Papyrus Describes Miracle Performed by 5-Year-Old Jesus

Scholars have deciphered and published a papyrus fragment containing part of the "Infancy Gospel of Thomas," which tells stories from Jesus' childhood.

Written in Greek, the papyrus fragment is the earliest copy of this gospel known to exist, scholars wrote in a paper recently published in the journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. I Photo: Wikimedia Commons / United States Public Domain

Written in the 4th or 5th century, the manuscript describes how Jesus brought clay birds to life as a child, Owen Jarus reported for Live Science.

Written in Greek, the papyrus fragment is the earliest copy of this gospel known to exist, scholars wrote in a paper recently published in the journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.

Other copies of the gospel exist, but they date to later times. Churches did not include this gospel in the Bible.

"It is the earliest preserved manuscript of the text in any language," Lajos Berkes, a lecturer at the Institute for Christianity and Antiquity at Humboldt University of Berlin, and Gabriel Nocchi Macedo, a papyrology professor at the University of Liège in Belgium, wrote in the study.

In the story told in the fragment, "Jesus plays at the ford of a rushing stream and molds 12 sparrows from the soft clay he finds in the mud.

When his father Joseph rebukes him and asks why he is doing such things on the holy Sabbath, the five-year-old Jesus claps his hands and brings the clay figures to life," according to a statement from the Humboldt University of Berlin.

While this fragment mentions only this particular miracle, later copies of the gospel tell of many other miraculous acts that Jesus performed as a child.

These include bringing a child named Zeno back to life and instantly healing his father Joseph after he was bitten by a poisonous snake. Scholars are already aware of this story from later copies of the gospel.