PHOTO FROM NASIR ESKANDARI ET AL.,
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 14 (2024), ART. 2670
As they pored through unpublished papyrus fragments in the State and University Library in Hamburg, Germany, papyrologists Lajos Berkes and Gabriel Nocchi Macedo stumbled upon a remarkable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 been written sometime in the second century, it gained widespread popularity, with copies in various languages appearing across the eastern Mediterranean. The antiquity of this fragment, however, all but confirms that the original language of the Infancy Gospel was Greek.
The fragmentary text partially records an episode from the Infancy Gospel known as the “vivification of the sparrows.” In this scene, a five-year-old Jesus shapes several sparrows out of clay and then commands them to fly away; the sparrows spring to life and depart as instructed.
As they pored through unpublished papyrus fragments in the State and University Library in Hamburg, Germany, papyrologists Lajos Berkes and Gabriel Nocchi Macedo stumbled upon a remarkable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 […]
