Who says the ancient Gnostics didn't know how to celebrate Pride month???
\sarcasm off
Posted on 06/12/2024 9:41:36 AM PDT by george76
Experts in Germany have uncovered a deciphered manuscript that has been determined to be the oldest record of Jesus Christ’s childhood.
As CBS News reported, the 1,600-year-old document had been stored in a university library in Hamburg, Germany, for decades. It was ignored until Dr. Lajos Berkes, from Germany’s Institute for Christianity and Antiquity at Humboldt University in Berlin, and professor Gabriel Nocchi Macedo from Belgium’s University of Liège looked it over and revealed it as the earliest surviving copy of the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” a document detailing Jesus Christ’s childhood.
The two experts said in a news release the papyrus contains anecdotes not found in the Bible but one that would have been available and shared during the Middle Ages. The words on the document reveal a remarkable miracle Jesus performed as a child, where he brought clay figures of birds to life.
In the Gospel of Thomas story, a five-year-old Jesus is playing in a stream while molding 12 sparrows out of soft clay in the riverbed mud. But when his father, Joseph, sees what he is doing, he scolds Jesus and demands to know why he is molding clay on the Sabbath.
Jesus responds by telling the clay figures to take flight as living birds, and they obey his command.
...
According to Macedo, the papyrus was written in Greek. CBS notes it contains 13 lines in Greek letters and originates from late antique Egypt.
Berkes and Macedo said the papyrus was neglected for so long because past researchers considered it “insignificant.” However, new technology enabled the two men to translate the language on the document and compare it to other early Christian texts.
“It was thought to be part of an everyday document, such as a private letter or a shopping list because the handwriting seems so clumsy,” Berkes explained. “We first noticed the word Jesus in the text. Then, by comparing it with numerous other digitized papyri, we deciphered it letter by letter and quickly realized that it could not be an everyday document.”
The experts speculated that the story of Jesus’s miracle was written as part of a writing exercise in a school or monastery. This is due to the awkward handwriting and inconsistent lines, as the Daily Mail notes.
“Apart from what can be deduced from the general history of the collection, there is no evidence of how or when the papyrus was discovered,” Berkes and Macedo wrote.
Macedo said the date the papyrus was placed in the library is unknown, but it was likely after 2001.
Dr Macedo told the Daily Mail that he and Berkes would produce a critical edition and commentary on the manuscript. They will also re-address the style and language of the Gospel of Thomas text.
The results will be published in the Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy.
The story from the Gospel of Thomas come at a moment when Jesus is still a young boy, so he is not committing sin against sabbath law. Joseph reproves him gently as a way of instructing him in the importance of sabbath. And, as I pointed out, Joseph imposes no punishment.
Blinding people and cursing them as alleged to have happened does not fall into the *spilling milk by accident* category.
From this article......
https://www.gotquestions.org/Infancy-Gospel-of-Thomas.html
• Bringing dried fish to life (in some later versions)
• Bringing life to clay sparrows that Jesus had crafted on the Sabbath
• Cursing a boy who dies
• Cursing a boy who dies and his parents, who are blinded
• Raising a friend who was killed by falling from a roof (knowing the character of the Jesus presented in this “Gospel,” the parents accuse Jesus of throwing him off the roof)
• Healing a man who cut off part of his foot while chopping wood
• Carrying water in a cloak after accidentally breaking the water jar
• Sowing one grain and receiving one hundred measures in harvest
• Stretching a piece of wood to help Joseph, the carpenter, make a bed for a rich client
• Healing James from snake bite
• Resurrecting a child who died of illness
• Resurrecting a man who died in an accident
From the article as well:
“In some places, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas portrays Jesus as a violent, petulant child. In one incident, after Jesus blinds the parents of a boy He struck dead, Joseph reprimands Him: “When Joseph saw that Jesus had done such a thing, he got angry and grabbed his ear and pulled very hard. The boy became infuriated with him and replied, ‘It’s one thing for you to seek and not find; it’s quite another for you to act this unwisely. Don’t you know that I don’t really belong to you? Don’t make me upset.” This is not supposed to be Jesus as a teenager or young adult, but as a child of single-digit age.
The portrait of Jesus painted in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is that of an insolent bully who uses His power frivolously. People are impressed with His sheer power and cleverness, but not with His kindness, as they are afraid of Him. After one display of Jesus’ abilities, “no one dared to anger him for fear of being cursed and maimed for life.” The Infancy Gospel of Thomas does not present Jesus as one who honors His parents or who grows in favor with His neighbors and therefore is at odds with what we know of Jesus the man.”
***************************************************************
So if you want to believe it and excuse or rationalize it way, that’s your business, but it’s so inconsistent with the character of Jesus, that it takes some real mental gymnastics. And some of those incidents do NOT fall at all within the childishness and immaturity category. Spiteful and vindictive, yes. But to try to justify them as something Jesus did as a boy is absurd, even considering the age of accountability.
—> The story from the Gospel of Thomas come at a moment when Jesus is still a young boy,
Came in the second century and is not scripture.
explain to me the blasphemy you are inferring. I believe Jesus would of laughed at that...a sense of humor about life is important.
People believe what they want. I just stated a fact. We will all be required to account for everything we say and do. So what if I say:
What did God say about Jesus being Crucified?
He nailed it.
Somehow I don’t believe God would pat me on the back and say: “Good joke”.
the book of thomas has always been around
Agree as to when the Gospel was written, but not as to when the story was set.
Totally bogus.
I do not endorse the Gospel of Thomas/ I hold that the story of Jesus bringing clay birds to life is essentially harmless by itself if taken with the caution that it is almost certainly fiction and should not be considered Biblical.
In modern terms, the Gospel of Thomas is at best unauthorized fan fiction, or, more likely, it was composed as lurid, Roman era fiction that exploited the popularity of Jesus to sell scrolls. In a roundabout way though, the Gospel of Thomas also helped to smuggle Jesus into Roman households.
I can imagine there were sometimes angry conversations when a Roman father saw a son or daughter reading a Gospel of Thomas scroll. The father may have been placated to a degree though by being told that it was fiction and not really a Christian scroll.
There remains a possibility that the story of Jesus bringing clay birds to life had an earlier and less dodgy origin. We may learn more as new manuscripts come to light or new methods of analysis make formerly illegible material readable.
You make Joseph Smith cry.
It was a request for help, and if "this beginning of miracles" also excludes any private miracle and not as a public ministry of them, then it is unlikely Mary was expecting a miracle, though her Lord knew this is what it would mean. In any case, her recourse to Him was indicative of Mary being in awe of her son according to the flesh, but Divine by nature.
Who says the ancient Gnostics didn't know how to celebrate Pride month???
\sarcasm off
I saw that.
Unreal and more unreal is that there are people who still take that alleged “gospel” as something to seriously consider in spite of nonsense like that.
Satan is behind sexual perversion. It’s no wonder his minions would push it as well.
Jonathan Cahn has some very interesting things to say about the sexual perversions we are seeing manifesting in our culture in his book “ Return of the Gods.”
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