When It Comes to the Bible, We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know

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Researchers have proclaimed that a 1600-year-old document in their library collection “is the oldest-ever manuscript detailing Jesus Christ’s life as a child.”

The papyrus document, held by a library in Hamburg, Germany, is believed to be from the 4th or 5th century C.E. Scholars say it had not been studied previously because the handwriting on it appeared so “clumsy,” that it wasthought to be part of a private letter or other mundane list.

But after researchers decoded it further andfound the name “Jesus” in the text, they declared the document the oldest surviving example ever found of the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas.”

The story of the Bible is also a story of what’s not in it

The Bible, also known as the “holy scripture of the Christian religion,” is not just one book. It’s many books combined together that purport to tell a history of Earth from its creation through the ministry and death of Jesus Christ, as well as the formation of the Christian church, in the first century C.E.

(Religion and literary criticism are both taken extremely seriously by their practitioners,so be advised that what follows is an extremely simplified version of how the Bible came to be.)

The first part of the Bible, the Old Testament, is very similar to the scripture of Judaism, and was written in Hebrew and developed starting in the 8th century B.C.E. The New Testament contains the Gospels (which tell the story of Jesus’s life)and other letters written by Saint Paul the apostle. These were all originally written in Greek, and originated around the year 40 C.E. and afterwards, with the Gospels actually being written after Paul’s letters, in 70 C.E.

From the start, the church has had to decide which writings would be part of the Christian canon, or collection of sacred books. Many councils were held to decide what books and writings would constitute“the Bible,” and by the fifth century, most Christian churches were in agreement about what the Bible included. Even that definition would change, however, during the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. At that time, Old Testament booksoriginally written in Greek rather than in Hebrew (like the book titled Maccabees) were taken out of the Protestant Bible.

Even more fascinating,there have been many discoveries of “gospels” and other historical documents that have not, for various reasons, beenconsidered part of the officially recognized Bible. These include the Gnostic Gospels. These texts that are considered from the biblical period but which aren’t recognized as part of the Bible are often known as apocryphal texts.

A record of Jesus Christ’s childhood?

The document recently studied in Germany is now thought to be part of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is not officially a part of the Hebrew or Christian scripture. It’s been suggested that it was written in the mid-2nd century C.E.It’s called the “Infancy” gospel because it purports to collect stories of Jesus as a child,from the age of 5 to around 12.It ends with the story (also included in Luke’s accepted gospel) of a 12-year-old Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem, discussing Jewish law with other scholars and teachers.

It also includes stories of Jesus working early miracles, including an episode in which he models birds out of mud while playing at the river bank, and brings them to life, after which they fly away (called the “vivification of the sparrows”).

It’s speculated that this book did not become part of the Bible because early Christian scholars were “doubtful of its accuracy.” However, it’s also known that the stories collected within the Infancy Gospel were popular ones throughout antiquity and the early Christian era. People were eager for more stories about Jesus Christ and were particularly taken, it seems, with these stories about his childhood.

What other documents are hidden that may someday change our understanding of the Bible?

This recent discovery doesn’t seem like an Indiana Jones movie or archaeology adventure tale.It was made after researchers simply looked more closely at a document long held (and forgotten about) in a library.

This doesn’t make the discovery any less thrilling. Previously, the oldest example of this Infancy Gospel that was known about by scholars dated from the 11th century. This new papyrus is more than 600 years older than thatdocument.Produced in the 4th century, this text is closer to the gospel’s date of origin (2nd century) and provides more proof of its popularity among ancient Christians.

Imagine how many other documents and fragments of documents mightcurrently be stored, as yet undiscovered (or misunderstood), in libraries and other storage facilities worldwide. We truly don’t know what we still don’tknow about even the Bible, arguably one of the most-studied documents in the history of history itself.