Newly deciphered manuscript is oldest written record of Jesus Christ's childhood, experts say

By Kerry Breen
Updated on: June 13, 2024 / 11:23 AM EDT / CBS News

A newly deciphered manuscript dating back 1,600 years has been determined to be the oldest record of Jesus Christ's childhood, experts said in a news release.

The piece of papyrus has been stored in a university library in Hamburg, Germany, for decades, historians at Humboldt University announced. The document "remained unnoticed" 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, studied it and identified it as the earliest surviving copy of the "Infancy Gospel of Thomas," a document detailing Jesus Christ's childhood.

The translation marks a "significant discovery for the research field," Humboldt University said. Until now, it was believed that the earliest version of this gospel was a codex from the 11th century.



The papyrus fragment.
STAATS- UND UNIVERSITÄTSBIBLIOTHEK HAMBURG/PUBLIC DOMAIN MARK 1.0

The document translated by Berkes and Macedo was dated between the 4th and 5th century. The stories in the document are not in the Bible, the news release said, but the papyrus contains anecdotes that would have been widely shared in the Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The few words on the fragment describe a "miracle" that Jesus performed as a child, according to the Gospel of Thomas, which says he brought clay figures of birds to life.

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