Miracle

It is no secret that throughout Christian history many different records have been created describing the life of Jesus Christ. Four of them are considered canonical and sacred – the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. However, besides these, there are Apocryphas that were written after the beginning of our era and therefore raise suspicion even in the Church.

Many of these texts were simply thrown aside at a certain moment when representatives of Christianity came together and began to form its final unified image from the then disparate ideas. At some so-called Councils the leaders of the churches decided that some records did not agree with their views of religion and therefore could not be included in the final version of the Bible.

Therefore, today science is aware of various archaeological apocryphal Biblical findings that may contradict or complement the canonical texts of the Bible. One of these is the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas”. The fragment of papyrus, written in Greek, dates back to the fourth or fifth century. This is the oldest known copy of the Biblescientists write in an article recently published in a scientific journal. There are other copies of the Bible, but they belong to later times. The churches did not include this Gospel in the Bible.

Lajos Berkes, a lecturer at the Institute of Christianity and Antiquity at the University of Berlin, writes in his research that this is “the oldest surviving manuscript of the text in any language.” Humboldt and professor Gabriel Nocchi Macedo of the University of Liège in Belgium. Scholars generally believe that the original Gospel of Thomas was written in the second century. This is partly because some of the stories told in the Gospels are similar to stories written by second-century Christian writers.

Miracle

A fragment of the papyrus describes a miracle performed by Jesus in his childhood. In the story told in the trailer, “Jesus was playing in the gorge of a raging stream and shaping twelve sparrows from the soft clay he found in the mud. When his father Joseph scolded him and asked why he was doing this in the holy place, the statement from the Humboldt University of Berlin said that five-year-old Jesus clapped his hands on the Sabbath.” It was stated that he brought clay figurines to life. Scholars already know this story from later copies of the Bible.

Although this passage mentions only this particular miracle, later copies of the Gospels describe many other miraculous acts performed by Jesus in his childhood. These include the return to life of a boy named Zeno and the instant recovery of his father Joseph after being bitten by a poisonous snake.

Where did this papyrus come from?

The origin of the piece is unclear.

[Ми] We know almost nothing about the origin, history and owner of the papyrus. The only thing we know for sure is that it came from Egypt. It may have arrived in Hamburg either during the acquisition of the main papyrus collection – between 1906 and 1939 – or in 1990, when a box of unpreserved papyri was transferred. [до Гамбурга] from Berlin”
– scientists comment.

In the research, scientists said they were sure that the piece was in Germany before World War II.

One reason the papyrus has not been studied before is that the handwriting is sloppy and resembles a private letter or shopping list rather than a Bible, the researchers said. Scholars believe this may have been a writing exercise by someone in a school or monastery.

Most scholars agree that the fragment is an ancient manuscript and not a modern forgery.