The Infancy and Youth of Jesus - Part 1

[Guest guest]

" My purpose in noting the broader narratives of Jesus' life available in ancient

records is not to insinuate their authenticity or opine as to their factualness,

but rather to suggest their plausibility against the background of India's vast

spiritual tradition of saints, rishis, and avatars. " (Paramahansa Yogananda,

p.63)

 

 

The Infancy and Youth of Jesus - Part 1

 

(p.66) 'And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and

the grace of God was upon him' (Luke 2:40).

 

The Gospels of the New Testament contain an inordinate paucity of information

concerning the early years of Jesus. The verses are silent about the entire

period of his infancy in Egypt and his youth in Israel, with the one exception

of Luke's account of the twelve-year-old boy sagely disputing with the learned

men in the temple in Jerusalem. Either unknown or dicountenanced by the general

Christian populace are ancient manuscripts that purport to relate anecdotes

about the child Jesus. Titled simply as " The Gospels of the Infancy of Jesus

Christ " (of which one is attributed to Jesus' disciple Thomas), these are

referenced as in use and held sacred by some Christians, including the Gnostics,

as early as the second century, and by other Christian sects in the following

ages. [1]

 

Alternative voices from

antiquity: scriptural fact

or heretical fiction?

 

Time works on men's minds, especially on those removed from the instant of

happening, to enhance or detract from the character of noteworthy personages and

the events associated with their lives. (p.67) If these are of religious import,

transformations of facts into legend seem to be even more precipitate. Yet who

can gainsay that the charm and mystery of pulling the threads of truth from the

fabric of legendary tellings does not produce a singular inspiration and awe

absent in the merely prosaic? India well understood this and cloaked her most

sacred spiritual wealth and the godly givers of this treasure with symbology and

a depth of meaningful mythology that has preserved her scriptural principles and

codes throughout generations of foreign domination and influence. Perhaps the

voices from antiquity should not be altogether silenced by offhand dismissal

from our mental consideration. Discriminative perusal, however, is certainly

warranted. Both innocent distortion and outright willful falsity are inevitable

when truth is passed through the interpretations of successive generations, or

even of individuals within a single generation, each of which finds it expedient

to make it " clearly understood " according to what best suits the present time

and purpose.

 

This sorting out of fact from fiction to maintain the integrity of the Christian

church and doctrine was clearly the intention of the early church fathers. The

twenty-seven books of the New Testament that today constitute the Biblical

account of the life and teaching of Jesus were gleaned by the early church from

a much larger collection of texts. [2] Councils of the so-called learned were

assembled to debate and determine holy doctrine from heresy. (p.68) Propounders

who were judged to be heretics might find themselves condemned to the flames

along with their writings. One wonders how honest an appraisal could be made by

an individual member of one of these councils when not only their reputation but

their very life depended on the favor of a political and religious hierarchy.

 

William Hone, in 'The Apocryphal New Testament', cites a legendary telling--at

which one must wonder--of events at the Council of Nicaea, convened by Emperor

Constantine in A.D. 325, which recounts how some three hundred bishops, having

" promiscuously put all the books that were referred to the Council for

determination under the communion table in a church, they besought the Lord that

the inspired writings might get upon the table, while the spurious ones remained

underneath, and that it happened accordingly. " In regard to the bishops

assembled at this Council, annotator Hone remarks: " The Emperor Constantine

says, that what was approved by these bishops could be nothing less than the

determination of God Himself; since the Holy Spirit residing in such great and

worthy souls, unfolded to them the divine will. Yet Sabinus, the Bishop of

Heraclea, affirms that 'excepting Constantine himself, and Eusebius Pamphilus,

these were a set of illiterate simple creatures that understood nothing.' " One

can hardly suppress at least a modicum of mental fraternity with the commentator

John Jortin (1698-1770; archdeacon of London) who, we are told by Hone, in

analyzing the authority of these General Councils wryly concluded: " The Council

held by the Apostles at Jerusalem [Acts 1] was the first and the last in which

the Holy Spirit may be affirmed to have presided. " [3]

 

Influence of a dark age

on the official canon of

scripture

 

The influence of the dark age in which Jesus took incarnation, and which

continued for several successive centuries, may well be faulted as providing a

confounding background of ignorance and superstition that led the church fathers

to exclude certain texts from the official canon of scripture. (p.69) It is not

altogether surprising that in attempting to define and preserve the memory and

message of Jesus, believers were wont to err on the side of authenticating only

those doctrines and texts that would best defend the new faith against contrary

or diluting forces and secure the power of church hierarchy as the supreme

keepers of the faith. Above all, their doctrinal concept of what the nature and

acts of Jesus should be as the unique and perfect Son of God come to earth, with

all that this implied to the understanding of the times, was in no measure to be

compromised. [4]

 

The absolute proof of truth must pass more than the reasoned analysis of

pedants, the prayers of faith of ecclesiastics, the scientific testing of

dedicated researchers; the ultimate validation of any doctrine lies in the

actual personal realization of those who touch the Sole Reality. Diversity of

opinion in religious matters will doubtless persist so long as the masses are

still wanting in such qualification. Nevertheless, God must enjoy the

heterogenous medley in His human family, for He has not troubled Himself to

write clear directions across the heavens for all alike to see and follow in

unity.

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within You) Volume

1, Discourse 4, pg. 63-69

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

Notes:

 

[1] The texts to which Paramahansaji refers were a part of 'The Apocryphal New

Testament', edited and annotated by William Hone (fourth edition, published in

London in 1821). The book's title page identifies it as " being all the gospels,

epistles, and other pieces now extant, attributed in the first four centuries to

Jesus Christ, his apostles, and their companions, and not included in the New

Testament by its compilers. " Two " infancy gospels " are included in Hone's

volume. The first, now called 'The Arabic Infancy Gospel', was translated into

English in 1697 by Henry Sike, professor of oriental languages at Cambridge

University, from an Arabic manuscript, which current scholars believe was

derived from an earlier version in the Syriac language (a dialect of Aramaic).

Some of the stories therein also appear in the Koran.

 

The second Infancy Gospel included in Hone's book is a short fragment of 'The

Infancy Gospel of Thomas'. A manuscript of this gospel that is more complete

than what Hone reproduced was later discovered and is readily available in works

by later scholars; indeed, much of the material in the Arabic Infancy Gospel is

now thought to have come from the earlier Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The very

early origins of the material in Thomas' text are attested to by a reference to

them in writings by the church father Irenaeus in A.D. 185.

 

Interestingly, Hone mentions the fact that in 1599 it was discovered that the

Arabic Infancy Gospel was in use by a congregation of Nestorian Christians

active in the mountains of Malabar on the coast of India. Traditionally, this is

the area associated with the missionary activity of the apostle Thomas himself

(see page 59 n.). ('Publisher's Note')

 

[2] " And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they

should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not

contain the books that should be written " (John 21:25).

 

Andrew Bernhard, author of 'Jesus of Nazareth in Early Christian Gospels',

writes: " Comments such as the conclusion of the Gospel of John (21:25) make it

clear that early Christians had no shortage of stories about Jesus. They

undoubtedly spoke often of their recently departed master, sharing all that they

remembered of him with each other and anyone else who was willing to listen.

When it became evident that Jesus' memory could not be preserved forever by oral

traditions dependent on the recollections of first-hand witnesses, some of his

followers decided to write down what they believed about him for posterity.

According to the Gospel of Luke (1:1-4), 'many' ancient writers endeavored 'to

draw up an account' of the activities of Jesus. Although identified and

described in the writings of numerous early Christian authors, such as Origen

('Homily on Luke' 1:1). " ('Publisher's Note')

 

[3] John Jortin, 'Remarks on Ecclesiastical History', Vol. II.

 

[4] The first appearance of the specific compilation of books that today are

known as the New Testament was in A.D. 367.

 

For centuries, the existence of many of the texts that were suppressed and

destroyed was virtually unknown to scholars and believers alike. Some of them

came to light in the famous discovery at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. Because of

the Nag Hammadi discoveries, writes Elaine Pagels, Ph.D., professor of religion

at Princeton University and a renowned scholar of early Christianity, " we now

begin to see that what we call Christianity--and what we identify as Christian

tradition--actually represents only a small selection of specific sources,

chosen from among dozens of others....

 

" By A.D. 200...Christianity had become an institution headed by a three-rank

hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons, who understood themselves to be the

guardians of the only 'true faith.'...The efforts of the majority to destroy

every trace of heretical 'blasphemy' proved so successful that, until the

discoveries at Nag Hammadi, nearly all our information concerning alternative

forms of early Christianity came from the massive orthodox attacks upon

them....Had they been discovered 1,000 years earlier, [these] texts almost

certainly would have been burned for their heresy.... Today we read them with

different eyes, not merely as 'madness and blasphemy' but as Christians in the

first centuries experienced them--a powerful alternative to what we know as

orthodox Christian tradition. " --Elaine Pagels, 'The Gnostic Gospels' (New York:

Vintage Books, 1981). ('Publisher's Note')