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The Gospel of Thomas is thought to preserve many authentic sayings of Jesus. No intact copies of it had survived until the discovery of a cache of Gnostic manuscripts in 1945, at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Like the other so-called Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas sees the true Christian laboring to understand intellectually the truth revealed by Jesus.
This work seeks to fill a gap in the canonical gospels: Jesus’ life between his presentation in the Temple as an infant and his visit to Jerusalem at age 12. The following excerpt describes his miraculous powers even as an infant.
The Infancy Gospel of James, thought to date to the middle of the second century, is more concerned with Mary, the mother of Jesus, than with Jesus himself. In it, Mary’s miraculous pregnancy is followed by yet another miracle: She remains a virgin even after the birth of Jesus.
Date of Composition | Language of Composition | Where Written | Earliest Extant Copies | |
Precanonical Gospels |
Passages found in both Luke and Matthew but not found in Mark are thought to come from the hypothetical Sayings Gospel known as Q.
When you pray, say:
Father,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread;
and forgive us our sins,
The Signs Gospel is a hypothetical text believed by many scholars to predate the canonical gospels and is thought to be embedded in the Gospel of John. It records Jesus’ deeds, almost all of them miracles, and contains very little of the speeches found in those parts of John that are not drawn from the Signs Gospel.
The number of Israelites killed by plague for worshiping Baal of Peor | 24,000 (Numbers 25:9) |
The number of people taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar when he captured Jerusalem | 4,600 (Jeremiah 52:30) |
