Truth and Gospel

Thomas said:
I would have thought 'personal relation' was a fundamental of every denomination?
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I don't know for sure.
I don't recall my grandfather mentioning it, nor was it mentioned necessarily by other religious people I encountered. Mostly that church. I think the minister may have alluded to something around that as a Wesleyan approach. Maybe there was a particular nuance to unique to them.

The forming of a personal relationship with Jesus, singling out Jesus - maybe that was what was different?
 
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muhammad_isa said:
Mmm .. Muslims believe that Jesus performed many miracles (with G-d's permission/decree) as
a young man and also as a child.

45 (And remember) when the angels said: O Mary! Lo! G-d giveth thee glad tidings of a word from him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, illustrious in the world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near (unto G-d).
46 He will speak unto mankind in his cradle and in his manhood, and he is of the righteous.
47 She said: My Lord! How can I have a child when no mortal hath touched me ? He said: So (it will be). G-d createth what He will. If He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! and it is.
48 And He will teach him the Scripture and wisdom, and the Torah and the Gospel,
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49 And will make him a messenger unto the Children of Israel, (saying): Lo! I come unto you with a sign from your Lord. Lo! I fashion for you out of clay the likeness of a bird, and I breathe into it and it is a bird, by G-d's leave. I heal him who was born blind, and the leper, and I raise the dead, by G-d's leave. And I announce unto you what ye eat and what ye store up in your houses. Lo! herein verily is a portent for you, if ye are to be believers.
50 And (I come) confirming that which was before me of the Torah, and to make lawful some of that which was forbidden unto you. I come unto you with a sign from your Lord, so keep your duty to G-d and obey me.
51 Lo! G-d is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him. That is a straight path.
52 But when Jesus became conscious of their disbelief, he cried: Who will be my helpers in the cause of G-d ? The disciples said: We will be G-d's helpers. We believe in G-d, and bear thou witness that we have surrendered (unto Him).
-Qur'an Al-Imran: The Family Of Imran-
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Random thoughts:

Adam was created from dust. This looks like the same metaphor to me, God raising up life from the earth, breathing life into forms created from it.

Jesus said that the only sign would be three days in the earth and rising again. Then he breathed the Holy Spirit into the apostles, sons of Adam formed from the dust of the earth, turning them into real birds, singing his song, and flying away to take it to all nations.
 
Scholars generally think the infancy materials found their way into the Quran via oral tradition.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas portrays the child Jesus as a capricious and murderous child, so it seems unlikely a Jewish community would have tolerated such a child in their midst, especially one who works by 'magic' and therefore would not be tolerated.
 
Thomas said:
Scholars generally think the infancy materials found their way into the Quran via oral tradition.
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Understandable in general..

Thomas said:
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas portrays the child Jesus as a capricious and murderous child, so it seems unlikely a Jewish community would have tolerated such a child in their midst, especially one who works by 'magic' and therefore would not be tolerated.
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Walking on water or the feeding of the 5000, or even the virgin birth could be seen as 'magic',
but we don't think so, do we.

It is quite plausible that the infancy Gospel is not accurate, yet contains truths.
Do you not believe that Jesus spoke in his cradle, either?

Miracles are miracles .. I personally have no difficulty in believing in them.
 
muhammad_isa said:
Walking on water or the feeding of the 5000, or even the virgin birth could be seen as 'magic',
but we don't think so, do we.
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No, we don't, but then nor did they – people in his place and time – so I don't see your point? They were regarded as wonders/miracles.

Elsewhere they did accuse Jesus of being possessed of a devil (John 7, 8 & 10), and they did try and stone him for blasphemy.

But the character and teachings of the adult Jesus are clearly a different order of thing to the short-tempered and vindictive Jesus of the Infancy Gospel. He 'dries up' or 'withers' (and possibly kills) a boy who spoils his game (IG 2); he kills another for simply bumping into him – although that bump might have been intended – (IG 4), and then blinds those who come to complain ...

Jesus 'withering'/'drying up' the son of Annas (para 2) bears a resemblance to Jesus's cursing the fig tree in Mark 11:14/Matthew 21:19 – but in both cases, Jesus immediately explains with the parable of the fig tree. Luke does away with the actual event, and just has the parable (13:16-17). There's no explanation offered in the IG.

The case of the boy raised from the dead after falling from the roof of a house bears remarkable resemblance to Acts:
"And a certain young man by the name of Eutychus, sitting on the window ledge and being carried down into deep sleep as Paul’s disquisition went on and on, was upended in his sleep and fell from the third floor, and was lifted up a corpse. But Paul went down and fell upon him and, holding him close, said, “Do not be horrified; for his soul is in him.” And, going back up and breaking bread and talking at great length until it was light, he thus departed. And they led the boy away alive, and were comforted in no small measure." (20:9-12)

Throughout the IG, there are references to the Synoptics, which shows the versions we have were clearly influenced either by the same sources as the synoptics, or the synoptics themselves. As the IG is later than the synoptics, it's most likely the latter.

muhammad_isa said:
It is quite plausible that the infancy Gospel is not accurate, yet contains truths.
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Quite possibly. Distilling those truths is, to say the least, problematic.

What's of greater value to scholars, is that the Infancy Gospel tells us much about the place and times, both immediately after the life of Cjrist and the centuries that followed, because these texts were popular, and the Infancy Gospel is only a brief hint.

muhammad_isa said:
Do you not believe that Jesus spoke in his cradle, either?
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No, I see no sufficient reason to do so. I understand that you see it otherwise.

muhammad_isa said:
Miracles are miracles .. I personally have no difficulty in believing in them.
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I have no difficulty with miracles, but as the text clearly states, these are not miracles, or 'blessings' but curses, and would have been seen as such in a religious and cultural context.
 
Thomas said:
I have no difficulty with miracles, but as the text clearly states, these are not miracles, or 'blessings' but curses..
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Come off it! The whole narrative of the crucifixion can be seen as "a curse" by those hypocrites
who orchestrated it.

All the miracles that Jesus performed were a sign to the Israelites .. some acknowledged Jesus,
and some did not.
..and many Gentiles also acknowledged Jesus as "son of God" .. the Jewish Messiah.

..and G-d is the Best of Planners.
 
muhammad_isa said:
Come off it! The whole narrative of the crucifixion can be seen as "a curse" by those hypocrites
who orchestrated it.
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Not really. You have to understand curse in terms of Judaism in 1st century Judea. In the Ancient world to curse was an invocation of evil, or at least ill-effect, upon the object of the curse. The crucifixion narrative is no such thing, it's clearly a legal process for both parties.

We could say 'curse', using the term in a broader, modern idiom, but that's a long way removed from what was meant by the term in the Ancient world.
 
I've been researching the Infancy Gospel.

Below is an edited conclusion of a long commentary:
Cursing in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Daniel Eastman, Vigiliae Christianae[/I, Vol. 69, No. 2 (2015), pp. 186-208 (23 pages).

"Conclusions
The foregoing investigation has had two goals: first, to establish some common features for the curses in IGT, and second, to identify ancient miracle-working paradigms which might prefigure the presence, form, and function of IGT’s curses. With regard to the former, we find that the curses of the child Jesus are all invoked as responses to personal slights, all achieved instantaneously, and all reversed at a later point.

Moreover, while the curses initially appear purely punitive in function, their later reversal in response to Jesus’ recognition as a teacher of teachers reveals their ultimate function in the text as didactic tools. Applying these criteria to other ancient instances of cursing, we find that the IGT Jesus can be viably compared to several other miracle-working figures in antiquity, namely the prophets of the Hebrew Bible (especially Elijah and Eli’sha), the figures of Jesus and his apostles in the New Testament and its apocrypha, and certain Jewish and Christian holy men active in Asia Minor during the first four centuries CE. Narrowing the search still further, we find that among these latter holy men, the ascetics of northern Syria described in Theodoret’s Religious History bear the closest resemblance to the IGT Jesus in terms of their punitive miracles.

This in turn leads to additional conclusions. First, although some of the stories in IGT doubtless existed in oral (and perhaps even written) form from as early as the second or even first century, it is likely that the cursing stories (and perhaps some of the other miracles as well) did not become incorporated into IGT until the fourth century, and moreover that this occurred in the Syrian ascetic milieu. Thus, while the literary figures of the prophets, the NT Jesus, and the apostles were no doubt influential with regard to the formation of IGT’s miracle cycle, the equal influence of contemporary stories about Syrian holy men should not be discounted.

Finally, we may remark that the above comparison of these curses has yielded substantial evidence for two theories regarding the composition of IGT, namely the text’s lengthy initial period of oral transmission and its Syrian origin."

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Happy to discuss further if interested ...
 
The Syriac Tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
Tony Burke, pub: Gorgias Press, NJ, USA, 2017.

"It is clear from the number of manuscripts that IGT was a very popular text in the Syriac churches. Though it is found as a separate text in only a few manuscripts, it had a much richer life as part of collections of apocryphal texts featuring episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary. One branch of this tradition, the West Syriac Life of Mary, is examined here from 19 Syriac manuscripts and another 13 in Garšūnī.

"Another effort to collect Mary-related apocrypha is found in the East Syriac History of the Virgin, known in 21 manuscripts, though only four of them incorporate IGT. Many of the manuscripts ... seem to have been created specifically for use in Marian piety, as they often contain additional Mary-related texts, including hymns and miracle stories. And these books of Mary were copied well into the nineteenth century. For many Syriac Christians then, these texts contained acceptable depictions of Jesus’ childhood years; they were neither frivolous nor blasphemous."
(from the Foreword to the above, pps vii-viii)

The 'Life of Mary' apocrypha include the Protoevangelium of James, Six-Books Dormition of the Virgin, and the Visions of Theophilus. There was also the Assumption of the Virgin (Syriac); Dormition of the Virgin by the Apostle John; Homily on the Dormition of the Virgin by Pseudo-Cyril of Alexandria; Life of the Virgin, by Maximus the Confessor; History of the Virgin (East Syriac); Life of Mary (West Syriac) ... a lot of stuff!

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The Quran, in Surah 3:35-3:55, presents the events recorded above in a similar manner to the History of the Virgin: Mary's birth, her childhood, the annunciation of Jesus as the 'Word from God' from Protoevangelium, then Zechariah's prayer from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus' education as a child, and the IGT clay bird miracle.
 
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