My coworker insists that he saw a documentary on the life of Christ on the A&E network. According to him, it stated that when Jesus was four years old, he “struck down” another child, for no apparent reason. This story was edited out of the King James Version of the Bible, as well as all subsequent versions. Can anyone confirm this?
Well, they would have erased his record as a minor once he turned 18, unless they tried him as an adult…
This story is found in the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas. It was never “edited out” of any Bible; it was simply never included in the first place due to the fact that it is almost entirely non-historical. Thomas, as well as other noncanonical books, are available here.
Someone more knowledgeable than I am will be along to give you the particulars on how Biblical canon was determined, but the episode you describe appears in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas:
This document was not “edited out” of the King James Bible, or any other Bible, ever. It was never part of the canon.
If this was ‘edited out’ then it wasn’t just from the KJV but from the canon of scripture generally.
I’ve heard of non-canonical books (of dubious authenticity) which have accounts of Jesus as a child killing animals then raising them to life.
anyway, think about it; if the gospels are a true account, then it would be very inconsistent with the ‘real’ Jesus, if they aren’t true, it would still be inconsistent with the Jesus ‘Character’ and thus it would be a daft thing to invent and slot in.
That’s one of the signs of a potential serial messiah, isn’t it?
I’ve seen medieval manuscripts illustrating this, or similar scenes. The stories are generally from either the Apocrypha (non-canon books of the bible) or are folk-tales. You can read a couple of these stories here: http://www.gloriana.nu/child.html
“Edited out of the KJV” is maybe a little misleading–I believe accounts of Jesus’ childhood, besides his visit to the Temple, don’t appear in either the Catholic or Protestant bibles.
Here’s the biography printout from A&E on Jesus of Nazareth. Murder is NOT among the controversial topics discussed in Unknown Jesus, the biography video from A&E at amazon.com. Read it’s description as well.
Some people assert that Jesus spent time in the Far East during his early years. Search on “issa”, you’ll find plenty of links. It’ll be difficult to find facts among all the religion, but it’s interesting reading.
In any case, it’s kind of silly for you to go around trying to disprove the unsubstantiated claims of your coworkers. [I am an atheist, so I have no vested interest in trying to protect the reputation of a mytho-historical figure, so no Christian-bashing please]
I disagree. If the four Gospels are true, then while the, for lack of a better word, “impetuousness” of the incidents might seem out of character, they wouldn’t be without precedent. God in the OT frequently struck people dead where they stood for various offenses, and Jesus cursed the fig tree in a manner similar to what is described in the Infancy Gospel. God/Jesus also struck down . . . Ananias? . . . for lying.
If the Gospels aren’t true, then we can take it as a given that the Gospel writers cribbed from other cultures’ mythologies regarding their gods – the virgin birth, the execution, the resurrection, etc. Given that, it isn’t inconceivable that the writer of the Infancy Gospel cribbed from the stories of bratty child-gods common in the pagan religions.
I suppose you could say that the story of Jesus killing the kid was edited out of the King James Version. After all, the infancy gospel of Thomas was “edited” out of the canon of accepted works way back during the early Roman-Christian period (not an accepted term as far as I know, just the best description I can come up with right now). So it wasn’t edited out during the translation of the KJV but much earlier.
Just to clarify things a bit, the infancy gospel of Thomas and all other new testament apocrypha were declared not to be part of the Canon during the first council of Nicea in 325 A.D.
Whether you believe the New Testament to be true or are a skeptical atheist like myself, you must realize that ANY AND ALL inclusions and removals during the first council were 100% motivated by the politics of the time and NOT by whether or not any of the texts could be verified as true or false. Some texts of the apocrypha were excised because of their criticisms of Roman culture, because of their attempts to bind Judaism and Christianity together and so on. The time of the First Council was a politically-troubled time for newly-Christian Rome and was definitely not motivated by the search for truth.
Of course, I suppose you could, as a believer, argue that it does not matter what the intention of the First Council was because they were guided by God, but if you believe humans have free will then in this case, they used their free will for political purposes.
Must I now? It looks like someone here is grinding a pretty damn big axe. Get back to Great Debates where the rest of us don’t have to listen to your ranting.
All my studies, excluding Sunday School, have supported this. It doesn’t really require much study to uncover the political aspects of religious leadership, past or present. Seems perfectly on-topic to me. Maybe a bit strongly worded, but hardly a rant. It addresses the issue of some things being “edited out” of the Bible. In this case the editing out happened at an early stage in the editing process, so we might use the term “left out” instead. Same thing, different timing.
Although I tend to agree that the council was virtually 100% political, personally I would concede that there probably was the odd monk or bishop or council member who actually believed that they were doing God’s work. Still, I think that belief itself was very much political in nature. I think it had more to do with the council members’ ideas on governing the masses and arranging power structures than with their ideas on literal truth.
If you think the stories about Jesus’ putative homicidal tendencies are a little strange, you should see the ones where people are healed by touching either his used diaper or his bath water, including a man who was turned into an ass and restored.
That Master has touched on this topic: What’s up with the “lost books of the Bible”?
According to the *Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church,*the canon of the Bible was likely determined at a council held in Rome in 382 A.D., under the auspices of Pope/S. Damasus. He then commissioned his secretary, S. Jerome, to prepare a comprehensive Latin translation, the Vulgate, which became the standard version of the Bible for the Western Church for the next millenium.
No, that was Peter, and it’s not clear from the passage whether he physically struck Ananias (and his wife) or whether it was their own guilty consciences for lying.
The episode is found at the tail end of Chapter 4 of the Acts, and the beginning of Chapter 5, which recounts an attempt by the early church to share all property in common to look after the community:
What is the consensus among Christians regarding the validity of these non-canonical texts? Wouldn’t the presence of several false scriptures cast doubt on the legitimacy of the canon of scripture?
No more than a three-dollar bill would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the US Mint. Phonies are phonies, and legit’s legit, and never the twain shall mark.
I realised shortly after posting it how shallow and unsatisfying a statement this actually is in the hard light of logic.
Sure, as I said above, on reflection I disagree myself too, except I didn’t mention the OT (just the gospels), a fig tree is of less value than a child’s life (by any acceptable standards) and what Northern Piper said about Ananias.