are no less confused than Zacchaeus. The child’s deeds and, in this case, his words seem only to drive a wedge between himself and others. The Infancy Gospel invites reflection on differences in knowing: the difference between what Jesus knows and others do not, the difference between what the audience knows and the characters do not, and the difference between what the audience knows and what it does not know. The Infancy Gospel takes delight in jolting turnabouts: the son corrects his father; the student teaches his teacher. Moreover, the Infancy Gospel also involves the audience in the drama, sometimes confirming assumptions but just as often confounding expectations. It is a kind of parallel play that teaches about epistemological boundaries. Caught up in narrative gaps and ambiguity, in surprises and suspense, readers become aware of the limits of human perception.45
Then, as if to trip up an audience already on the wrong foot, things change. After Jesus raises Zeno from the dead, the wonders of Jesus in the second half of the family gospel lead (mostly) to reconciliation and harmony. Jesus catches spilled water in his cloak to give to his mother and helps his father with a carpentry project by stretching a piece of wood to match it up with another board. Joseph exults, “Blessed am I, for God gave me such a child.”46 The villagers also witness miracles: when a young man splits open his foot chopping wood and dies, Jesus, a hometown hero, pushes his way through the onlookers to heal and restore the victim to life. Hope overcomes the fear of the “first-half” stories, and the crowd’s cry rings out: “For he saved many souls from death. And he will continue to save all the days of his life.”47
The transition of neighbors and parents from contempt and fear to admiration of the child Jesus has been an important question in recent studies of the Infancy Gospel.48 Is the change in the behavior of Jesus or in the perception of those around him? The single blip in the convivial mood of the second half of the Infancy Gospel suggests the latter. A brutal schoolhouse episode leaves the teacher dead, but in the very next chapter, a different tutor wisely yields the floor to the pupil, and Jesus, standing at a lectern with a book on it, utters “awe-inspiring words” to an appreciative crowd. The teacher lavishes praise on Jesus—“he is full of much grace and wisdom”—and thus earns a reward: “Because you spoke rightly and testified rightly,” announces Jesus, “on account of you the one struck down also shall be saved.”49 In light of this splendid act of restoration, Tony Burke suggests that the “real transformation in the narrative is made in those around Jesus, not Jesus himself. . . . In IGT [Infancy Gospel of Thomas] this means that people should respond to Jesus not with incredulity or violence, but with belief and praise . . . it is Jesus’ teachers, neighbors, and parents who have a lesson to learn here.”50 So too Reidar Aasgaard argues, “Audiences—both individuals and groups—gradually realized the greatness of Jesus.”51 Aasgaard applies this conclusion with equal force to the “increasing insight” of the parents of Jesus. In the first half of the gospel, Jesus drives his parents up the wall; in the second half, father and son together assemble furniture like a well-oiled machine.
This proposal about “increasing insight” circles back to the problem with which we began: Mary and Joseph’s failure to understand Jesus. While the second half of the Infancy Gospel is brightly optimistic, some shadows of doubt linger. When Joseph returns to collect Jesus from the third teacher, he finds a crowd gathered around the classroom. He assumes that Jesus has acted out once again: “And Joseph quickly ran to the classroom, suspecting that this teacher too was no longer inexperienced and that he may have suffered.”52 As it turns out, Joseph’s worry proves to be unwarranted, as teacher and crowd praise the child. But the father’s anxiety is a reminder that the son remains an unknown quantity.
Moreover, if we lay too much stress on the cheerful atmosphere of the second half of the Infancy Gospel, we risk overlooking the domestic trouble that persists in the concluding chapter, a retelling of the canonical “Finding of Jesus.” As in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus remains in Jerusalem without his parents’ consent: “And his parents did not know.”53 When Mary and Joseph arrive at the temple, Jesus’ role is accentuated: more than ask questions, as in Luke, Jesus also “explained the main points of the law and the riddles and the parables of the prophets.”54 But Jesus’ virtuoso performance does little to lessen the parents’ confusion. The Infancy Gospel even amplifies Mary’s worry, adding another term to Luke’s “great anxiety”: “Child, what have you done to us? See, we have been looking for you in great anxiety and distress.”55 As in the Lukan version, the reply of Jesus in the Infancy Gospel hangs in the air, leaving matters unresolved: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in the place of my father?”56
At this point, the Infancy Gospel distinguishes itself from the canonical source by eliminating the Lukan verse: “But they did not understand what he said to them” (Luke 2:50). In its place, the Infancy Gospel inserts a benediction from the “scribes and the Pharisees” in the temple: “Blessed are you, because the Lord God has blessed the fruit of your womb. For we have never before seen nor heard such wisdom of praise and such glory of virtue we have never seen nor heard.”57 It is a blessing that gives and takes away: they recognize greatness, although they cannot fully comprehend it. It is, I suspect, a kind of feint. The perception of the learned figures is cast in playfully negative terms: the experts were ignorant before—“we have never seen nor heard”—and so they prove themselves again when they conspire to destroy the adult Jesus in the Lukan passion narrative. Still, whether one reads it as straightforward or ironic, the praise of the temple experts does not tell the reader anything about the parents. Jesus is unprecedented, and so is the set of domestic relationships to which he belongs.
Reidar Aasgaard takes the omission of Luke 2:50—“But they [i.e., Mary and Joseph] did not understand what he said to them”—as a sign of the purpose of the Infancy Gospel: to show the “growing insight” of the parents into the mission of their child.58 The “omission” of Luke 2:50 from the Infancy Gospel’s version of the story is not unimportant, but I do not think that the absence alone can support the weight of Aasgaard’s proposal. Rather than parental understanding, the reader of the Infancy Gospel is left with a doublet of unyielding interrogatives: first, Mary’s reproach and then the cutting rejoinder from the twelve-year-old: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know?” No, Mary and Joseph did not know. The question-and-question format implies precisely the opposite of “growing insight.”
In the Proto-gospel of James, the temple is a site of knowledge and carnage. Meanwhile, Joseph and Mary resist the surveillance of Rome and hide from Herod’s brutal investigators. In the Infancy Gospel, the temple is a place of recognition. But it is also a place of confusion. Some people in the Infancy Gospel recognize and understand the wisdom of the child Jesus, but these people do not include his parents. Jesus is confronted with a choice: stay in the temple, among those who understand, or return to live with parents who do not.
The parents remain mystified by this child, and the reader may feel the same way. But now, at least, the reader understands why Mary and Joseph do not understand their son. Mary knows the blessings and curses, the good and the bad that her strange child can do, and the combination has left her, like the reader, at a loss. Mary’s own reproach of Jesus becomes in context a moment of sincere and reflective probing, a knowing question about not knowing: “Child, what have you done to us?” It also echoes the father’s earlier interrogation of his five-year-old son: “Why do you say such things?”59 The result, I submit, is a complex and sympathetic rendering of the parents in the “Finding of Jesus.” As the Infancy Gospel tells it, Mary and Joseph arrive at the temple, hearts filled with anxiety, minds filled with questions about Jesus’ disruptive childhood. They hope for the best and fear the worst.
Will Jesus, Mary, and Joseph remain a family? It is composed of a father who is not quite a father, a mother who is not quite a mother, and a son who is not quite a son. When Jesus denies Mary and Joseph their claims as parents by appealing to “the things of his father,” he also disavows his place in their family as son. Each member of the trio stands askew of stable roles of father, mother, and son, which is why the move that the Infancy Gospel makes here, the way that it alters its source material, is crucial. Only here, in the Infancy Gospel, do scribes and Pharisees arrive to ask Mary the key question—the only one that matters: “Are you the mother of this child?” Mary, who had been rebuffed by Jesus only a moment earlier, steps into the void: “I am,” she replies.60
Mary makes her choice. She will remain his mother. What will Jesus choose? Like the Gospel of Luke, the Infancy Gospel reports, “Then Jesus rose from there and followed his mother and was obedient to his parents.”61 The twelve-year-old Jesus, so recently prepared to abandon Mary and Joseph and live instead in the house of God, his father, suddenly turns about. When commentators discuss the parallel verse in the Lukan version (Luke 2:51), they focus on the “obedience” of the child. But what about the return home? In the Gospel of Luke, the prior family life of Jesus is not reported, so readers are left on their own to imagine what it might have once entailed and how it could be different after the scene in the temple. The Infancy Gospel, by contrast, fills in the space. It shows the good and the bad that took place during the previous seven years. What kind of home life awaits this family when they travel back to Nazareth? More of the same, or will things be different?
* * *
It is tempting to find something timeless in the Lukan story of the “Finding of Jesus.” If François Bovon succumbs, he does so thoughtfully and humanely: “He does not do what his parents expect; he does what they do not wish. This makes them suffer, and women, above all, can identify with Mary’s question: ‘Child, why have you treated us (ἡμĩν) like this?’ Like an adolescent, Jesus does not give in. He asserts his opinion with absolute matter-of-factness. As often in generational conflicts, the parents do not understand their children at the close of the argument, and, as often in such cases, the father remains silent.”62 This is a poignant reading of a tense moment of familial strain that is usually underappreciated in the rush to explicate Jesus’ reference to “the things of my father.” Sometimes, to be sure, the truth of human experience breaks through in the canonical gospels, and Luke 2:41–52 may be one of those moments. But Bovon’s attention to some possibilities neglects other aspects of the story, especially the rhetorical drumbeat of parental failure. The ignorance of Mary and Joseph is more than typical—it is spectacular.
The Infancy Gospel offers readers the prelude to this confrontation in the “Finding of Jesus,” anticipating but not resolving domestic misunderstanding. As such, the Infancy Gospel resists a didactic approach that would find in the childhood stories a straightforward lesson about Jesus or the faith of the readers.63 The gospel is characterized instead by ambiguity and suspenseful gaps, reminding readers of what human beings do not know. In the face of acts of divine power and expressions of divine knowledge, mortal understanding reaches its limits. The family of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, tested by these limits, accepts uncertainty and chooses to remain together. It is a tense and sometimes dysfunctional household, but a household nonetheless. This depiction of family life is not in line with the rigid definitions of a patriarchal hierarchy espoused by the Pastoral Epistles. But neither is it consistent with the “apostolic love triangle” of the Apocryphal Acts, which denies the worth of spousal and parental relationships. The Infancy Gospel, which portrays and seems to accept the static on the lines between members of the household, puts a fair amount of distance between it and other early Christian models of family life.
Why? Because we know so little about the specific historical circumstances of the writing and telling of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, answers to this question must remain incomplete. In this chapter, I have suggested that it has something to do with ambiguity in the Lukan childhood account. So too it reflects what can be spotted in biblical narrative, another important source of storytelling for the family gospels, in the contrast between divine omniscience and human ignorance. It may also articulate a sense of the fragile position of Christianity, a new and strange religion, amid more time-tested claims of religious knowledge.64 In skillful hands and before a sympathetic audience, incomprehensibility could be turned to advantage. The religion about “Christ crucified,” Paul insists, is “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks” (1 Cor 1:23). In other words, the story of Jesus does not make sense, and that proves that it is true. Perhaps this is why the Lukan image of a clueless Mary and Joseph first captured the imagination of the author of the Infancy Gospel. The twelve-year-old Jesus, touched by heaven and thus mysterious, was a puzzle—even to, especially to, his parents.