Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: How Can Such a Small Gospel Be So Much Fun?

Thanks to Mark Goodacre and Tony Chartrand Burke for pointing me in the direction of this hilarious animated short based upon Infancy Gospel of Thomas 9. As I occasionally discuss apocryphal gospels with my students, I'm going to recommend it to them. I hope they (and you, of course) enjoy it as much as I did!

Here is the text, as rendered by Harold Attridge and Ronald F. Hock in The Complete Gospels (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994):

9:1 A few days later Jesus was playing on the roof of a house when one of the children playing with him fell off the roof and died. When the other children saw what had happened, they fled, leaving Jesus standing all by himself. 9:2 The parents of the dead child came and accused Jesus: "You troublemaker you, you're the one who threw him down." 9:3 Jesus responded, "I didn't throw him down - he threw himself down. He just wasn't being careful and leaped down from the roof and died." 9:4 Then Jesus himself leaped down from the roof and stood by the body of the child and shouted in a loud voice: "Zeno!" - that was his name - "Get up and tell me: Did I push you?" 9:5 He got up immediately and said, "No, Lord, you didn't push me, you raised me up." 9:6 Those who saw this were astonished, and the child's parents praised God for the miracle that had happened and worshipped Jesus.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the original text - a bit less sinister than the movie