As they pored through unpublished papyrus fragments in the State and University Library in Hamburg, Germany, papyrologists Lajos Berkes and Gabriel Nocchi Macedo stumbled upon a remarkable find: the oldest known fragment of an ancient text known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The fragment, about 4 by 2 inches in size, contains 13 partial lines of Greek text. Berkes and Macedo date it to the late fourth or early fifth century. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the famous Gnostic Gospel of Thomas) contains stories of Jesus’s childhood (see Christianity’s First Family). Believed to have […]
