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The Syriac Infancy Gospel, also known as the Arabic Infancy Gospel, is a
New Testament apocrypha The New Testament apocrypha (singular apocryphon) are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings were cite ...
l writing concerning the infancy of Jesus. It may have been compiled as early as the sixth century, and was partly based on the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas The ''Infancy Gospel of Thomas'' is a biographical gospel about the childhood of Jesus, believed to date at the latest to the second century. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is generally considered to be Gnostic in origin because of references ...
, the
Gospel of James The Gospel of James (or the Protoevangelium of James) is a second-century infancy gospel telling of the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary, her upbringing and marriage to Joseph, the journey of the couple to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus ...
, and the
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (or The Infancy Gospel of Matthew) is a part of the New Testament apocrypha. In antiquity the text was called The Book About the Origin of the Blessed Mary and the Childhood of the Savior. Pseudo-Matthew is one of a g ...
. The only two surviving manuscripts date from 1299 AD and the 15th/16th century in Arabic. They were copied in the area of northern Iraq and show influence from the
Quran The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...
.


Contents

It consists of three parts: #The birth of Jesus – based on the
Protevangelium of James The Gospel of James (or the Protoevangelium of James) is a second-century infancy gospel telling of the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary, her upbringing and marriage to Joseph, the journey of the couple to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, ...
#Miracles during the
Flight into Egypt The flight into Egypt is a story recounted in the Gospel of Matthew ( Matthew 2:13– 23) and in New Testament apocrypha. Soon after the visit by the Magi, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him to flee to Egypt with Mary and the ...
– seemingly based on nothing more than local traditions #The miracles of Jesus as a boy – based on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas It contains a number of embellishments on the earlier text, however, including a
diaper A diaper /ˈdaɪpə(r)/ ( American and Canadian English) or a nappy (Australian English, British English, and Hiberno-English) is a type of underwear that allows the wearer to urinate or defecate without using a toilet, by absorbing or conta ...
(of Jesus) that heals people, sweat (of Jesus) that turns into balm, curing leprosy, and dyeing cloth varied colours using only
indigo Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', m ...
dye. It also claims earlier encounters for Jesus with
Judas Iscariot Judas Iscariot (; grc-x-biblical, Ἰούδας Ἰσκαριώτης; syc, ܝܗܘܕܐ ܣܟܪܝܘܛܐ; died AD) was a disciple and one of the original Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. According to all four canonical gospels, Judas betraye ...
, and with the thieves with whom he is later crucified, as well as being one of the earliest documents.


Dating

Although this Gospel is thought to have originated from
Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages ...
sources dating back to the fifth or sixth century, it has become known to European readers by way of an Arabic version published by Henry Sike in 1697 together with a Latin translation. The preface to the William Hone translation states, "It was received by the Gnostics, a sect of Christians in the second century..." The earliest known mention of the Gospel was by Isho'dad of Merv, a ninth-century Syrian
church father The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical pe ...
, in his biblical commentary concerning the
Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew), or simply Matthew. It is most commonly abbreviated as "Matt." is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people and for ...
. The narrative of the Arabic Infancy Gospel, particularly the second part concerning the miracles in Egypt, can also be found in the
Quran The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...
. Some critical scholarship claim its presence in the Qu'ran may be due to the influence the Gospel had among the Arabs. It is not known for certain that the Gospel was present in the
Hejaz The Hejaz (, also ; ar, ٱلْحِجَاز, al-Ḥijāz, lit=the Barrier, ) is a region in the west of Saudi Arabia. It includes the cities of Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, Tabuk, Yanbu, Taif, and Baljurashi. It is also known as the "Western Provin ...
, but it can be seen as likely. However, according to Islamic scholars the Gospel was translated into Arabic in the post-Islamic period due to the difficulty that 16th century Europeans would have in translating early Arabic's
defective script A defective script is a writing system that does not represent all the phonemic distinctions of a language. This means that the concept is always relative to a given language. Taking the Latin alphabet used in Italian orthography as an example, the ...
into Latin as well as the extreme rarity of written texts in
Pre-Islamic Arabia Pre-Islamic Arabia ( ar, شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام) refers to the Arabian Peninsula before the emergence of Islam in 610 CE. Some of the settled communities developed into distinctive civilizations. Information ...
. Most recent research in the field of
Islamic studies Islamic studies refers to the academic study of Islam, and generally to academic multidisciplinary "studies" programs—programs similar to others that focus on the history, texts and theologies of other religious traditions, such as Easter ...
by Sydney Griffith et al. (2013), David D. Grafton (2014), Clair Wilde (2014) & ML Hjälm et al. (2016 & 2017) assert that "all one can say about the possibility of a pre-Islamic, Christian version of the Gospel in Arabic is that no sure sign of its actual existence has yet emerged." Additionally ML Hjälm in her most recent research (2017) inserts that "manuscripts containing translations of the gospels are encountered no earlier than the year 873".


Quranic parallels

One parallel story between an Infancy Gospel and the Quran is found in the Arabic Gospel of The Infancy of the Savior and Surah 19:29–34, where the story of Jesus speaking as a baby in the cradle is narrated. The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Savior: v2 "He has said that Jesus spoke, and, indeed, when He was lying in His cradle said to Mary His mother: I am Jesus, the Son of God, the Logos, whom thou hast brought forth, as the Angel Gabriel announced to thee; and my Father has sent me for the salvation of the world."
Abdullah Yusuf Ali Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE, Master of Arts#Oxford.2C Cambridge.2C Dublin .28conferred.29, MA, Master of Laws, LL.M, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, FRSA, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, F ...
The Quran Surah 19:29–34 "But she pointed to the babe. They said: "How can we talk to one who is a child in the cradle?" He said: "I am indeed a servant of Allah: He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet; And He hath made me blessed wheresoever I be, and hath enjoined on me Prayer and Charity as long as I live; (He) hath made me kind to my mother, and not overbearing or miserable; So peace is on me the day I was born, the day that I die, and the day that I shall be raised up to life (again)"! Such (was) Jesus the son of Mary: (it is) a statement of truth, about which they (vainly) dispute.


Zoroastrian connection

The third chapter of this Gospel covers the story of the wise men of the East, which, in some respects, closely follows the version of the story from Matthew. Unlike Matthew, however, this account cites Zoradascht (
Zoroaster Zoroaster,; fa, زرتشت, Zartosht, label=Modern Persian; ku, زەردەشت, Zerdeşt also known as Zarathustra,, . Also known as Zarathushtra Spitama, or Ashu Zarathushtra is regarded as the spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism. He is s ...
) as the source of the prophecy that motivated the wise men to seek the infant Jesus.


See also

*
Acts of the Apostles (genre) __NOTOC__ The Acts of the Apostles is a genre of Early Christian literature, recounting the lives and works of the apostles of Jesus. The ''Acts'' (Latin: ''Acta'', Greek: Πράξεις ''Práxeis'') are important for many reasons, one of them b ...
*
Agrapha Agrapha (; Greek for "non written"; singular ) are sayings of Jesus that are not found in the canonical Gospels. The term was used for the first time by J.G. Körner, a German Bible scholar, in 1776. Definition of agrapha The definition of agra ...
*
List of Gospels A gospel (a contraction of Old English , meaning "good news/glad tidings", comparable to Greek , ) is a written account of the career and teachings of Jesus. The term originally meant the Christian message itself, but came to be used for the bo ...
*
New Testament apocrypha The New Testament apocrypha (singular apocryphon) are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings were cite ...
*
Pseudepigraphy Pseudepigrapha (also anglicized as "pseudepigraph" or "pseudepigraphs") are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past.Bauckham, Richard; "Pseu ...
*
Textual criticism Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...


References


Further reading

*
New Testament Apocrypha The New Testament apocrypha (singular apocryphon) are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings were cite ...
, vol. 1, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963 *Elliott, James K. The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation. Oxford:
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1993.


External links


Catholic Encyclopedia – The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour
* ttp://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Sources/BBbible.html Is The Bible Really The Source Of The Qur'ân?br> The Apocryphal New Testament "The Arabic Infancy Gospel"
{{Authority control
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
5th-century Christian texts