About This Edition

Gnosis edition note. This early Christian collection tells stories of Jesus as a child, from making clay sparrows come alive to speaking with teachers in the Jerusalem temple. Its author is unknown; the prologue speaks in the name of Thomas the Israelite. It is a different work from the Gospel of Thomas that collects Jesus’ sayings.

Mark M. Mattison translated this edition and dedicated the translation to the public domain. The principal manuscript is Hagios Saba 259. The translator presents nineteen numbered chapters: the woodcutter story, Chapter 10, follows Chapter 16 in that manuscript, and Chapters 17–18 are supplied from later Greek manuscripts. These distinctions are retained in the reading text. Chapter titles and verse numbering follow the translation.

Parentheses mark editorial insertions; a forward slash and a backslash mark editorial revision; angle brackets mark an unintelligible word; square brackets mark a gap in the text. Here the angle brackets are printed as ⟨ and ⟩ so the reader can preserve them. Missing or uncertain words have not been filled in. The translator’s notes are placed after the chapters they discuss; a note covering two chapters appears with the first of them.

The stories include curses, deaths, healings and reversals of harm. They preserve an early Christian literary portrayal of Jesus’ power and wisdom, rather than a modern historical reconstruction of his childhood. This opening note is Gnosis editorial material; the following chapters and their translator’s notes are Mattison’s work.