Christ Child: Cultural memories of a young
Jesus
Stephen J. Davis
Yale £30
(978-0-300-14945-6)
Church Times Bookshop £27 (Use code CT968
)
IT IS an oft told tale. The child Jesus, playing by a river, makes
clay birds from mud. When rebuked for performing this action on the
sabbath, he claps his hands, and the birds come to life and fly
away. This is the best-known of a collection of stories about the
childhood of Jesus, in circulation from Christian antiquity, most
commonly referred to today as the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. (This compilation is not to be confused with the
Gospel of Thomas - a different kettle of fish.)
Among other stories, we have Jesus cursing - to death - a boy
who bumps into him on the street; we have him bringing home water
in his cloak after it had spilt to the ground from a broken
pitcher; we have one of his teachers dropping dead - again by the
power of the boy's curse. Your reviewer's favourite of these tales
tells how Joseph was commissioned by the king - presumably Herod -
to make him a throne. This Joseph did. But, when Herod tries to sit
in it, he finds that he cannot squeeze his regal posterior between
the arm-rests. There was, one infers, a lot of him. The boy Jesus
tells Joseph to take one side of the throne while he takes the
other. Both pull and - miraculously - the seat of the throne widens
to allow Herod to lower the royal behind comfortably.
In earlier times the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was
simply known as the Paidika, the "Childhood Deeds" of
Jesus, and that is the term Stephen Davis uses throughout his study
of these strange tales. "Strange" they certainly are, to us. But
that is our problem. We are not where those stories were first
told, nor where they have been remembered and retold across the
centuries. Davis's purpose is to examine how these stories have
been read and reshaped in the many ancient and medieval lieux
de mémoire, as he calls them, where they have been
recalled.
This work - this great work - falls into three parts. In Part
One, Davis delineates his "Methods and Approaches". There is no
question of ransacking these texts for the edifying. But Davis's
approach, grounded in "the sociology of cultural memory", yields
much that is illuminating. Little may be learned from our texts
about the life of faith. Much, however, may be gathered about the
locations where these texts were read.
In Part Two, Davis discusses how the different types of
narratives that make up the Paidika were received and
understood in the Graeco-Roman world - stories of clay birds'
taking flight, of fatal curses' falling from the lips of a fearful
child, of the encounters of a precocious Jesus with his
teachers.
Part Three is, first, an exploration of how the Paidika
material was interpreted in the contested locations where Jewish
and Christian communities were not yet altogether apart, but in a
continuing, albeit uneasy, relationship. Second, it is a study of
the reception of the Paidika by Muslims. We are reminded
that Jesus's miracle of bringing clay birds to life is cited twice
in the Qur'an.
Davis shares with us his hope that he has written "an
idiosyncratic but useful and interesting book". This modest hope is
more than amply fulfilled. But he has also produced a work of
immense erudition and considerable importance. Those who told the
tall tales of the Paidika at least recognised the
Christian obligation to remember the child Jesus. The latter is now
largely forgotten.
The Revd Dr John Pridmore is a former Rector of Hackney in
east London.