Syriac Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Edition in Progress (Part 4)
Back in October and November I wrote a series of three posts (1, 2, and 3) detailing my efforts to construct a critical edition of the Syriac manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The project is now about eight years (and counting) in the making but it may soon finally see publication because I’ve been working diligently on it over the past six months, to the neglect, unfortunately, of other tasks, such as Apocryphicity. Right now I’m taking a brief pause in the project, so I thought I’d use some of this time to reacquaint myself with the blog by posting a short update.
As previously mentioned, my critical edition will contain three separate recensions of the text:
Sa: based on five manuscripts, two of them from the 6th century; another three interrelated manuscripts from the 17th-18th centuries; and one more from the 15th/16th century that I recently came across that lies midpoint in development between the early and recent manuscripts.
Sw: based on 15 manuscripts (another seven exist in Garshuni, which I am justifiably ignoring) varying from the 15th to the 20th centuries; incorporates IGT into a West Syrian Life of Mary collection in six books (the Infancy of Mary and the Birth of Jesus, both taken from the Protevangelium of James; the Vision of Theophilus; IGT; and the Death of Mary and Departure of Mary from the Dormition of Mary)
Se: three manuscripts of an East Syrian Life of …