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A manuscript dating back more than 1,600 years has been deciphered in Germany and contains one of the earliest known accounts of Jesus Christ’s childhood.

The papyrus manuscript, which dates to the fourth or fifth century, was thought to be an insignificant piece of writing that had been kept for many years at a Hamburg, Germany, library.

Two experts have now decoded the text and claim it is the earliest surviving copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT), which describes Christ’s childhood and is widespread in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The text was not officially included in the Bible as some early Christian writers doubted its accuracy.

The IGT is believed to have been first written down during the 2nd century; however, until now, a codex from the 11th century was the oldest known Greek version of the text.

“The papyrus fragment is of extraordinary interest for research,” Lajos Berkes, a theology lecturer and one of the two men who deciphered the document, said in a press release.

[image:humboldtuniversity]

“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,” the expert 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 papyrus comes from late antique Egypt, which was a Christian society at the time, and has a total of 13 lines written in Greek letters.

The beginning of the “vivification of the sparrows” is described in the book. This is a story from Jesus’ early years in which he turns twelve clay sparrows into living birds. The narrative has Jesus creating the sparrows out of soft clay when he was playing next to a gushing stream. The five-year-old Jesus clapped his hands and animated the clay figures in response to his father Joseph’s reprimand.

The story, described as Jesus’ second miracle, is a well-known part of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

“Our findings on this late antique Greek copy of the work confirm the current assessment that the Infancy Gospel according to Thomas was originally written in Greek.”

“From the comparison with already known manuscripts of this Gospel, we know that our text is the earliest. It follows the original text, which according to current state of research was written in the 2nd century AD.”

The experts believe the manuscript was written onto the papyrus fragment as a writing exercise at either a school or a monastery.

[source:humboldtuniversityberlin]