Christ Child
Cultural Memories of a Young Jesus
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- $36.99
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- $36.99
Publisher Description
Little is known about the early childhood of Jesus Christ. But in the decades after his death, stories began circulating about his origins. One collection of such tales was the so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas, known in antiquity as the Paidika or “Childhood Deeds” of Jesus. In it, Jesus not only performs miracles while at play (such as turning clay birds into live sparrows) but also gets enmeshed in a series of interpersonal conflicts and curses to death children and teachers who rub him the wrong way. How would early readers have made sense of this young Jesus?
In this highly innovative book, Stephen Davis draws on current theories about how human communities construe the past to answer this question. He explores how ancient readers would have used texts, images, places, and other key reference points from their own social world to understand the Christ child’s curious actions. He then shows how the figure of a young Jesus was later picked up and exploited in the context of medieval Jewish-Christian and Christian-Muslim encounters. Challenging many scholarly assumptions, Davis adds a crucial dimension to the story of how Christian history was created.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scholars have long debated the events of Jesus's childhood. The biblical accounts offer few details of his life before age 30. In this dense but intriguing study by a fine scholar, Davis, professor of religious studies at Yale University offers new light on a very old document, the Paidika, or the Childhood Deeds of Jesus, popularly known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The author argues that writings like the Paidika are best understood within the context of what he terms the "sociology of cultural memory," the construction of myth based not on historical fact, but rather on a writer's engagement with the past through the lenses of current cultural and societal mores. Hence the stories tell more about the writers than about their subject, Jesus of Nazareth. The author also explains how the Paidika was read by Jewish and Muslim audiences. Happily, the text of the Paidika is included, allowing the reader to experience this rich and powerful text, meeting the child Jesus through ancient eyes.
