1 Sharon, M., “People of the Book,” in McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an , 6 vols. (Leiden, 2001–6), 4:36–43. While I use the word “Abrahamic” in my title to speak of the three monotheistic religions, I am aware that this term is of recent coinage and not unproblematic; see Robinson, Neal, who traces statements about Muslims in Vatican II back to the thinking of the Islamist Louis Massignon in “Islam,” in The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought: Intellectual, Spiritual, and Moral Horizons of Christianity , ed. Hastings, Adrian, Mason, Alistair, and Pyper, Hugh (Oxford, 2000), 330–31. See also idem, “Massignon, Vatican II and Islam as an Abrahamic Religion,” Islam and Christian-Islamic Relations 2.2 (1991): 185–205.Google Scholar I am thankful to Paul Barrette, Thomas Burman, Robert Getz, Theresa Kenney, Pamela Sheingorn, Christine Shepardson, and my anonymous reviewers for offering valuable suggestions and critiques. I am also grateful for a Mellon Fellowship at the Vatican Film Library in St. Louis, where I examined a reproduction of BAV, MS lat. 4578, cited below.Google Scholar

2 This tale is probably the most famous of the centuries-old apocryphal legends about Jesus's childhood. It has been retold in different forms by more recent writers, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hilaire Belloc, and Robert Pinsky, and also appears in a recently republished book intended for Christian children. See “The Golden Legend” 7, in Christus: A Mystery, in The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , ed. Longfellow, Samuel, 6 vols. (New York, 1966), 5:214–16; “The Birds,” in Hilaire Belloc, Complete Verse, preface by Roughead, W. N. (London, 1970), 38; Pinsky, Robert, The Want Bone (New York, 1990), 3–5; and Fowler Lutz, A., Stories of the Child Jesus from Many Lands, by Ted Schleunderfritz (Manchester, NH, 2003; orig. pub. 1895), 164–67.Google Scholar

3 For a translation, see Hock, Ronald F., The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas (Santa Rosa, CA, 1995). See also Elliott, J. K., The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford, 2005; orig. pub. 1993), 68–83. For recent studies, see Chartrand-Burke, Tony, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” in The Non-Canonical Gospels , ed. Foster, Paul (London, 2008), 126–38, and Aasgaard, Reidar, The Childhood of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Eugene, OR, 2009).Google Scholar

4 See further Gero, Stephen, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: A Study of the Textual and Literary Problems,” Novum Testamentum 13 (1971): 46–80.Google Scholar

5 Oskar Dähnhardt earlier catalogued the legend of the birds without offering much commentary in Natursagen: Eine Sammlung naturdeutender Sagen, Märchen, Fabeln und Legenden, vol. 2, Sagen zum neuen Testament (Leipzig, 1909), 71–76. Elliott, J. K. lists apocryphal versions of the story in A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives (Leiden, 2006), 135–36.Google Scholar

6 Below I mention Middle English narratives about Jesus's apocryphal childhood; these tales also appeared in other vernaculars. For a listing, see Hall, Thomas N., “The Miracle of the Lengthened Beam in Apocryphal and Hagiographic Tradition,” in Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations , ed. Jones, Timothy S. and Sprunger, David A., Studies in Medieval Culture 42 (Kalamazoo, 2002), 109–39, at 119–22. See also Reinsch, Robert, Die Pseudo-Evangelien von Jesu und Maria's Kindheit in der romanischen und germanischen Literatur (Halle, 1879).Google Scholar

7 Mâle, Emile, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century , trans. Nussey, Dora (New York, 1972), 206.Google Scholar

8 Hock provides a translation in The Infancy Gospels. See also Elliott, , The Apocryphal New Testament , 48–67.Google Scholar

9 Elliott, , The Apocryphal New Testament , 86. Gijsel, Jan and Beyers, Rita, “Introduction générale aux deux textes édités,” in Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium: Textus et commentarius, Libri de nativitate Mariae, Corpus Christianorum: Series Apocryphorum 9–10 (Turnhout, 1997), 1:12–13.Google Scholar

10 In his recent critical edition, Jan Gijsel provides a codicological description of the extant manuscripts and groups them into families. Manuscript families P, Q, and R all contain IGT material; see his stemma, Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium , 97.Google Scholar

11 Edited by von Tischendorf, Konstantin in Evangelia apocrypha (Hildesheim, 1966; repr. of 1876 ed.), 51–112. Gijsel ends his edition of Pseudo-Matthew with the angel's command that Joseph bring his family back to the land of Judah.Google Scholar

12 The BAV manuscript I refer to belongs to family R (Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium , ed. Gijsel, , 1:169). Gijsel places it in the category of manuscripts whose origin is unknown (1:514). In addition to Pseudo-Matthew, the manuscript contains the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and the IGT in Latin, which is closely related to the expanded Pseudo-Matthew. Tischendorf provides an edition of the Latin IGT found in BAV, lat. 4578 (Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, , 164–80). See further Voicu, Sever J., “La Tradition latine des Paidika,” Bulletin de l'AELAC 14 (2004): 13–21.Google Scholar

13 For more on the legends' anti-Judaism, for example, see Birenbaum, Maija, “Virtuous Vengeance: Anti-Judaism and Christian Piety in Medieval England” (PhD diss., Fordham University, 2010), chap. 2; Dzon, Mary, “The Image of the Wanton Christ-Child in the Apocryphal Infancy Legends of Late Medieval England” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2004), 288–99; Vitz, Evelyn Birge, “The Apocryphal and the Biblical, the Oral and the Written, in Medieval Legends of Christ's Childhood: The Old French Evangile de l'Enfance,” in Satura: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo , ed. Reale, Nancy M. and Sternglantz, Ruth E. (Donington, UK, 2001); and Casey, Mary, “Conversion as Depicted on the Fourteenth-Century Tring Tiles,” in Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals , ed. Armstrong, Guyda and Wood, Ian N. (Turnhout, 2000), 339–46, figs. 1–11.Google Scholar

14 The number of pools is not specified in the IGT; see Hock, , The Infancy Gospels , 105.Google Scholar

15 “Vae tibi, fili mortis, fili satanae” ( Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, , 94). All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.Google Scholar

16 “Et cum venisset mater ad eum, rogabat eum dicens, ‘Domine mi, quid faciendo iste fecit ut moreretur?’” (ibid.).Google Scholar

17 In his chapter on children in his thirteenth-century encyclopedia, the Franciscan Bartholomaeus Anglicus remarks: “sola enim praesentia cogitant, & de futuris nihil penitus curant” ( De rerum proprietatibus [Frankfurt-am-Main, 1964; repr. of Mainz, 1460 ed.], 239).Google Scholar

18 On probably the best-known visual embodiment of this enmity, see Rowe, Nina, “Rethinking Ecclesia and Synagoga in the Thirteenth Century,” in Gothic Art and Thought in the Later Medieval Period: Essays in Honor of Willibald Sauerländer , ed. Hourihane, Colum (University Park, PA, 2011), 265–91.Google Scholar

19 “Quicumque ergo humiliauerit se sicut paruulus iste, hic est maior in regno caelorum. Sicut iste paruulus … non perseuerat in iracundia, non laesus meminit … nisi talem habueritis innocentiam et animi puritatem, regna caelorum non poteritis intrare” (Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 3:18.4; Commentaire sur S. Matthieu, Tome II [Livres III–IV], ed. and trans. Bonnard, Émile, SC 259 [Paris, 1979], 48 and 50). Jerome's comments on children's innocence were repeated by Bede and other medieval religious writers; see Boynton, Susan and Cochelin, Isabelle, “The Sociomusical Role of Child Oblates at the Abbey of Cluny in the Eleventh Century,” in Musical Childhoods & the Cultures of Youth , ed. Boynton, Susan and Kok, Roe-Min (Middletown, CT, 2006), 3–24, at 7.Google Scholar

20 “At ille nolens matrem suam contristari, pede suo dextro percutiens nates mortui dixit ad eum: ‘Exsurge, fili iniquitatis; non enim dignus es intrare in requiem patris mei, quia dissipasti opera quae ego fui operatus’” ( Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, , 95).Google Scholar

21 Gen. 2:7 uses the word limus for the mud from which Adam was formed, while Pseudo-Matthew uses the word lutum (ibid.), but they are synonymous. For the Vulgate, I cite Biblia sacra: iuxta vulgatam versionem , ed. Weber, Robert and Gryson, Roger, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1994).Google Scholar

22 Bible Moralisée: Codex Vindobonensis 2554, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek , comm. and trans. Guest, Gerald B. (London, 1995).Google Scholar

23 Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron , trans. McWilliam, G. H. (London, 1972), 497. Illuminated Manuscripts: Boccaccio's Decameron: 15th-Century Manuscript , ed. Pognon, Edmond, trans. Peter Tallon, J. (Fribourg, 1978), 74. Along similar lines, Alexander Neckam (d. 1217) speaks of creation as God's play, an allusion to Proverbs 8:30–31: “For outside time God's wisdom played: his mind / His art, design, and grace, disposed all things” (“Lusit ab aeterno summi sapientia patris, / Singula disponens, ars, noys, ordo, decor”) (De laudibus divinae sapientiae , ed. Wright, Thomas, Rolls Series 34 [London, 1863], 426, lines 356–57, trans. Rigg, A. G., A History of Anglo-Latin Literature [Cambridge, 1992], 120).Google Scholar

24 Here and elsewhere I cite the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible (Rockford, IL, 1971; repr. of 1899 ed.).Google Scholar

25 Ambrose, , Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, 7.12.114, in Opera 4, ed. Adriaen, M., CCL 14 (Turnhout, 1957), 251–52. Further interpretations of the sparrows mentioned in Scripture can be found in The Medieval Book of Birds of Hugh of Fouilloy's Aviarium , ed. Clark, Willene B., Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 80 (Binghamton, NY, 1992), 162–69.Google Scholar

26 Ingersoll, Ernest, Birds in Legend, Fable and Folklore (Detroit, 1968), 48–49. See also Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie , ed. Kirschbaum, Engelbert, Bandmann, Günter, and Braunfels, Wolfgang (Herder, 1972), 4:140–41. Cf. Ps. 123:7: “anima nostra sicut passer.” Google Scholar

27 The text does not specifically state that the informant was a child, but it suggests that this is so by saying that this Jew watched Jesus make the sparrows ( Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, , 95).Google Scholar

28 “Iesus autem audiens Ioseph et percutiens manum ad manum dixit passeribus suis: ‘Ite et volate per orbem et per omnem mundum et vivite’” (ibid.).Google Scholar

29 Rappoport, A. S., Mediæval Legends of Christ (London, 1934), 121–22. See, e.g., the episode as recounted in a thirteenth-century poem on the lives of Mary and Christ (Vita beate virginis Marie et salvatoris rhythmica , ed. Vögtlin, A. [Tübingen, 1888], 102–3, lines 2946–63). There is an additional reason for the vivification of birds. As Bart Ehrman pointed out in a recent National Geographic Channel show, “Secret Lives of Jesus,” by making the birds come to life and fly away, Jesus destroys all evidence of his misdeed (“Secret Lives of Jesus,” Explorer, National Geographic, 2006, DVD). The show includes a dramatization of the miracle.Google Scholar

30 La Pensée sauvage , trans. Weightman, John and Weightman, Doreen as The Savage Mind (Chicago, 1966), 204.Google Scholar

31 “O semen iniquitatis pessimum, o fili mortis, officina satanae, vere erit fructus seminis tui sine vigore, et radices tuae sine humore, et rami tui aridi, non ferentes fructum” ( Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, , 96). This language of sterility echoes Matt. 7:20 and Luke 6:44. The text is not entirely clear as to whether this is the same wicked boy who earlier clashed with Jesus.Google Scholar

32 “Et ecce subito ex adverso puer quidam, et ipse operarius iniquitatis, currens intulit se super humerum Iesu, volens eum eludere aut nocere si posset” (ibid.).Google Scholar

33 “Non revertaris sanus de via tua qua vadis” (ibid.).Google Scholar

34 “Manifestum est quod omne verbum quod dicit verum est, et frequenter antequam dicat adimpletur” (ibid., 96–97).Google Scholar

35 Cf. the violent repercussions of Christian anti-Jewish narratives of host desecration; Rubin, Miri, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia, 1999).Google Scholar

36 Dzon, , “Wanton Christ-Child” (n. 13 above), 227–33 and passim. On this theme, see further Janson, Dora Jane, “Omega in Alpha: The Christ Child's Foreknowledge of His Fate,” Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 18 (1973): 33–42, and a number of the essays in The Christ Child in Medieval Culture: Alpha es et O! , ed. Dzon, Mary and Kenney, Theresa M. (Toronto, forthcoming).Google Scholar

37 Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, , 108–9.Google Scholar

38 As I note elsewhere, “The variation among … anecdotes … demonstrates the ambiguity of the legends' portrayal of the Christ Child: he is not simply a mischievous boy, but also a loving son and merciful Savior” (Dzon, Mary, “Cecily Neville and the Apocryphal Infantia salvatoris in the Middle Ages,” Mediaeval Studies 71 [2009]: 235–300, at 260). See further eadem, “Boys Will Be Boys: The Physiology of Childhood and the Apocryphal Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages,” Viator 42 (2011): 179–225, at 212–13, and Birenbaum, “Virtuous Vengeance” (n. 13 above), 73–74.Google Scholar

39 For Caxton's text, see W. Caxtons Infantia Salvatoris , ed. Holthausen, F. (Halle, 1891), chap. 16, 9–10. I have consulted a digitalization of the incunable from Rome (ca. 1474) that is now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The story about the birds appears on folio 15v.Google Scholar

40 Dzon, , “Cecily Neville.” Google Scholar

41 “At illi audientes dixerunt quidam quia ‘hic est filius dei.’ Alii autem ‘Non, sed demonium habet”’ ( W. Caxtons Infantia Salvatoris , chap. 16, 10).Google Scholar

42 For an in-depth study of these poems, see Dzon, , “Wanton Christ-Child,” esp. 102–28.Google Scholar

43 Altenglische Legenden , ed. Horstmann, Carl (Paderborn, 1875), 3–61, at 15, line 386. For a recent discussion of the poem about the apocryphal childhood in this manuscript, see Kline, Daniel T., “The Audience and Function of the Apocryphal Infancy of Jesus Christ in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108,” in Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative , ed. Bell, Kimberly K. and Couch, Julie Nelson, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 6 (Leiden, 2011), 137–55.Google Scholar

44 Magennis, Hugh, “Images of Laughter in Old English Poetry, with Particular Reference to the ‘Hleahtor Wera’ of The Seafarer,” English Studies 73 (1992): 193–204.Google Scholar

45 Cf. the apocryphal “Letter of Lentulus,” translated in Elliott, , The Apocryphal New Testament (n. 3 above), 542–43. See further Dzon, , “Wanton Christ-Child,” 209–14.Google Scholar

46 Horstmann, Carl, ed., “Nachträge zu den Legenden,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 74 (1885): 327–39, at 331, lines 277–79. On the question of what constituted servile work, see Masciandaro, Nicola, The Voice of the Hammer: The Meaning of Work in Middle English Literature (Notre Dame, IN, 2007), esp. 50–52.Google Scholar

47 The Middle English Stanzaic Versions of the Life of Saint Anne , ed. Parker, Roscoe E., EETS, o.s., 174 (New York, 1971; repr. of 1928 ed.), 1–89, at 46, lines 1765–67.Google Scholar

48 Hock, , The Infancy Gospels (n. 3 above), 111.Google Scholar

49 See further Dzon, Mary, “Joseph and the Amazing Christ-Child of Late-Medieval Legend,” in Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality , ed. Classen, Albrecht (Berlin, 2005), 135–57.Google Scholar

50 Renan, Ernest, Histoire des origines du Christianisme, vol. 6, L'Église chrétienne , 2nd ed. (Paris, 1879), 513. See also Vitz, , “The Apocryphal and the Biblical” (n. 13 above), 147.Google Scholar

51 “Et n'est ce pas grant derision et moquerie de dire que l'enfant Jhesus faisoit blecier ses compaignons, qu'il se moquoit de ses maistres d'escole et qu'il donnast occasion de se plaindre de luy a ses parens, et que saint Joseph le reprenoit comme malvaiz garçon, et puis qu'il respondit au dit monseigneur saint Joseph orguilleusement, en le menaçant” (Lieberman, Max, ed., “Saint Joseph, Jean Gerson et Pierre d'Ailly dans un manuscrit de 1464,” Cahiers de Joséphologie 20 [1972]: 5–110, at 50).Google Scholar

52 Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, (n. 11 above), 87–88.Google Scholar

53 Right before recounting some miracles of the Christ Child, a fifteenth-century French text states: “lesquelz ne sont point en l'euvangille; mais quelque personne devote contemplant la puissance de Dieu, lequel peut faire toutes choses, les mist en enscript, en esperance qu'il seroit plus profitable a ung chrestien de prendre plaisir a lire cecy, d'estre oyseux ne dire mal aultruy” ( La Vie de Nostre Benoit Sauveur Ihesucrist & La Saincte Vie de Nostre Dame , ed. Meiss, Millard and Beatson, Elizabeth H. [New York, 1977], 26–27). The legends seem to have been entertaining as well as instructive. Medieval ceramics expert Elizabeth Eames implies that the Tring Tiles, which depict a handful of the apocryphal infancy legends, were intended to be funny: “Whoever drew these pictures had a lively sense of humor and an acute awareness of human foibles” (Catalogue of Medieval Lead-glazed Earthenware Tiles in the Department of Medieval and Later British Antiquities, 2 vols. [London, 1980], 1:60). I suspect that many people who casually view the tiles in the British Museum find them comical, largely due to the tiles' cartoonish rendering of an unexpected subject: an active and even troublesome Christ Child. See Marc Abrams, “Jesus Did the Funniest Things,” The Guardian, 20 December 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/dec/20/highereducation.research1. Aasgaard perceives in Jesus's encounter with his first teacher “a distinct slapstick quality … aim[ed] at comic effect” (The Childhood of Jesus [n. 3 above], 48). “Clearly,” he states, “humor is a central element in the episode, as it is elsewhere in IGT …; this is a feature that has been very much neglected in earlier, mostly deadly serious, analyses of the story” (146–47). To be sure, many of the medieval apocryphal legends engage in dark humor at the expense of Jews, as noted, e.g., by Birenbaum, “Virtuous Vengeance” (n. 13 above), 67.Google Scholar

54 On censorship of the apocrypha, see Vitz, , “The Apocryphal and the Biblical,” and Paulmier-Foucart, Monique and Nadeau, Alain, “The History of Christ in Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum historiale,” in Christ among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers , ed. Emery, Kent Jr. and Wawrykow, Joseph P. (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), 113–26, at 121. For arguments against the view of the apocryphal infancy texts as forbidden, see Dzon, , “Cecily Neville” (n. 38 above).Google Scholar

55 The former derives from Pseudo-Matthew, chap. 14, and ultimately a Christian reading of Isaiah 1:3 and Habakuk 3:2 ( Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium , ed. Gijsel, [n. 9 above], 1:430–31), while the latter derives from the tenet of Christ's descent into hell (found in the Apostles' and Athanasian creeds) that was elaborated by the Gospel of Nicodemus; see Izydorczyk, Zbigniew, ed., The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts in Western Europe (Tempe, AZ, 1997).Google Scholar

56 See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 3, q. 36, a. 4, ad 3, where he quotes John Chrysostom's Commentary on the Gospel of John: “Christus non fecit miracula antequam aquam convertit in vinum, secundum illud quod dicitur Ioann. II: ‘Hoc fecit initium signorum Iesus’” ( Summa Theologiae 4, Tertia Pars , corrected ed. [Ottawa, 1953], 2649a).Google Scholar

57 For an explicit statement of such a denial, see Vita rhythmica , ed. Vögtlin, (n. 29 above), 118, lines 3404–13.Google Scholar

58 The Princeton Index of Christian Art provides only select examples for the subject “Christ Child: Miracle.” I have profited greatly from Kathryn Smith's work on apocryphal infancy imagery (as disseminated in “Canonizing the Apocrypha: London, British Library MS Egerton 2781 and Its Visual, Devotional and Social Contexts” [PhD diss., New York University, 1996], chap. 4, as well as in Art, Identity, and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and Their Books of Hours [London, 2003], and in “Accident, Play, and Invention: Three Infancy Miracles in the Holkham Bible Picture Book,” in Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Art, and Architecture , ed. L'Engle, Susan and Guest, Gerald B. [London, 2006], 357–69). Also useful are Cartlidge, David R. and Keith Elliott, J., Art and the Christian Apocrypha (London, 2001), and Wrapson, Lucy, “Christ's Boyhood: A Comparison of the Iconography of the ‘Meditationes vitae Christi’ (Paris, B.N. MS Ital 115) with ‘The Holkham Bible Picture Book’ (London, B.L. MS Add. 47682) in the Light of Surviving Infancy Material” (master's thesis, University of London [Courtauld Institute of Art], 2002), especially the appendix. Interestingly, neither the Holkham Bible nor the Tring Tiles, well-known fourteenth-century sources that illustrate apocryphal infancy stories, depict the miracle of the birds. See The Holkham Bible: A Facsimile , ed. Brown, Michelle P. (London, 2007), particularly fols. 14r–16r, and James, M. R., “Rare Medieval Tiles (with a note by R. L. Hobson),” The Burlington Magazine 42 (1923): 32–37.Google Scholar

59 I do not wish to suggest, however, that the lower classes were uninterested in this material, which I would characterize as “popular” in the sense of being shared by many sectors within medieval society. For an interpretation of the legends as an instance of popular culture, an approach that stresses their folkloric qualities, see Kauffmann, C. M., “Art and Popular Culture: New Themes in the Holkham Picture Book,” in Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture Presented to Peter Lasko , ed. Buckton, David and Heslop, T. A. (Stroud, UK, 1994), 46–69.Google Scholar

60 Cartlidge, and Elliott, , Art and the Christian Apocrypha, 98–99, 107–8, fig. 4.21. See further Garcia, Hugues, “Les diverses dimensions d'apocryphité: Le cas du cycle de la nativité de Jésus dans le plafond peint de l'Église Saint-Martin de Zillis,” Apocrypha 15 (2004): 201–34.Google Scholar

61 See the edition by Boulton, Maureen, Les Enfaunces de Jesu Crist , Anglo-Norman Text Society 43 (London, 1985), fol. 10v, upper register. See also eadem, “The ‘Evangile de l'Enfance’: Text and Illustration in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 38,” Scriptorium 37 (1983): 54–65.Google Scholar

62 See, e.g., George, Wilma and Yapp, Brunsdon, The Naming of the Beasts: Natural History and the Medieval Bestiary (London, 1991), figs. 14, 16, 18, and 21.Google Scholar

63 For a codicological description of this manuscript, see Avril, F. and Gousset, M.-T., Manuscrits enluminés d'origine italienne (Paris, 1984), 2:133. For a discussion of the miniatures accompanying the apocryphal infancy text in Lat. 2688, see Sheingorn, Pamela, “Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of Jesus,” in The Christ Child in Medieval Culture (n. 36 above).Google Scholar

64 For a facsimile, see Evangelica Historia: Disegni Trecenteschi del MS. L. 58 Sup. della Biblioteca Ambrosiana , ed. Degenhart, Bernard and Schmitt, Annegrit, 2 vols. (Milan, 1979), 2:194. Volume 1 provides an edition of the Latin text. In “Reshapings,” Sheingorn comments on the illuminations in this manuscript.Google Scholar

65 Harrsen, Meta, Central European Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library (New York, 1958), no. 40.Google Scholar

66 On the themes of Jesus going to and being in school, see further Bagley, Ayers, “Jesus at School,” Journal of Psychohistory 13 (1985): 13–31, and Frojmovic, Eva, “Taking Little Jesus to School in Two Thirteenth-Century Latin Psalters from South Germany,” in Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture , ed. Merback, Mitchell B. (Leiden, 2007), 87–117.Google Scholar

67 The story about Jesus hanging his pitcher on a sunbeam, which was clearly known in northern Europe in the later Middle Ages, is not in the IGT, though it appears in vernacular and Latin texts, as well as art, from that time, e.g., in the apocryphal childhoood poem in the London Thornton manuscript (“Nachträge,” ed. Horstmann, [n. 46 above], 332, lines 343–45; and Caxton's Infantia Salvatoris [n. 39 above], chap. 22, 13). The story also appears in the Anglo-Norman poem on the apocryphal childhood; Maureen Boulton cites the Armenian infancy gospel, chap. 23, which is an analogue (Les Enfaunces, 12); Peeters, P., ed., Évangiles apocryphes , 2 vols. (Paris, 1914), 2:257–58. Latin, A Life of Mary and Jesus (in Gießen, Universitätsbibliothek, cod. 777) that recounts the story about how Jesus hung his jar on a sunbeam cites the Liber de Infantia salvatoris as the source for this and other childhood miracles (Narrationes de vita et conversation beatae Mariae virginis et de pueritia et adolescentia salvatoris , ed. Schade, Oscar [Halle, 1870], chap. 43, 21).Google Scholar

68 See La Vie , ed. Meiss, and Beatson, (n. 53 above), 32–33. Cf. chap. 2 of the IGT in Latin (Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, , 165).Google Scholar

69 On Jewish blindness, see, among others, Blumenkranz, Bernhard, Le Juif médiéval au miroir de l'art chrétien (Paris, 1966), 58–65, and more recently, Rowe, , “Rethinking Ecclesia and Synagoga” (n. 18 above).Google Scholar

70 A fifteenth-century English wall painting (in Shorthampton, Oxfordshire) that depicts the Virgin holding the Christ Child with a clay-colored bird in his hand may be an exception, since Mary has another boy in her arms and a third kneels before her. These children may be intended to represent Jesus's playmates. See Johnston, Philip Mainwaring, “Shorthampton Chapel and Its Wall-Paintings,” Archaeological Journal 62 (1905): 157–71, plate 5. On images of the Christ Child with a bird, see also Shorr, Dorothy C., The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 172–77, and Friedman, Herbert, The Symbolic Goldfinch: Its History and Significance in European Devotional Art, Bollingen Series 7 (Washington, DC, 1946).Google Scholar

71 The Koran , trans. Dawood, N. J. (London, 1993), 47.Google Scholar

72 Thomas, David, “The Miracles of Jesus in Early Islamic Polemic,” Journal of Semitic Studies 39 (1994): 221–43, at 223.Google Scholar

73 Gril, Denis, “Miracles,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an (n. 1 above), 3:392–99. See also Sale, George, A Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran , ed. Wherry, E. M., 4 vols. (Osnabrück, 1973; repr. of 1896 ed.), 2:155. For a collection of Islamic traditions concerning the prophets, see Prophets in the Quran: An Introduction to the Quran and Muslim Exegesis , ed. and trans. Wheeler, Brannon M. (London, 2002).Google Scholar

74 Neal Robinson points out that, although the Qur'an technically refers to only one bird, the collective may be intended (“Creating Birds from Clay: A Miracle by Jesus in the Qur'an and in Classical Muslim Exegesis,” Muslim World 79 [1989]: 1–13, at 4). Al-Thalabi and others thought that Jesus “made several birds of different sorts” (Sale, Comprehensive Commentary, 2:19; cf. Abu Jafar Muhammad Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Commentaire du Coran , ed. Godé, Pierre, 5 vols. [Paris, 1983–89], 2:86). Christ's breathing into the birds likens his act to God's creation of Adam (Qur'an 21:91; 66:12).Google Scholar

75 In the Qisas al-Anbiya' (Stories of the Prophets) by al-Thalabi, the miracle of the clay bird is placed in Jesus's adulthood, while other miracles (e.g., his miraculous dyeing of garments) are said to have occurred during his childhood; see A Reader on Islam: Passages from Standard Arabic Writings Illustrative of the Beliefs and Practices of Muslims , ed. Jeffery, Arthur (The Hague, 1962), 571–75 and 579.Google Scholar

76 On the issue of the reception of the apocrypha in both Christianity and Islam, see, among others, the work of Cornelia B. Horn, such as her “Intersections: The Reception of the History of the Protoevangelium of James in Sources from the Christian East and in the Qur'ān,” Apocrypha 17 (2006): 113–50.Google Scholar

77 The Protevangelium and Pseudo-Matthew recount how a pregnant Mary and Joseph were examined by the Jewish elders to see if they were guilty of sexual sin, but proven innocent. See Hock, , The Infancy Gospels (n. 3 above), 59 and 61, and Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, , 73–75.Google Scholar

78 The Book of John Mandeville with Related Texts , ed. and trans. Higgins, Iain Macleod (Indianapolis, 2011), chap. 15, 83. (This translation is of the original French text.) On Mandeville's treatment of Saracens, see Grady, Frank, “‘Machomete’ and Mandeville's Travels,” in Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam , ed. Tolan, John V. (New York, 2000), 271–88. William of Tripoli, thought to be one of Mandeville's sources for this section, mentions Jesus's vivification of clay birds in his Notitia de Machometo, chap. 10. The detail also appears in the De statu Sarracenorum, which is attributed to him, chap. 32. See the dual edition of these Latin texts by Peter Engels, Notitia de Machometo; De statu Sarracenorum (Würzburg/Altenberge, 1992), 228 and 344. On William's relatively positive view of Muslims, see O'Meara, Thomas F., “The Theology and Times of William of Tripoli, O. P.: A Different View of Islam,” Theological Studies 69 (2008): 80–98.Google Scholar

79 See Kenney, Theresa, “The Manger as Calvary and Altar in the Middle English Nativity Lyric,” in The Christ Child in Medieval Culture (n. 36 above).Google Scholar

80 Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium , ed. Gijsel, (n. 9 above), chaps. 18 and 20, 1:449, 451, 461, 463.Google Scholar

81 Parrinder, Geoffrey, Jesus in the Qur'ān (Oxford, 1996), 77.Google Scholar

82 The most conspicuous of these is the tale that the boy Jesus made little pools (cf. Pseudo-Matthew, chap. 26), an incident that Mandeville locates in Materea, a suburb of Cairo, famous for its field of balsam: “In that field are seven wells, one of which was made by the feet of Our Lord Jesus Christ when He went to play with the other children” ( The Book of John Mandeville , trans. Higgins, , chap. 7, 31). A Middle English version (that found in BL, Egerton 1982, which does not have the “Egypt Gap,” as do the defective versions) leaves out the detail of a well being made by Jesus's foot but adds, significantly: “and there He showed several miracles” (The Travels of Sir John Mandeville , trans. Moseley, C. W. R. D. [London, 2005], 66). The field of balsam where Jesus rested with his family in their exile is mentioned in the so-called Arabic Infancy Gospel, chap. 24, which notes that Jesus created a fountain there (hence the well made by Jesus's foot in Mandeville) (“Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour,” trans. Walker, Alexander, in Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries, Ante-Nicene Fathers 8 [New York, 1926], 409. Cf. Simeonis, Symon, Itinerarium Symonis Semeonis ab Hybernia ad Terram Sanctam , ed. Esposito, Mario, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 4 [Dublin, 1960], chap. 57, 80–81). In chapter 13 of the French version, which deals with the province of Galilee, where “Our Lord performed His first miracle,” Mandeville arguably alludes to four other apocryphal infancy legends (admittedly non-standard in Christian European apocryphal infancy texts, except for no. 2): (1) the story about how Mary washed the Child's shirt and how Jesus's sweat, when sprinkled, produced balsam (Arabic Infancy Gospel, chap. 24, 409; cf. The Holkham Bible , ed. Brown, [n. 58 above], fol. 15v); (2) the report that he used to draw water from a well for his mother (cf. Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, [n. 11 above], chap. 33, 103; BNF, lat. 11867, Livre de l'Enfance du Sauveur: Une version médiévale de l'Évangile de l'Enfance du Pseudo-Matthieu [XIIIe siècle] , ed. and trans. Dimier-Paupert, Catherine [Paris, 2006], 166); (3) the tale about how the boy Jesus playfully leapt from hill to hill unscathed, unlike his playmates (cf. “Nachträge,” ed. Horstmann, [n. 46 above], 333, lines 472–83; Livre de l'Enfance du Sauveur, 162); and (4) the legend about how a burning dart was thrown at the Child because he was negligent about his duties as an apprentice in a dyer's workshop (cf. “Nachträge,” ed. Horstmann, , 336, lines 686–89). The Book of John Mandeville , trans. Higgins, , chap. 13, 69, 72. These cases all involve landmarks (namely, a well, Jesus's footprints, and a tree, which grew from the burning brand); the miracle of the birds, in contrast, supposedly left no trace, although Pseudo-Matthew says the birds were fashioned beside the Jordan. While the author of Mandeville's Travels probably learned about such details by consulting books (e.g., Ps.-Odoric, De terra sancta, which mentions the story of the firebrand [Peregrinatores medii aevi quattuor , ed. Laurent, J. C. M. (Leipzig, 1864), 147]), Europeans who visited the Holy Land probably encountered these legends aurally.Google Scholar

83 The Book of John Mandeville , trans. Higgins, , chap. 15, 84–85.Google Scholar

84 Robinson notes that Ibn Ishaq's Kitab al-Maghazi “was regarded with suspicion because [he] relied on Jewish and Christian informants for his material” (“Creating Birds,” 4–5). The idea that Jesus spent time in school with other boys may stem from the episodes involving a teacher in the IGT and also from oral tradition, particularly that associated with Nazareth. The sixth-century Piacenza Pilgrim remarks that “[i]n the synagogue there is kept the book in which the Lord wrote his ABC, and in this synagogue there is the bench on which he sat with other children” ( Travels from Piacenza , in Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades , trans. Wilkinson, John, 2nd ed. [Warminster, UK, 2002], 129–51, at 131–2. For the Latin, see Antonini Placentini Itinerarium , ed. Geyer, P., in Itineraria et alia geographica, CCL 175 [Turnhout, 1965], 127–74, at 130–31).Google Scholar

85 Hayek, Michel, Le Christ de l'Islam (Paris, 1959), 108. See also Hughes, Thomas P., A Dictionary of Islam (London, 1935), 231, and Robinson, “Creating Birds,” 5.Google Scholar

86 Ambrose states that “the bat (vespertilio) is an ignoble creature, whose name is taken from the word for evening (vesper). They are equipped with wings, but at the same time they are quadrupeds. They are provided with teeth, in this respect differing from other birds. As a quadruped, too, the female brings forth her young alive and not in the oval stage.” He goes on to note how they fly at night using their webbed feet and also how they cling together like grapes, in an admirably charitable fashion ( Hexameron , in Saint Ambrose: Hexameron, Paradise and Cain and Abel , trans. Savage, John J., Fathers of the Church 42 [New York, 1961], chap. 24, 223; PL 14:240). Bats' bad reputation among medieval Christians also stemmed from specific biblical passages, namely, Leviticus 11:19, which forbids their being eaten, and Isaiah 2:20, which says that bats (and moles) will become idols; see the Commentary on Leviticus by Rabanus Maurus (PL 108:357), and that on Isaiah by Jerome (PL 24:54). Beryl Rowland provides additional derogatory references to bats in Birds with Human Souls: A Guide to Bird Symbolism (Knoxville, TN, 1978), 6–9.Google Scholar

87 Marie de France: Fables , ed. and trans. Spiegel, Harriet, Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations 5 (Toronto, 1987), 86–91, and Aesop's Fables , trans. Gibbs, Laura (Oxford, 2008), 172–73. The Medieval Latin versions of the fable about the battle between the quadrupeds and birds generally imply that the bat was a bird by stating that it was specifically the birds who punished it, “because it abandoned his own on the day of necessity” (“socios proprios in die necessitatis derelinquit”). See the Latin versions (including that by Romulus Nilantii, believed to be Marie's source) found in Les Fabulistes latins depuis le siècle d'Auguste jusqu'à la fin du Moyen Âge , ed. Hervieux, Léopold, vol. 2, Phèdre et ses anciens imitateurs (Paris, 1884), 348–49 and passim. Norman R. Shapiro notes the “ubiquity” of the fable, citing a similar folktale from West Africa and raising the possibility that “transmission [was] via the Arabs” (Fables from Old French: Aesop's Beasts and Bumpkins, trans. idem [Middletown, CT, 1982], 93).Google Scholar

88 Debra Hassig notes that the bat posed a “classification dilemma” for the bestiary. It was “usually categorized as a bird but sometimes as a beast” ( Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology [Cambridge, 1995], 216 n. 14). For another Aesop fable in which the bat cleverly changes identities, see Aesop's Fables , trans. Gibbs, , no. 364, 172. On the owl, see Rappoport, , Mediæval Legends of Christ (n. 29 above), 123.Google Scholar

89 Tony Chartrand-Burke argues that the Greek text preceded the other versions (“The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: The Text, Its Origins, and Its Transmission,” [PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2001], 47–49, 127–29), and Elliott, , The Apocryphal New Testament (n. 3 above), 69.Google Scholar

90 For an English translation of the Arabic text (found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Or. 350), see that by Walker, , “The Infancy of the Saviour,” 405–15. For an edition of the Arabic text (found in the aforesaid manuscript) with a facing-page Latin translation, see Sike, H., ed., Euangelium Infantiae uel liber apocryphus de Infantia Saluatoris ex manuscripto edidit ac latina uersione et notis illustrauit (Utrecht, 1697). There are a few other extant manuscripts containing an Arabic account of Jesus's infancy, one of which is Florence, Bibliotheca Laurenziana, Or. 387 [32], which extends into his adulthood; see Chartrand-Burke, , “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 127–29, and Genequand, Charles, “Vie de Jésus en arabe,” in Écrits apocryphes chrétiens , ed. Bovon, François and Geoltrain, Pierre (Paris, 1997), 1:205–38. See futher n. 97 below.Google Scholar

91 Chartrand-Burke, , “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 127.Google Scholar

92 Margoliouth, David, “Is Islam a Christian Heresy?” Muslim World 23 (1933): 6–15, at 9.Google Scholar

93 Elliott, , The Apocryphal New Testament , 100. See also Chartrand-Burke, , “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” 89 and 126–29.Google Scholar

94 “Through being translated into Arabic the [apocryphal infancy] legends became known to the Muslims. At any rate Mohammed was familiar with this tradition and adopted many of the legends in the Koran” (Cullmann, Oscar, “Infancy Gospels,” in New Testament Apocrypha , ed. Schneemelcher, William, trans. Wilson, R. McL., vol. 1, Gospels and Related Writings [Philadelphia, 1963], 414–69, at 456).Google Scholar

95 “The Infancy of the Saviour,” trans. Walker, , 414.Google Scholar

96 Ibid., 412.Google Scholar

97 For an edition of the text in this manuscript, see that by Provera, Mario E., Il vangelo arabo dell'infanzia: secondo il MS. Laurenziano Orientale (n. 387) (Jerusalem, 1973).Google Scholar

98 On the influence of the apocrypha on the Qur'an, see Parrinder, , Jesus in the Qur'ān (n. 81 above), passim; Robinson, Neal, Christ in Islam and Christianity (Albany, 1991), passim; Leirvik, Oddbj⊘rn, Images of Jesus Christ in Islam, 2nd ed. (London, 2010), passim; as well as Horn, “Intersections” (n. 76 above).Google Scholar

99 On Peter the Venerable's interest in Islam, see, e.g., Kritzeck, James, Peter the Venerable and Islam (Princeton, 1964). On Robert of Ketton, see Charles Burnett's entry on him in Matthew, H. C. G. and Harrison, Brian, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004), 31:465–67.Google Scholar

100 See Burman, Thomas E., Reading the Qur'ān in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560 (Philadelphia, 2007).Google Scholar

101 In his De haeresibus, John calls Muhammad a “false prophet” who, “having casually been exposed to the Old and the New Testament and supposedly encountered an Arian monk, formed a heresy of his own” (trans. in Sahas, Daniel J., John of Damascus and Islam: The “Heresy of the Ishmaelites” [Leiden, 1972], 133).Google Scholar

102 “Vt autem non solum Gentiles & Idololatras, sed etiam Christianos simplices ad sectam suam detestabilem facilius traheret, quasi in laudem domini nostri Jesu Christi quaedam miracula de infantia Saluatoris, quae in libris inueniantur apocryphis, libro legis suae, quae Alcoranus dicitur inseruit, dicens: quod Christus cum puer esset, de luto terrae volucres procreauit. Et quaedam alia miracula, quae nec in Euangeliis continentur, nec ab Ecclesia recipiuntur, de Christo praedicauit” ( Historia Hierosolimitana Abbreviata , in Gesta Dei per Francos , ed. Bongars, Jacques [Hanover, 1611], 1059).Google Scholar

103 “Cetera quae ab hereticis sive scismaticis conscripta vel praedicta sunt, nullatenus recipit catholica et apostolica Romana ecclesia; e quibus pauca, quae ad memoriam venerunt et a catholicis vitanda sunt, credidimus esse subdenda” ( Das Decretum Gelasianum: De libris recipiendis et non recipiendis , ed. von Dobschütz, Ernst, TU 38 [Leipzig, 1912], 11).Google Scholar

104 Dzon, , “Cecily Neville” (n. 38 above).Google Scholar

105 “Ille namque formis uolatilium luteis a se compositis insufflans uolatile faciet”; “formis uolatilium luteis a se factis insufflans uolatum praebuit” ( Machumetis Saracenorum principis, eiusque successorum vitae, doctrina, ac ipse Alcoran , ed. Bibliander, Theodore [Basel, 1550], 23 and 44). John V. Tolan points out that “Robert of Ketton produced not a literal rendering of the Muslim sacred text but a Latin adaptation in which difficult and obscure passages are explained; it is generally impossible for the reader to distinguish between the actual text of the Qur'an and the explicative material inserted by Robert” (Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages [Gainesville, FL, 2008], 53).Google Scholar

106 For a brief discussion of these authors' views of Islam, see Kedar, Benjamin Z., Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton, 1984), 116–29; 180–83.Google Scholar

107 The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints , trans. Ryan, William Granger, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1993), 2:370–71. “Asseruit etiam pseudopropheta uera quedam falsis immiscens quod Moyses fuit magnus propheta, sed Christus maior et summus prophetarum natus ex Maria uirgine uirtute dei absque semine hominis. Ait quoque in suo Alcorano quod Christus dum adhuc puer esset de limo terre uolucres procreauit, sed uenenum immiscuit quia Christus non uere passum nec uere resurrexisse dixit” (de Voragine, Jacobus, Legenda aurea , ed. Maggioni, Giovanni Paolo, 2nd ed., 2 vols. [Tavarnuzze, 1998], chap. 177, 2:1262). Norman Daniel notes that “Muslim devotion to Jesus and his mother was often welcomed as ‘poison mixed with honey,’” since it involved a denial of the Passion and Resurrection (The Arabs and Mediaeval Europe, 2nd ed. [London, 1979], 251).Google Scholar

108 E.g., the story that the pregnant Mary had a vision of two peoples, one rejoicing and the other lamenting, on her journey to Bethlehem with Joseph (The Golden Legend , trans. Ryan, , 1:38; Legenda aurea , ed. Maggioni, , chap. 6, 1:65). Cf. Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium , ed. Gijsel, (n. 9 above), chap. 13, 1:413; Protoevangelium, chap. 17, in Hock, , The Infancy Gospels, 63.Google Scholar

109 The Golden Legend , trans. Ryan, , 1:168, 213, 275; Legenda aurea , ed. Maggioni, , chaps. 45, 51, 63, 1:280, 352, 456.Google Scholar

110 Hanson, Craig L., “Manuel I Comnenus and the ‘God of Muhammad’: A Study in Byzantine Ecclesiastical Politics,” in Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam (n. 78 above), 55–82, at 55. On Mary as the sister of Aaron, see Parrinder, , Jesus in the Qur'ān (n. 81 above), 64 and 78.Google Scholar

111 I translate here the French rendering of the facing Greek text provided by Montet, Edouard (“Un rituel d'abjuration des musulmans dans l'église grecque,” Revue de l'histoire des religions 53 [1906]: 145–63, at 152): “J'anathématise le radotage de Môamed disant que Notre-Seigneur et Dieu Jésus-Christ est né de Marie, sœur de Moïse et d'Aaron … et qu'étant encore tout petit enfant, il modelait des oiseaux avec de la boue, et, en soufflant les rendait vivants.” Google Scholar

112 Daniel, Norman, Islam and the West: Making of an Image , rev. ed. (Oxford, 1993), 13.Google Scholar

113 “The complete narrative … could not have been written before the tenth century” (Dan, Joseph, “Toledot Yeshu,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica , ed. Skolnik, Fred, 2nd ed., 22 vols. [Detroit, 2007], 20:28–29). Peter Schäfer mentions the preparation of a new edition of the Toledot Yeshu with an English translation (Jesus in the Talmud [Princeton, 2007], 145 n. 3).Google Scholar

114 Dan, , “Toledot Yeshu,” 29. The earliest critical study of the Toledot was by Krauss, Samuel, Das Leben Jesü nach jüdischen Quellen (Hildesheim, 1977; repr. of 1902 ed.). For a study in English, see Goldstein, Morris, Jesus in the Jewish Tradition (New York, 1950). Hugh J. Schonfield traces parallels between the Toledot and other literature, such as the apocrypha (According to the Hebrews [London, 1937]). For more recent scholarship, see Schlichting, Günter, Ein jüdisches Leben Jesu: Die verschollene Toledot-Jeschu-Fassung Tam u-mu'ad: Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Motivsynopse, Bibliographie (Tübingen, 1982); Osier, Jean-Pierre, L'Évangile du ghetto (Paris, 1984); Di Segni, Riccardo, Il vangelo del ghetto (Rome, 1985); and Das jüdische Leben Jesu, Toldot Jeschu: die älteste lateinische Übersetzung in den Falsitates Judeorum von Thomas Ebendorf , ed. Callsen, Brigitta et al. (Vienna, 2003). Hans-Josef Klauck provides a summary for non-specialists in Apocryphal Gospels: An Introduction (London, 2003), chap. 12, 211–20.Google Scholar

115 Krauss briefly discusses the apocryphal infancy legends as possible sources of the Toledot, and also cites the scene from Luke 2:46–47 in which Jesus prematurely debates with the rabbis in the temple ( Das Leben Jesu , 167–68).Google Scholar

116 Schlichting, , Ein jüdisches Leben Jesu , 87, 195 n. 192. Cf. Krauss, , Das Leben Jesu, 168, 261 n. 3.Google Scholar

117 Krauss, , Das Leben Jesu , 168, 261 n. 3.Google Scholar

118 In the version edited by Schlichting, schoolboys close in on Jesus, ready to kill him with their shoes, since he presumed to teach Halakha ( Ein jüdisches Leben Jesu , 79).Google Scholar

119 In this section, I paraphrase the text in Goldstein, Jesus in the Jewish Tradition, 148–54. For translations into English, see also “The Life of Jesus,” in Bachrach, Bernard S., Jews in Barbarian Europe (Lawrence, KS, 1977), 98–102, and Basser, Herbert W., “The Acts of Jesus,” in The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume , ed. Walfish, Barry, 2 vols. (Haifa, 1993), 1:273–82. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century translations into English are reprinted as the appendices in Zindler, Frank R., The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: Sepher Toldoth Yeshu and the Quest for the Historical Jesus in Jewish Sources (Cranford, NJ, 2003).Google Scholar

120 De Iudaicis superstitionibus 10, in Opera omnia , ed. van Acker, L., CCM 52 (Turnhout, 1981), 206. Cf. Osier, , L'Évangile du ghetto, 159–60. While Agobard's knowledge of the Toledot is debatable, his successor, Amulo, provides “virtually a Latin rendition of Aramaic Toledot Yeshu” (Hillel I. Newman, “The Death of Jesus in the Toledot Yeshu,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 50 [1999]: 59–79, at 68). For the text, see Epistola contra Judaeos, PL 116:141–84.Google Scholar

121 On the efforts of the friars to confute Judaism, see Chazan, Robert, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, 1989), and Cohen, Jeremy, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY, 1982). On Christian anti-Jewish polemical literature, see further Dahan, Gilbert, The Christian Polemic against the Jews in the Middle Ages , trans. Gladding, Jody (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), and Funkenstein, Amos, “Basic Types of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the Later Middle Ages,” Viator 2 (1971): 373–82. Also useful is Berger, David, Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue: Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations (Boston, 2010).Google Scholar

122 In the version edited and translated by Schlichting, the lines that describe Jesus's making of birds indicate that he uttered a magic spell ( Ein jüdisches Leben Jesu , 111).Google Scholar

123 “Faciebant itaque homines Galilææ aues de luto coram eo, et ipse dicebat, ‘Schemhamephoras’ super eas; et statim illæ aues uolabant. Ceciderunt ergo illi in facies suas adorantes eum” (Martí, Ramon, Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Judæos [Farnborough, UK, 1967; repr. of Leipzig ed., 1687], 363). See also Osier, , L'Évangile du ghetto, 161–65. For the text by Porchetus, see Victoria Porcheti adversus impios Hebraeos (Paris, 1520), chap. 11, fols. 30r–31r, and Das jüdische Leben Jesu, 98–107 (with the German translation by Martin Luther).Google Scholar

124 Kieckhefer, Richard, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2004), 34–35. Cf. Di Segni, , Il vangelo del ghetto, 142–52, and Dalman, Gustaf, Jesus Christ in the Talmud, Midrash, Zohar and the Liturgy of the Synagogue (New York, 1973), 45–50. On this characterization of Jesus, see also Smith, Morton, Jesus the Magician (New York, 1977); Mathews, Thomas F., “The Magician,” in The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton, 1993), 54–91; and Nicholson, R. H., “The Trial of Christ the Sorcerer in the York Cycle,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 16 (1986): 125–69.Google Scholar

125 Derogatory statements about Jesus, including the idea that he learned the art of magic in Egypt, are found in the high-medieval Jewish polemical text Nizzahon Vetus (see Berger, David, ed., The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus [Philadelphia, 1979], passim).Google Scholar

126 For example, the Vita rhythmica recounts that, after Jesus vivifies clay birds, some people speculate that “magus hic est et incantator” (ed. Vögtlin [n. 29 above], 103, lines 2960–62).Google Scholar

127 Qur'an 5:112. This passage is found almost immediately after God reminds Jesus how he gave him power to vivify clay birds.Google Scholar

128 For a wide-ranging discussion of borrowings between medieval Jews and Christians, see the insightful work of Yuval, Israel Jacob, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages , trans. Harshav, Barbara and Chipman, Jonathan (Berkeley, 2006). Both Yuval's study and Amos Funkenstein's writings, particularly his concept of counter-history, advance the position that medieval Jews polemically and self-defensively appropriated elements of Christian culture, which contributed to the formation of their own identity (see Funkenstein, , Perceptions of Jewish History [Berkeley, 1993]). Biale, David (“Counter History and Jewish Polemics against Christianity: The Sefer toldot yeshu and the Sefer zerubavel,” Jewish Social Studies 6 [1999]: 130–45) sees Funkenstein's theory of the counter-history as not fully applicable to the Toledot Yeshu, partly because the latter incorporates folklore, but since medieval Christians tended to blur apocryphal legends and biblical narratives, such a distinction to me seems artificial.Google Scholar

129 For studies on the child within Christianity, see, among others, Bakke, O. M., When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity , trans. McNeil, Brian (Minneapolis, 2005); Horn, Cornelia B. and Martens, John W., “Let the Children Come to Me”: Childhood and Children in Early Christianity (Washington, DC, 2009); Herlihy, David, “Medieval Children,” in Women, Family and Society: Historical Essays, 1978–1991 , ed. Molho, A. (Providence, RI, 1995), 215–43; MacLehose, William F., “A Tender Age”: Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (New York, 2008); Berthon, Éric, “Le Sourire des anges,” Médiévales 25 (1993): 93–111; The Vocation of the Child , ed. Brennan, Patrick McKinley (Grand Rapids, 2008); and The Child in Christian Thought , ed. Bunge, Marcia J. (Grand Rapids, 2001).Google Scholar

130 “Non solum vero terrae aerisque animalia illius iussionibus obtemperabant, immo etiam aqua aerque ipsi veri Dei vero famulo oboediebant. Nam qui auctori omnium creaturarum fideliter et integro spiritu famulatur, non est mirandum, si eius imperiis ac votis omnis creatura deserviat. At plerumque idcirco subiectae nobis creaturae dominum perdimus, quia Domino universorum creatori servire negligimus” ( Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac , ed. and trans. Colgrave, Bertram [Cambridge, 1956], chap. 38, 120–21). Felix here is quoting Bede's prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti, chap. 21 (Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert , ed. and trans. Colgrave, Bertram [Cambridge, 1940], 224–25).Google Scholar

131 Vita prima, bk. 1, chap. 21, in The Saint, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents , ed. Armstrong, Regis J., Wayne Hellman, J. A., and Short, William J. (New York, 1999), 1:234–35. For the Latin, see Fontes Franciscani , ed. Menestò, Enrico and Brufani, Stefano (Assisi, 1995), 332–35. For a study, see Sorrell, Roger D., “Tradition and Innovation, Harmony and Hierarchy in St. Francis of Assisi's Sermon to the Birds,” Franciscan Studies 43 (1983): 396–407.Google Scholar

132 Klingender, Francis, Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages , ed. Antal, Evelyn and Harthan, John (Cambridge, MA, 1971), 442–43. See further idem, “St. Francis and the Birds of the Apocalypse,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16 (1953): 13–23.Google Scholar

133 On this manuscript, see James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library in Eton College (Cambridge, 1895), 35–37.Google Scholar

134 This is actually not the only apocryphal account of animation since, in the Latin IGT, Jesus causes a dry fish to cast out its salt and move about ( Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, [n. 11 above], 164–65).Google Scholar

135 The apocryphal Child's interactions with animals are briefly mentioned by Hobgood-Oster, Laura, Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in Christian Tradition (Urbana, IL, 2008), 46–51, and Alexander, Dominic, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, UK, 2008), 23 and 35–36.Google Scholar

136 Evangelia apocrypha , ed. Tischendorf, , 80, 85, and 110.Google Scholar

137 Peter the Venerable, e.g., says that Jews are irrational and thus unhuman, in his anti-Jewish treatise Adversus Iudaeorum inveteram duritiem , ed. Friedman, Yvonne, CCM 58 (Turnhout, 1985), 57–58 and 225–26. For a summary, see Lukyn Williams, A., Adversus Judaeos: A Bird's-Eye View of Christian Apologiae until the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1935), 387–88.Google Scholar

138 “The Chariot and the Donkey,” in The Clash of Gods (n. 124 above), 23–53, at 48.Google Scholar

139 Hagiography also sometimes implies that animals are more receptive to God's goodness than humans. Roger of Wendover (d. 1236), a monk of St. Albans, says that after Innocent III approved Francis's rule, the saint encountered resistance when he tried to preach to the Romans. He thus “went out of the city, and in the suburbs found crows …, ravens, kites, magpies, and several other birds flying in the air,” to whom he preached, mentioning the “wretched Romans” who “despised” the word of God (quoted in Lewis, Suzanne, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora [Berkeley, 1987], 314–15). Il Fioretti recounts a similar tale: how St. Anthony of Padua preached to the fish because the heretics at Rimini would not listen to him (Il Fioretti di San Franceso , ed. Accrocca, Felice, L'Anima del Mondo 14 [Asti, 1997], 170).Google Scholar