# The Apocryphal New Testament (1924)/Infancy Gospels/The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy

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Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 80–82
THE ARABIC GOSPEL OF THE INFANCY
Our present text of this book depends in the main upon a single Arabic manuscript, now lost, which was used by Sike, the first editor, in 1697. There are now known to be other manuscripts at Rome and Florence, but they have not been fully collated. The greater part of the book, however, is also embodied in a Syriac History of the Virgin which was edited and translated by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge in 1899.
The Arabic Gospel is a late compilation, as has been shown most clearly by Father P. Peeters in his recent French edition (1914, Evangiles apocryphes, ii).
The book falls into several divisions:
I is a late note prefixed.
II-IX. The Nativity to the Flight into Egypt. The Protevangelium is the ultimate source of some parts of this.
X-XXV. Miracles in Egypt, some of which show influence of late local traditions.
XXVI-XXXV. Return to Nazareth. Miracles done there, which do not occur in other texts.
XXXVI-LIW. Further miracles, mostly derived from Thomas: ending with Jesus in the Temple.
LIV. Baptism of Jesus.
LV. Doxology.
A briefer analysis of this book will suffice than in the case of Pseudo-Matthew.
I. States that it is found in the book of Joseph the high-priest in the time of Christ, who some say is Caiaphas, that Jesus in the cradle proclaimed his Godhead.
Il. The decree of Augustus in the year 300 (or 304) of the era of Alexander. The Birth in a cave. An old Hebrew woman comes as midwife. IIT. Her hands are withered (?) because of her unbelief, and she is healed. (There is a gap in the text.) IV. The Shepherds. The midwife praises God. V. The Circumcision. V, VI. The Presentation.
VII. The Magi. VIII. They bring back one of Jesus' swaddling cloths which is proof against fire, and is preserved with veneration. IX. The Flight.
X, XI. Arrival in Egypt. An idol announces the presence of a God, and falls. The demoniac son of a priest is healed. XII. Alarm of Joseph and Mary.
XIII. Robbers hear a noise of an approaching host and flee, leaving their captives. Joseph and Mary arrive, and the captives ask who is the king who is coming. Answer: 'He is coming on after us.'
​XIV. A demoniac woman healed. XV. A dumb bride healed.
XVI. A woman oppressed by a demon-serpent relieved.
XVII. A leprous girl healed by water in which Jesus was washed.
XVIII. A leprous child healed in like manner. XIX. A husband and wife released from a spell. XX, XXI. The brother of two women, who had been changed into a mule, restored by having Jesus placed on his back (Peeters points out the identity of this miracle with one told of St. Macarius in the Historia Lausiaca of Palladius). XXII. The leprous girl of XVII married to the brother.
XXIII. The robbers Titus and Dumachus (the good and bad thieves of the Crucifixion) capture them. Titus redeems them: Jesus prophesies his end.
XXIV. At Matarieh in Egypt a spring bursts forth and balm originates from the sweat of Jesus. XXV. They lived three years at Misr (Cairo) and saw Pharaoh. Many miracles were done which are not written in the Gospel of the Infancy or in the complete Gospel (probably the Canonical Gospels are meant). These chapters are an Egyptian interpolation not earlier than the twelfth century.
XXVI. Return to Nazareth. XXVII. At Bethlehem a sick child healed. XXVIII. A child diseased in the eyes healed. XXIX. Two women, mothers of children. One child dies, the other, Cleopas, is healed. The mother of the dead throws Cleopas, first into an oven, then into a well: he is uninjured: she herself falls into the well and is killed. XXX. One of two twin boys healed—the Bartholomew of the Gospels. XXXI. A leprous ​woman healed. XXXII. A leprous bride healed. XXXIII, XXXIV. A woman haunted by a dragon freed by one of Christ's swaddling cloths. XXXV. Judas, a child possessed by the devil, smites Jesus, and the devil leaves him in the form of a dog.
XXXVI. Jesus (seven years old) makes figures of all sorts of animals of clay, and makes them walk, fly, and feed. XXXVII. The story of the Dyer Salem (see above). XXXVIII. Jesus lengthens or shortens beams which Joseph had cut wrongly: for he was not clever at his trade. XXXIX. A bed made for the king of Jerusalem pulled out to the right size. XL. The children in the oven (see above). XLI. In the month of Adar the boys make Jesus their king, and passers by have to stop and salute him. XLII. The parents of a child bitten by a snake come, and are stopped: Jesus goes with them to the snake's nest and makes it suck out the poison: it bursts: the child is healed: he was Simon Zelotes. XLIII. James bitten by the viper and healed. XLIV. Zeno falls from the house and is raised. XLV. Jesus brings water in his cloak.
XLVI. The pools and sparrows of clay. The son of Hanan spoils the pools and is palsied. XLVII. The child who ran against Jesus falls dead. XLVIII. Taught by Zacheus, who is confounded by his wisdom. XLIX. Taught by another master, who smites him and dies.
L. With the doctors at Jerusalem: questioned about the Law. LI. Questioned about astronomy. LII. And by a philosopher about philosophy: he answers all perfectly. LIII. Is found by Mary and Joseph. Returns with them. LIV. He lived in obscurity until his baptism. LV. Doxology.
The stories which this book has in common with Thomas are rather shortly told and do not help to solve difficulties in the older text. The long series of healings in Egypt and at Bethlehem is monotonous: for the most part the Virgin is the prominent figure in them. It is to her that the sufferers apply, and she gives them the water in which the child has been washed, or some of his linen, or allows them to touch him.
There is an echo of the story in ch. xli in a Western book, the Vita Rhythmica of the Virgin and Christ, a long Latin rhyming composition of the thirteenth century, edited by Végtlin (Bibl. d. Litterar. Vereins in Stuttgart, no. 180, 1888). In ll. 2,564 sqq. it is said that the Egyptian boys crowned Jesus as king and again in 2,612, after the return from Egypt, the boys made him their king and called him domicellus, 'young Lord'. The sources of this Vita are enumerated by the compiler, and are ostensibly Greek to a large extent—Germanus, Theophilus, Epiphanius, Ignatius are named, as well as the Infantia Salvatoris. With it should be read the Latin stories printed from a Giessen manuscript by O. Schade, Kénigsberg, 1876, Narrationes de vita et conversatione B.V.M. &c. They follow the text of the Vita Rhythmica closely.
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