The Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-gospel of James are usually thought of by scholars as early Christian “infancy gospels” or “childhood gospels.”1 This is because these accounts contain stories about Jesus between the ages of five and twelve and stories about Mary, his mother, that likewise cover her infancy and youth. Sometimes they are described as “filling in gaps” in the “missing years” of the gospels of the New Testament.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a short account of seventeen chapters—references are included below in parentheses—that describes events in the life of Jesus between the ages of five and twelve. The gospel lacks a strong narrative arc and can seem to readers little more than a loose collection of childhood episodes.2 It begins with a series of episodes about the five-year-old Jesus: he turns toy birds into actual birds (2); curses one boy, leaving him disabled (3); curses another child to death (4); fights with his father and afflicts neighbors with blindness (5); and, during his first lesson in a classroom, humiliates a teacher (6–7).
Jesus suddenly reverses course in the next chapter, restoring to health all those he had previously cursed (8). In Chapter 9, Jesus is accused of pushing another boy, Zeno, from the roof of a house. With Zeno lying dead on the ground, his parents pointing the finger at Jesus, Jesus raises Zeno from the dead, who in turn testifies to the innocence of Jesus. At the age of seven, Jesus performs miracles for his mother, fetching her water, and for his father, helping him with planting (10–11). Jesus, now eight years old, continues to help his father, this time supernaturally extending the length of wood planks for making ploughs and yokes (12). Two classroom scenes follow: in one, Jesus curses the teacher, who falls down dead (13); in the other, Jesus speaks to a crowd while the teacher looks on with approval (14). Jesus performs a couple more miracles, healing a boy from a snakebite and raising from the dead a man who had died from an errant stroke of an axe while chopping wood (15–16). The Infancy Gospel concludes with a version of the only childhood story found in the New Testament, the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple of Jerusalem (17; cf. Luke 2:41–52).
The Proto-gospel of James, which focuses on Mary, likewise includes childhood episodes. But it is a more sophisticated account than the Infancy Gospel, building to a climax in a story of the birth of Jesus in a cave outside of Bethlehem. Early chapters relate the story of Mary’s parents, Anna and Joachim, who are childless and upset because of it (1–3). After seeking divine aid, Anna miraculously conceives a child, whom she dedicates to a lifetime of service in the temple (4). The child is born—a girl, whom Anna names Mary—and spends the next three years at home with her parents (5–6). At the age of three, Mary is escorted by her parents to the temple, where she lives until the age of twelve (7–8). The priests in the temple worry that she will soon begin to menstruate and defile the holy site. The priests seek divine counsel and are instructed to choose a husband for Mary by lot: an elderly widower is selected—Joseph, who already has sons of his own (9). Joseph, perplexed and troubled by the situation, refuses to have sex with Mary and leaves her in his house while he goes off to work on a construction project.
The next several chapters follow an unfolding crisis, one that includes details familiar to readers of the gospels of the New Testament as well as some unfamiliar elements: an angel appears to Mary, and she conceives a child without having had intercourse with Joseph (11). She promptly forgets what the angel has told her (12) and thus cannot explain her pregnancy to Joseph when he finally returns home (13). Distressed, Joseph considers divorcing Mary, but an angel reassures him (14). But this reassurance is short-lived: Joseph and Mary are hauled before the high priest to explain Mary’s condition (15–16). Neither one is able to do so, so the high priest orders an ordeal to reveal whether they have had sex. They pass the test, confirming the miraculous origins of Mary’s pregnancy (17).
The remaining chapters continue to weave together details from earlier gospels with new information. Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem to comply with the census of Augustus (17), but Joseph decides instead to stop in a cave outside of Bethlehem (18). From a distance, Joseph witnesses the miraculous birth in the cave (19). After the child is born, skepticism about the source of Mary’s pregnancy continues, and a midwife, Salome, attempts to examine Mary’s postpartum genitals (20). She is stopped short, however, when her hand catches fire and begins to disintegrate. The child Jesus heals her (21). The family is soon threatened by King Herod. He consults Magi, who have arrived looking for the child (21), and orders the killing of every infant in his domain (22). Mary hides her child from the soldiers in a manger (22). But Zacharias, high priest and father to the newborn John, is unable to escape the soldiers, and they kill him in the temple (23). The narrative comes to an end when the priests gather to choose a new high priest (24). It is Simeon, who, according to the Gospel of Luke, will hail Jesus as Messiah when Mary and Joseph bring the infant to Jerusalem shortly after his circumcision (Luke 2:21–35).
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The Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-gospel of James are the strange gospels at the heart of this book. They include stories about the childhoods of Jesus and Mary. But are they “infancy gospels”? Tales about a wonder-working child could be told to testify to the power of the individual. They could be used to reveal something important about the figure’s character and forecast future greatness. And all of this could be accomplished without telling readers anything about the family life of the child. It is my contention that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-gospel of James are underread when taken as narrow chronicles of holy figures. So long as they are approached as odd character sketches of Jesus and Mary, the family gospels and research into them will, I fear, languish on the borders of the field. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph makes a case for a different perspective, one that sees the stories as something more than profiles of Jesus and Mary.
In the past, scholars often dismissed these gospels as tabloid accounts meant to satisfy a craving for tidbits about the celebrities of the faith.3 Recent treatments, however, have exchanged scorn for empathy. Tony Burke argues that the portrayal of the child Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas reflects the “idealized child” of antiquity.4 Stephen Davis asks whether the stories of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas reflect cultural memories of childhood in antiquity.5 And Reidar Aasgaard argues that the Infancy Gospel represents an early example of Christian childhood literature.6 As for the Proto-gospel of James, Jennifer Glancy and Lily Vuong wonder whether the unusual womb of Mary reflects or resists ancient assumptions about the female body.7 These studies have illuminated important aspects of both gospels and have sharpened my thinking on the accounts. I want Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to add to the momentum of this new wave of interest. I think it does so by focusing attention on why these stories make a difference to the study of early Christianity.
My use of the term “family gospels” reflects the chief argument of this book. Both family gospels depict a family in crisis. If we look at the stories as family dramas, new questions emerge: How well did Mary and Joseph know each other? How much did they understand about the strange events that they witnessed? What did Mary and Joseph see in their son? What did they fail to see? What did they know that others did not? And what did they not know at all? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is about these new questions. It is the depiction of the give-and-take of familial relationships that makes the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-gospel of James important to the study of early Christianity. Before I describe in more detail my approach, I first outline my assumptions about where to plot the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-gospel of James on the timeline of early Christian literature.
The family gospels are not unique. After they had been written and began to circulate, ancient Christians continued to tell stories about the family life of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Many of the written sources that document this storytelling combine details from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke with new elements and perspectives. Some sources include the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a Latin text that includes most of what we know today as the Proto-gospel of James. Something similar happened among eastern Christians, as the family gospels were taken up into the Syriac Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, later translated as the Arabic Infancy Gospel. Other sources focus on the “wise men” from Matthew: the Revelation of the Magi and On the Star.8 In the Afterword, we will encounter a different account, the History of Joseph the Carpenter, which describes the death of Joseph and the grief of Mary and Jesus.
Even so, the family life of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did not fascinate at first. The birth of Jesus did not matter to the author of the oldest gospel. Neither the narrator of the Gospel of Mark nor the characters in the story refer to the birth of Jesus. Jesus enters the picture as a lone adult. He goes to the Jordan River, where John baptizes him (Mark 1:9). The first chapter does not mention Mary and Joseph, nor does it imply that Jesus has left behind his natal household Instead, it refers to kinship of the supernatural variety: “And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’ ” (Mark 1:11). The rest of the gospel is a fast-paced narrative about an itinerant holy man, culminating in his arrest, trial, and crucifixion in Jerusalem. The tone is established early: before Chapter 1 reaches the halfway point, Jesus has taken up public ministry. He travels to Galilee, “proclaiming the good news” (Mark 1:14). Mark 1:1 locates the “beginning” of the gospel of Jesus in the activity of adulthood, not in his nativity.
From the standpoint of modern biography, the absence of a birth story in Mark is merely the first in a series of omissions. After all, Mark ignores many crucial milestones: the first words of Jesus, his adolescent years, the moment he departs from home and sets out on his own. Mark’s lack of a birth story stands out because the two later Synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke, added infancy narratives. Without Matthew and Luke, the present book would likely not exist. It does so because of the decision of this pair of evangelists to begin the story of Jesus with a family drama instead of with the sudden appearance of a fully formed, independent adult. The Synoptic accounts set the parameters for the contents of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-gospel of James. In their telling, the story begins with an infant, not an adult Jesus, who belongs first to and with Mary and Joseph. The relationships of this small household, hinted at in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, are what proved attractive to the writers and readers of the family gospels.
How was the additional storytelling of the family gospels received by ancient Christians? Answering this question depends on how one thinks about the authority of the gospels of the New Testament at a time before there was a New Testament. An influential list of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament dates to the late fourth century, in the thirty-ninth festal letter of Athanasius of 367 CE. Most of the writings of the New Testament were written by 100 CE. What happened in the nearly three centuries between this date and the canon of Athanasius?9 One view is that the process of forming the New Testament followed a linear path. It was a rather neat, multistaged process, led by charismatic figures such as Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in the second century. Christians gradually reached decisions about which books to include and how many. Consider this recent summary: “Patristic evidence shows that in the final quarter of the second century a kind of communis opinio had already been reached about the exclusive authority of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For Irenaeus (around 180 CE), it was an established fact that these four were the only gospels with general authority.”10 According to this model, by the end of the second century, Christian leaders and followers had reached a decision about which gospels to read and which to reject.
Irenaeus’s Against Heresies is often regarded as a crucial hinge in canonical development, establishing once and for all the four-gospel canon. Yet, as Annette Yoshiko Reed shows, in many places, it is unclear what Irenaeus has in mind.11 For Irenaeus, “gospel” can refer to “divine knowledge,” something much bigger than, strictly speaking, written gospel narratives.12 Consulting the “correct” books did not in and of itself protect against error; faithful interpretation required the right blend of tradition and gospel.13 So too the explosion of early Christian literature in the second and third centuries undercuts the claim that Irenaeus reflects a second-century consensus. Many, it seems, favored the expansion of the Christian library, adding apocalypses, acts, letters, and, gospels. How does one make sense, as Harry Gamble puts it, of the “ongoing production . . . throughout the second and well into the third century” of “additional literature in similar genres—gospels, letters, acts, and apocalypses”?14 Among these books are of course the family gospels and many others: the Gospel of Peter, which describes the exit of Jesus from the tomb; a Third Letter to the Corinthians, attributed to Paul; and the Apocalypse of Peter, a prototype of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The list also includes the Gospel of Thomas, a sayings gospel not to be confused with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.15 Christians would not have written such “copycat” books unless there was an audience waiting to receive and read them. If so, a widespread consensus did not yet exist about which books should and which should not be read. From the perspective of second- and third-century Christians, a closed canon lay on the other side of a distant horizon.
Making sense of the flourishing of early Christian writing in the second and third centuries means moving away from an evolutionary model, as a recent essay by David Brakke suggests.16 He outlines three different modes of scriptural practice in the early Christian era. The proposal allows for a broader and more flexible assessment of early Christian literature and separates the question of “scripture” from that of “canon.”17 One mode of scriptural practice involves “Study and Contemplation” and features the editing of texts and spotting corruptions. A second mode is “Revelation and Continued Inspiration,” which covers the writing of “new texts that mimic the genres of existing scriptures.” The third and final mode involves “Communal Worship and Edification,” which focuses on “careful consideration of what should and should not be read at gatherings for worship.”18 Of these modes, only the third, “Communal Worship and Edification,” would lead eventually to the closed canon of Athanasius.19 The other two modes were quite different. “Study and Contemplation” required the perspicacious gaze of the scholar, who could distinguish truth from corruption in a text or set of texts and restore them to pristine condition.20 Those who accepted “Revelation and Continued Inspiration” welcomed new volumes into an expanding religious library.21
I suggest that we think of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-gospel of James as products of “Continued Inspiration.” The family gospels present themselves as supplements to the authoritative storytelling of the Synoptic gospels—extending, expanding, and rewriting.22 Now they do not call themselves “gospels.”23 The titles I use were assigned secondarily, but I retain them because this is how they are best known, and I persist in the use of “gospel” because of their generic affinity to earlier gospels.24 Moreover, we do not know who wrote the family gospels.25 The Infancy Gospel of Thomas first circulated anonymously. And while the Proto-gospel of James, or Protevangelium Jacobi, includes an epilogue stating that the account comes from the hand of James, it is a dubious claim.26 So too we cannot be sure of where or when the family gospels were written.27 Jesus, Mary, and Joseph assumes that both were composed in Greek and first circulated by Christians in the eastern part of the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries, after the Synoptic accounts had acquired authority in some Christian circles but before Christian leaders of the fourth century began to insist on an exclusive club of New Testament writings.28
The writers of the family gospels were deeply familiar with earlier storytelling about the figures of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.29 What they received, especially from the earlier Synoptic birth narratives, is an image of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as a family. By expanding into “gaps” or open spaces, they mimic, perhaps unwittingly, the interpretive practice of Matthew and Luke. These two Synoptic gospels famously add on to the Gospel of Mark the birth accounts of Jesus. Why did they do so? Did Matthew and Luke hope to replace Mark with their own, better accounts?30 Did they want to complement Mark’s version with another one? In any case, it is the methodology that matters: the family gospels share with Matthew and Luke the use of an earlier source or sources as a narrative framework.
The family gospels tell us something about how early Christians read and interpreted the Synoptic tradition. The authors of the infancy gospels saw in the Synoptic infancy narratives an invitation to add more stories. Seeing the family gospels as extensions of the Synoptic tradition may help readers to appreciate their sincerity, for lack of a better term. For some, it will not be enough to overcome what is, on any measure, provocative storytelling. But perhaps a shift in perspective will begin to put to rest the idea that these stories are simply “gap-filling” measures. Scholars would not accept as a sufficient explanation that all that Matthew and Luke do is “fill in gaps” in Mark. When the Gospels of Matthew and Luke add infancy narratives to the front of Mark, they do so to draw the eye to divine affairs and human intimacy. The same is true for the storytelling in the family gospels.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, guided by elements in the family gospels, investigates themes of Roman-era culture. We explore a range of ancient literary sources, especially from the second and third centuries CE, looking for images of empire, family life, spectacle, and education. These images, I contend, illuminate aspects of the family gospels. In this, my book is an example of what is sometimes called “cultural poetics.” Daniel Boyarin glosses the term as “a practice that respects the literariness of literary texts (that is, as texts that are marked by rhetorical complexity and for which that surface formal feature is significant for their interpretation), while attempting at the same time to understand how they function within a larger socio-cultural system of practices.”31 To relate this gloss to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the chapters that follow investigate the ways that the family gospels appropriate themes of Roman culture (“a larger socio-cultural system of practices”) as well as how they resist them. I want to understand how the family gospels belong to the world in which they were written. So too I want to understand how they interpret that world.
Cultural poetics is a powerful method for connecting text and context. Even so, it has limitations, or at least it does in the way that it is practiced in this book. For one thing, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph does not offer a social history of the ancient family. Rather, it dwells mostly on representations of family life. The same is true for themes such as empire, education, and spectacle. What did these practices mean to the authors of the family gospels and their readers? How is this meaning captured in the storytelling of the Infancy Gospel and the Proto-gospel of James? Most important, how do questions about domestic life and knowledge posed by the family gospels echo the questions that come to the surface in a diverse set of ancient sources? Written by ancient Roman pagans, ancient Jews, and ancient Christians, the primary sources that surround the family gospels in Jesus, Mary, and Joseph indicate that knowledge—where it can be found, how it is acquired, how it should be interpreted—was a topic on people’s minds.
But what about the “literariness of literary texts” that appears in Boyarin’s gloss of “cultural poetics”? While all of the chapters concern themselves with this question, Chapters 4 and 5 focus to a greater degree on the “literariness” of the family gospels. Much of my thinking has been shaped by Meir Sternberg’s poetics of narrative in the Tanakh, especially his view that a parallel drama of knowledge between intratextual characters and extratextual audience operates in biblical stories.32 Sternberg argues that the organizing principle of biblical narrative is the difference between the omniscience of God and the limited understanding of human beings.33 In perhaps his most compelling case study of a palace and household drama, the account of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah in 2 Samuel 11–12, Sternberg points up the kinds of questions that the story raises and refuses to answer.34 How widespread is news of the affair in David’s Jerusalem? Does Uriah know about the affair? Does David suspect that Uriah knows? Definitive answers are hard to maintain; more than one hypothesis can be argued. These kinds of questions both expose the fallible perception of characters in the narrative and remind readers of the limits of their own understanding. Readers may accept that 2 Samuel 11–12 offers a truthful telling of the events and, at the same time, concede that the full story or the “whole truth” extends beyond their grasp. The narrative remains complex and unsettled—a lesson learned time and again through engaging with the laconic reporting of biblical stories. Human beings only ever know in part, if it can be said that they know anything at all.
Biblical writers assume the omniscience of God. I think the authors of family gospels share the same view of things.35 But I do not think that readers must adopt or share their theological presuppositions to appreciate their accounts or the way they pose the dilemma of human ignorance. In the family gospels, characters must make decisions in the face of uncertainty.36 As a comparison, consider a different account, the book of Tobit. Of the ancient family dramas in narrative form, the one that comes closest in spirit to that of the Christian family gospels is a Jewish book. The book of Tobit was addressed to a Jewish audience, although it is not included in the Tanakh.37 Like the family gospels, it is “parabiblical” in the sense that it reflects the language and pacing, not to mention many of the theological assumptions, of biblical narrative.38 And while its composition was likely not affected by the rise of the Roman Empire—it belongs first to the Jewish Diaspora of the Hellenistic period—Tobit shares with the family gospels an interest in the intimacy of family life. One scholar observes that the “whole book [of Tobit] is generally unusual for its detailed portrait of family life.”39 What should fathers teach their sons? What should sons inherit from their fathers? What is the value of marriage? So too, like the family gospels, the book of Tobit unfolds at the intersection of divine and human affairs, and this gives a particular resonance to its exploration of what human beings know and do not know under such circumstances.
“What God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt 19:6; cf. Mark 10:9). Demons ignore such injunctions. One of the plot lines of Tobit features a woman, Sarah, who has been married seven times. Each wedding was followed by demonic savagery: as soon as the groom enters the bridal chamber, a demon appears and kills him, leaving Sarah a widow. Her story intersects with the story of Tobias, the son of Tobit, who travels to where Sarah lives to collect his family’s riches and return them to his father. He learns all about Sarah’s misfortune and the danger that awaits any man who enters the bridal chamber. Tobias nevertheless intends to marry her. As it turns out, Tobias has a friend in heaven: the angel Raphael, who disguises himself as Tobias’s traveling companion. He gives the benighted Tobias instructions for defeating the demon in Sarah’s room: “When you enter the bridal chamber, take some of the fish’s liver and heart, and put them on the embers of the incense. An odor will be given off: the demon will smell it and flee” (Tob 6:17–18). When Tobias enters the bridal chamber, the family of Sarah waits. Tobias follows the instructions of his friend, and the demon is expelled. This good news is verified for family members when a maid enters the bridal chamber and finds “them sound asleep together” (Tob 8:13). After so much suffering, the sight of Tobias and Sarah at rest brings relief for all parties.
The book of Tobit builds suspense for an audience that trusts that God’s purposes will not be thwarted. Readers know who Raphael is, and they know that Raphael will defeat the demon. At the same time, they are aware of the limits of Tobias’s knowledge—that he does not know Raphael’s identity, nor does he know whether the smell of fish liver will prove efficacious. So too with Sarah, who shows courage in trying to marry again despite the lessons of her tragic history. This combination of suspense and “anti-suspense factors” eventually yields to a satisfying resolution. Not only are Tobias and Sarah married, but Raphael also reveals his true identity (Tob 12:11–15), a moment that leads to the prophesying of Tobit about the restoration of Israel. As Ryan Schellenberg puts it, “Tobit’s narrative world has no loose ends.”40
Are there loose ends in the family gospels? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph argues that this is so. Uncertainty persists in the household of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Yet, they share with the book of Tobit an important focus. Ignore for the moment Raphael’s “big reveal” at the end of the story, which is the instant that he takes off his disguise and declares his true identity. Prior to this, Tobit is a story about human beings making a choice to act. They have been given some but not all of the relevant information. Tobias’s crossing of the threshold into the bridal chamber, while Sarah braces herself for yet another demonic attack and crushing loss, is a scene about courage in the face of the unknown. Readers may guess that all will be well. Tobias and Sarah must trust that it will be so.
Like Tobias and Sarah in this suspenseful interlude, the members of the holy household of the family gospels must choose over and again to remain a family. The chapters of this book frame and interpret the family gospels as dramas of knowledge, as stories about what is known and what remains unknown in a small household. I do not think that these accounts give us access to what really happened, but I do not always couch my claims in ways that call attention to the fictional character of the stories. I want my readers to focus on the storytelling and to recognize in it a rich depiction of familial conflict and misunderstanding.
Chapter 1 explores the historical context of the family gospels, especially the widespread rhetoric of familial concord in the Roman era. Christian writers responded, sometimes arguing for a rather conservative vision of patriarchal household authority. At other times, they told stories about the breaking up of marriages, replacing this with a celibate household learning at the feet of an apostle. If the prevailing image of the household was as a place of teaching, learning, and knowledge, then scenes of domestic confusion, like those in the family gospels, pose a stark contrast.
The first chapter then turns to the earlier gospels of the New Testament, especially the infancy narratives of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. What did Mary and Joseph understand about the events in which they were swept up? How much did they know (and not know) about their extraordinary child? How much did Jesus disclose about himself to Mary and Joseph? Several early Christian authors offered explanations. The second-century heresiologist Irenaeus, for example, notes the belief of a rival Christian group, the “Marcosians,” that the twelve-year-old Jesus taught his parents secret knowledge. In the fourth century, John Chrysostom rejected the idea that Jesus had performed childhood wonders. Both Irenaeus and John Chrysostom seek to overcome ambiguity. The family gospels accept it as a feature of human relationships.
Chapters 2 and 3 explore aspects of Roman-era culture and images of family life in the family gospels. The grim Roman-era fascination with public spectacles forms the backdrop to Chapter 2. I argue that the family gospels include narrative spectacles of their own. When a midwife tries to examine Mary’s genitals in the Proto-gospel of James, her hand begins to burn and disintegrate. In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus’ indiscriminate use of supernatural power—he curses and heals, kills and brings back to life—leaves neighbors and parents in a state of fearful uncertainty in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Hard to ignore, these spectacles are also difficult to decipher. Like other stories from the era, the family gospels use narrative spectacles to expose the limits of human understanding, as both characters in the text and the audience outside of it struggle to make sense of them. And when the smoke clears, the intimate drama of family life comes into view.
The difference between human perception and divine omniscience is central to Chapter 3. Joseph in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas wants Jesus to be educated, while Anna, the mother of Mary in the Proto-gospel of James, wants her daughter to train in the temple. This chapter contends that broader conversations about the value of classical Greek education and culture may help to illuminate this conflict. Lucian of Samosata, a Greek-speaking satirist from the Roman period, describes his own youthful dilemma over whether to pursue education and its rewards or the skilled labor of masonry and sculpture. In it, Lucian offers a young person’s perspective on a disagreement with parents about the future.
The family gospels, by contrast, emphasize the perspective of parents who “want what’s best” for their children. But the dreams of Joseph, on one hand, and those of Anna, on the other, go unrealized: the child Jesus is not a good student, and Mary is forced out of the temple when the priests fear that the onset of her menstrual cycle will defile the house of God. Do the parents err in wanting a future for their children that is at odds with the plans of heaven?
Chapters 4 and 5 change somewhat in approach. Rather than use examples from both gospels to explore a common theme, each of the chapters focuses on a specific family gospel. Chapter 4 shows that the Proto-gospel of James gives a twist on an ancient biblical idiom—that is, the use of the term “know” as a euphemism for sexual intercourse. The Mary and Joseph of the Proto-gospel do not “know” each other in the biblical sense (i.e., sexually) or in any other sense. They meet by accident, and once Joseph installs Mary at his house, he departs for a months-long work project.
It will of course not shock anyone to learn that an early Christian account denies Mary and Joseph a robust sex life. But why present the holy couple as strangers to one another? In the Proto-gospel of James, the nature of the relationship between Mary and Joseph remains vague, and it is only the crisis of Mary’s unexpected pregnancy that throws the man and woman together. Yet, together they brave doubt, scandal, and a potentially lethal ordeal. Their bond is forged in a crucible of miracle and courage, and their fidelity to one another scrapes away at expectations about what constitutes conjugal intimacy. They bond over “unknowing.” And this shared ignorance disrupts assumptions about what counts as a “husband” and what counts as a “wife.”
The willingness of the family gospels to put domestic strife on display is just as striking in the case of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Chapter 5 begins with Gospel of Luke’s story about a twelve-year-old Jesus debating with religious experts in the Jerusalem temple. It is sometimes referred to as the “Finding of Jesus” because, for a span of three days, Mary and Joseph lose track of their son. When they finally discover him in the temple, Mary reproaches her son: “Why have you treated us like this?” (Luke 2:48).
A version of this story forms the conclusion to the Infancy Gospel. It is perhaps the episode that inspired the entire family gospel. Rather than smoothing over the dysfunction of the holy family, the Infancy Gospel piles on more examples of parent-child strain. Jesus kills playmates and sasses off to adults. When Joseph reprimands the boy, Jesus warns his father not to upset him. Against this background, Mary’s question to her twelve-year-old son takes on new urgency. Because the child Jesus uses his astonishing powers for good and evil, the audience, like the characters in the story, cannot predict how the child will react. Through episodes of suspense and surprise, the Infancy Gospel instills in readers the same loss of comprehension that bedevils Mary and Joseph. By so doing, it also gives readers a new perspective on the blowup in the temple. The parents have a choice to make, and so does Jesus. Will they remain a family?
In the Afterword, I look at one sixth-century source, the History of Joseph the Carpenter, that offers another scene of family drama. In it, Joseph, lying on his death bed, begs the forgiveness of his son, and the son, in turn, weeps for his father.
One of the long-standing obstacles to scholarship on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has been the lack of a critical edition of the Greek text. The obstacle has been overcome with the publication of Tony Burke, De infantia Iesu. It includes a critical edition of the Greek text based on the “S Recension” (Gs) of the text. This is the text and translation that I follow, including Burke’s chapter and verse divisions and subdivisions. On occasion, I point out variants in the other influential “A Recension” (Ga). When I do so, I indicate this in the notes and use Gs and Ga to distinguish between the different texts. While Burke makes a convincing argument for Gs as the earliest representation of the Greek text, scholars continue to find value in comparing readings from Ga.41
For the Proto-gospel of James, or Protevangelium Jacobi, the edition of the Greek text and English translation that I use comes from Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, Apocryphal Gospels, including chapter and verse divisions. It is based on the critical edition in Émile De Strycker, La Forme la plus ancienne, 63–191. I occasionally modify the translation, indicating where I do so in the notes.
I have kept most quotations of the Greek text of the family gospels and other ancient sources in the endnotes. Where I think it is essential to include a Greek term in the main text, I use a transliteration.