Was the Author of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas a Child?
I was recently e-mailed a link to an article (though it is only on-line and apparently unpublished) on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that suggests the author of the text was a child. Here is the LINK and the abstract (make of it what you will):
Apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Thomas is very controversial apocryphal text of uncertain origin. More authentic recent Czech translation by Petr Pe?áz (Dus, Pokorný 2001) tries to preserve original colloquial style and suggests an idea that the author of this text was not an adult person, but a child – boy at prepubescent age (10 – 12 years) with hyperactive tendencies. All the text represents childish megalomaniac imagination, which helps the child to cope with everyday conflicts with teachers, the father and friends by means of identification with young Jesus. The text had been probably forgotten in child’s lair and revealed a few decades afterwards without recognizing the real childish author. This article illustrates this hypothesis by comparing the gospel’s style with other literal works of similar age children and the Gospel of Mark and tries to depict a plausible psychological profile of the childish author by deliberate classification of his cognitive, emotional, moral, psychosexual stage of development.
From the article:
This courageous translation of Petr Pe?áz exploits colloquial Czech.
Makes me want to check it out, see what’s so colloquial, let alone courageous, about it.
It impresses on our feelings much more than original Greek version.
No chiz. Dr. Klimeš’s bio suggests he has no knowledge of Greek.
The paper is fairly difficult to understand, with its awkward english. The author just seems to look for things in the text that remind him of concepts and generalizations he read about in his psychology books. A very naive thing to do. I took a glance at Klimeš’ site, and he seems to fancy himself a rogue thinker.
I’m all for new ideas, but every now and then a scholar (or amateur) will propose something so rediculous that I’m left to believe that they’re simply trying to make a name for themselves. At the very least they hope to become a footnote in somebody else’s work. And so they’ll probably never be called “right,” but perhaps they might be “intriguing,” or “thought-provoking.”
A word of warning: The “pseudo” in the “Gospel of PSEUDO-Thomas” is all important.
“This gospel of Jesus’ childhood is utterly different text from Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, which does not describe childhood of Jesus at all.”
http://jeronymklimes.webpark.cz/mojeprace/pseudothomas.pdf