In the stories about the childhood of Christ that are not included in the Bible, the god-man behaves like an ordinary tomboy: he constantly gets into fights, is rude to teachers, and the Mother of God is called to the principal for this. His parents forced Christ to wash the dishes and sent him to study at the ancient equivalent of a vocational school - however, nothing good came of it.
Why was it important for believers to know the “prequel” to the story of the Son of God and how medieval artists illustrated these unusual legends? The story is told by historian Sergei Zotov, author of the books “Iconographic Mayhem” and “History of Alchemy.”
Introduction: why were apocrypha written?
In the Middle Ages, when profession was most often passed on by inheritance, it determined a person’s social status much more strongly than in other eras; Some activities were considered especially pleasing to God, while others, on the contrary, were sinful and despicable. It is not surprising that while telling about the Savior, the Bible talks about the crafts that Christ and his relatives were engaged in. Everyone knows that Joseph, the husband of Mary and the adoptive father of Christ, was a carpenter. But where did the medieval images come from, where Christ himself works on wood or acts as a dyer? What kind of strange professions are these for a godman? Why is Jesus also depicted doing household chores?
And where did the illustrations come from in which the young Christ tames dragons, rides in the sun's rays, as if down a hill, and goes to school, where he fights with the neighboring boys and teachers? In order to understand all this, we will have to dive into the history of Christian apocrypha
, that is, texts not included in the official biblical canon.
The New Testament was the foundation on which the biography of Christ was built, but it did not speak at all about many things (for example, about his childhood) or spoke too briefly. The gaps left in Scripture were filled with numerous apocrypha. They played the same role as sequels and prequels in modern cinema, and narrated what happened before or after the events that could be read about in the canonical Gospels.
Some of the apocryphal traditions that contradicted the “official” version of events or were filled with fantastic details were viewed with disapproval by the Church and outright prohibited their dissemination. However, other apocrypha - say, those about the life of the Holy Family - were very popular. Many subjects of Christian iconography (for example, the Descent of Christ into Hell) and even church holidays (like the Assumption of the Virgin Mary) arose under the influence of apocryphal legends, for which it is difficult to find support in the New Testament.
The first apocrypha were recorded in Asia Minor and Syria, where Christian preaching was especially active. They were needed, among other things, to confirm the idea, which was not obvious to all believers at the turn of the 1st–2nd centuries, that Jesus was God himself, and not just Christ (that is, the “messiah”). Since the Greco-Roman world was accustomed to the deification of heroes and emperors, thanks to the apocrypha, in which Jesus already in infancy performs a huge number of exploits, the Savior quickly began to be perceived as God.
Jews who did not believe the stories of the early Christians tried to ridicule their theology, calling Jesus a parody of Perseus, who was also born of a virgin (Zeus penetrated Danae in the form of gold coins without violating her virginity), or pointing out his low descent from Mary , who was supposedly a spinner. As we see, to this day the Mother of God is often depicted spinning - Christians probably borrowed this attribute of hers from their ideological opponents.
The attention of first-century believers was focused on the preaching, death and resurrection of Jesus, not on his childhood. However, in the Gospel of Luke there is - the only one in the entire Bible - a story about the adolescence of Christ, in which he remains alone in Jerusalem and talks with teachers in the Temple. It was to him that all the apocrypha about the childhood of the Savior appealed, showing their continuity in relation to the canonical text.
In the second century, the childhood apocrypha was required to satisfy the need of believers for a more complete picture of the life of their messiah; Moreover, many newly-made Christians were yesterday's pagans, accustomed to stories of miracles. “Prequels” were required not only for them, but also in order to explain to opponents of Christianity what happened to Jesus during those seventeen years about which the canonical gospels are silent. So one of the most popular apocryphal stories was the story of Jesus’ childhood and youth.
In the II–VI centuries. the so-called “Gospel of the Savior’s childhood” appears. In them, they tried to portray Christ as looking like an ordinary child: he helped his parents around the house, went to school, and even became an apprentice to a craftsman. However, this everyday life, of course, was filled with miracles that Jesus, a true man and a true God, tirelessly performed. Some of these apocrypha were translated into Russian back in Soviet times by antiquarian Irina Sventsitskaya (“Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew”, etc.), as well as by her colleague Alexander Skogorev (“Arabic Gospel of the Savior’s Childhood”).
Many legends from the apocrypha were written down by Gnostics, so the word “apocrypha” itself became associated with their faith. Gnostic
creeds, that is, those that arose in parallel with the Christian and in the same environment, were criticized by Christian theologians as heretical, and then were completely eradicated - however, their retellings of apocryphal stories remained in popular rumor and were recorded from memory.
The Gnostic apocrypha that has reached us tells unique stories about the childhood of Jesus that have not been preserved anywhere else. For example, in the story of the life of Christ by the Gnostic Justin (2nd century), it is mentioned that at the age of twelve he was a shepherd and looked after a flock of sheep. This story probably arose from the common designation of Jesus as the “good shepherd.” Indeed, in the Gospel, he, instructing the entire “flock” on the good path, all people without exception, including sinners - “lost sheep”, said about himself: “I am the good shepherd […] I also have other sheep that are not of this fold , and I must bring them also: and they will hear My voice, and there will be one flock and one Shepherd” (John 10: 13-16). Justin interprets these words not as an allegory, but literally, and the young Jesus becomes a shepherd.
In a Gnostic text of the 3rd–4th centuries. The Pistis Sophia mentions that the young Savior helped his father put up supports in the vineyard. This episode from the life of Christ could also be an interpretation of an allegory from the canonical Gospel. Following the words with which the Son of God addressed the disciples, holding out the cup to them (“drink from it, all of you, for this is My Blood of the New Testament” - Matt. 26:27), the Church correlated the Eucharistic wine with the blood of Christ. That is why his establishment of vineyards symbolized his work to save humanity.
The Christian apocrypha drew its plots not only from the above-mentioned texts, but also from folklore stories, the traditions of preachers, and sometimes they were constructed by copyists of biblical texts who tried to facilitate their understanding. That is why the Church eventually began to consider most apocrypha to be distortions of the truth. Among them were stories with such incredible titles as “The Book of the Giant Og, Who Fought with Dragons after the Flood” or “The Book of the Daughters of Adam.” However, those that survived censorship could be included in medieval books along with the official gospels - so today we have rich visual material illustrating the apocrypha about the childhood of Christ.
One of the first such apocrypha about the young Jesus was the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, created in the mid-2nd century by the author of another popular text, James's Story of the Birth of Mary. In the latter, for example, it was said that Jesus had half-brothers, the sons of Joseph, and after the immaculate conception, Joseph and Mary were tested with bitter water (it exposed liars - if you lie and drink it, God would show the liar marks on his face and a tumor on his thigh ).
Although such stories sometimes even found their way onto church frescoes in the Middle Ages, most of the stories in this apocrypha, created to combat opponents of Christianity in the 2nd century, in particular critics of the Immaculate Conception, were later unacceptable to Catholic theology. Jerome of Stridon, a translator of the Bible into Latin, argued against the authenticity of these works in the 4th–5th centuries, but they were quite common in the East.
God believes in man
...God appeared before us because He wanted to become one of us, so that not a single person on earth would be ashamed of his God: as if God was so great, so far away that there was no approach to Him. He became one of us in our humiliation and in our deprivation; <...> through His love, through His understanding, through His forgiveness and mercy, He became close to those whom others rejected because they were sinners. He did not come to the righteous, He came to love and seek sinners. He came so that not a single person who has lost respect for himself could think that God has lost respect for him, that God no longer sees him as someone worthy of His love.
You can read these and other materials in the special issues “Christmas Nativity Scene” - a joint project of the magazine “Foma” and the campaign group “Kardos”.
"The Gospel of Thomas": the revival of sparrows and the death of the teacher
Each chapter of The Gospel of Thomas describes one of the miracles performed by the child Jesus. It also discussed in detail his stay with his family in Egypt - an episode only briefly mentioned in the New Testament. Two-year-old Christ and his family lived with a young widow who sheltered them. One day he began throwing salted fish into a basin, which immediately released salt and came to life (researchers believe that this may be a hint at the revival of Egyptian mummies, as well as future miracles of the resurrection of people).
The neighbors suspected the holy family of sorcerers, so Joseph, Mary and their child had to move. At the age of three, Jesus was walking through the city and saw a teacher giving a lecture to his disciples. Then he threw grain to the twelve guest sparrows sitting next to him - the birds began to fight for food and eventually fell right on top of the teacher. The teacher grabbed the Savior by the ear, but he told him the meaning of his leprosy - this was a hint of strife among his students; here also a parallel was implied with the future twelve apostles of Christ. For this prank, young Jesus and his family are again driven out of the city, and in the next chapter they move to Nazareth.
In a new place, five-year-old Jesus, playing, built small ponds, and in them he made twelve clay sparrows. The neighbors were outraged by his action - after all, it was Saturday, holy for Jews, on this day nothing could be made. Joseph had already begun to scold his child, but Jesus revived the sparrows, and they began to fly and praise God.
All the Jews were amazed, but one of the boys began to destroy the ponds of Christ. Then he called him “a wicked, ignorant sodomite” and cursed him, so much so that he immediately fell and died. This apocryphal episode was known to Muhammad through the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Savior and even became part of the Koran: “O Isa, son of Maryam! Remember the mercy I showed you and your mother. I supported you with the Holy Spirit (Jibril), thanks to which you spoke to people in the cradle and as an adult. I taught you the Scripture, wisdom, Taurat (Torah) and Injil (Gospel). By My permission you made statues of birds from clay and blew on them, and by My permission they became birds” (5.110).
The hatred and misunderstanding towards the child Jesus only intensified after this act (forming a parallel to his persecution as an adult). A few days after the miracle with the sparrows, one of the children hit Christ on the street (in other versions, he threw a stone or crashed into him). However, as soon as the boy did this, he immediately fell dead. Then the young man's parents complained to Joseph about Jesus, but instead of resurrecting the murdered boy, Christ blinded his parents for their insolence. Then Joseph grabbed his stepson by the ear, to which Jesus said: “You don’t know who I am, but if you knew, you wouldn’t make me angry.”
Then the parents decide to send Christ to school. The teacher was amazed at the child’s knowledge, but ordered him to first learn the alphabet. Then Jesus began to predict the future of the teacher (sad, and apparently relating to all Jews who would be punished in the future for crucifying the Savior). Afterwards, Joseph nevertheless took his son to study writing with a second teacher. However, here too Christ began to be willful. As soon as the teacher hit him on the head (which was the norm in schools at that time), the godman told him: “I should teach you, not you teach me.” After this, he told him the entire alphabet by heart and discovered the secret meaning of the first letter (alef). The teacher recognized God in Jesus, and he healed all the people around them from all illnesses.
In the next story, Christ, along with other boys, jumped from the roof of a house. A neighbor boy jumped and fell to his death. The boy's parents thought that it was Jesus who pushed him, and in order to refute this, the Son of God forced the child to resurrect and tell him that this was not true.
A similar miracle happened a few days later. A boy, Christ's neighbor, was chopping wood and accidentally cut his leg (in those days this meant death from sepsis). Then the young Savior touched his foot and healed him. The crowd immediately believed that he was God. In the next episode, six-year-old Jesus, at the command of his mother, went to draw water into an earthen jug. However, people crowding around the well accidentally broke the vessel. Then the young Christ took water into his cloak, demonstrating another miracle.
Then the God-man went with Joseph to sow wheat. The harvest from what Christ sowed turned out to be a hundredfold - the family distributed the grain to the poor and orphans.
The following episode describes the profession of carpentry mentioned in the New Testament for Joseph and his son. When Christ was eight years old, he heard that his father was asked to make a bed, but Joseph did not have long enough boards for this. Then Jesus took hold of a piece of wood, pulled, and miraculously lengthened it.
After this, Joseph decides to send Christ to school for the third time. The boy sabotaged his lessons and refused to study. Then the teacher became enraged and hit Jesus on the head - it’s easy to guess that the teacher instantly paid for this offense with his life (however, in the end, the Son of God resurrects all those killed by him in this apocrypha). Joseph was afraid that the townspeople would be outraged by the behavior of his son, and ordered Mary to put him under house arrest. However, his friend, also a teacher, came to Joseph and offered to transfer the boy to home schooling.
Christ for the fourth time began to tell his wisdom to the teacher, instead of listening to him, but he did not beat him. On the contrary, he was so amazed by the child’s knowledge that he called many people, and they all admired the schoolboy’s extraordinary sermon.
In the final chapters of The Gospel of Thomas, Jesus heals a man who was bitten by a viper by simply blowing on his wound - and the snake then dies on its own; he also resurrects a seriously ill young man and revives a construction worker who died due to an accident. The apocrypha ends with the story of how the already twelve-year-old Jesus and his parents return to Jerusalem for Easter. On the way back, Joseph and Mary only think that their son is coming with them, but in fact he secretly returns to Jerusalem and preaches in the temple to all the teachers and elders.
In another similar apocrypha, “The Book of Joseph the Carpenter,” created in the 4th–5th centuries in Egypt, the author no longer shows the miracles of the young Christ, as in the “Gospel of the Childhood of Thomas,” and does not attribute them to the Virgin Mary, as in the “Nativity Story of Jacob.” Mary,” but ennobles Joseph—for example, by saying that he was ninety years old at the time of Jesus’ birth, which means he could not be the biological father of the Savior. This book tells in detail about Joseph’s sons from previous marriages—Christ’s half-brothers—and also describes in detail the death of Elder Joseph. This information was extremely valuable for theologians, since it refuted the popular point of view of opponents of Christianity, who reasoned that since Jesus had brothers, the Virgin Mary did not remain a virgin throughout her life.
Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem for the census
Mary, meanwhile, told Joseph what the Archangel Gabriel had announced to Her. She said that She would have a son and that he would be an unusual Person. And at night the Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. He said:
- Joseph from the line of David! Your betrothed bride, Mary, will have a Son from the Holy Spirit. You will call Him Jesus, which means Savior. For He will save people from their sins. This is how the ancient prediction that the Lord spoke through the prophet will be fulfilled.
From that time on, Joseph began to protect Mary even more and began to treat Her with reverence. After all, She was destined to become the Mother of the Lord, the Son of God, the Savior of the entire human race.
At that time, Judea was one of the provinces of the vast Roman Empire and was subject to Roman rulers. And so the order of Emperor Augustus was announced throughout the state. He ordered a census of his subjects in all lands of the empire, including Judea.
Every Jew had to come to the city where his family came from. There you had to tell the scribes your name, as well as the names of all members of your family.
Joseph, like Mary, came from the family of King David. And David’s hometown was small, poor Bethlehem, located not far from Jerusalem. Joseph and Mary went there.
They reached the town at the end of the day and spent a long time looking for where to stay for the night. Bethlehem was crowded with people flocking from all over Judea for the census.
Only late in the evening did Joseph and Mary find shelter. They settled in a cave near the city, which served as a stable for livestock.
There were sheep bleating, cows sighing, and a little donkey stepping with its hooves. But Joseph and Mary were glad to have such a refuge. They knew that the Lord cared about them and sent them this warm cave. In it they found peace and relaxation.
Joseph laid his cloak on the floor of the cave. And Mary, having prayed to God and feeling the approach of childbirth, lay down.
“Arabic Gospel of the Savior’s Childhood”: the rapist serpent and the mad Judas
In the “Arabic Gospel of the Childhood of the Savior,” written in Arabic in the 5th–6th centuries based on ancient legends, Christ appears as an even more incredible organizer of miracles than in the “Gospel of Thomas.” He begins to speak for the first time in the cradle, and then heals the old midwife from paralysis with one touch.
Seeing how powerful the baby is, she preserves the foreskin of Christ after circumcision, placing it in a vessel with oil and giving it to her son, an incense seller, for safekeeping, instructing her never to give the relic to anyone (in the Gospel of John Judas wants to sell this vessel, which here hints at his future betrayal of Christ).
It was not ordinary people who came to worship the divine baby, but magicians from the East, which was previously predicted by Zaradusht himself (Zoroastrian prophet Zarathustra). Mary gave them one of Christ's swaddling clothes, and the fire worshipers, returning to Persia, tried to burn it, but the fabric remained untouched. After the news that King Herod wants to kill Jesus, the family moves to Egypt, where another miracle occurs. As soon as Jesus was brought into the city, the earth shook there, and the local priests began to ask their pagan idol what was the matter, to which he replied: “A secret God came here, but truly He is God. And besides Him, no one is worthy to be revered as God, for He is truly the Son of God,” and then collapsed.
Satan lived in the idol, who also inhabited the son of the chief priest. He was not himself and attacked people, and now this boy chose Joseph and Mary as his target. The Mother of God was drying Jesus' diapers on poles, and the demoniac, jumping up to the holy family, became entangled in them. Their miraculous power immediately began to drive out demons from the young man, and they, turning into snakes and crows, began to jump out of his mouth. When reason returned to the boy, he began to glorify Christ.
After this, the fame of the miraculous baby spread throughout all lands. Passing by one wedding, Maria gave her child to the deaf-mute bride to hold, and she, barely cradling him in her arms, miraculously began to speak and hear. Hiding from Herod's persecution, the family moved all the time, and after living with the healed bride for three days, they moved to a new city.
There lived a virtuous wife who was raped every night by Satan in the form of a snake coiled around her womb. As soon as the wife saw the baby Jesus, she asked Mary to hold him and kiss him. After that, Satan never approached her again.
The next day, the woman saved from the serpent decided to bathe the infant Christ, and with the water remaining after washing him, she washed the leper girl, whose body had already become completely white - and she immediately recovered. Taking this girl as a companion, the holy family healed the son of the wife of the ruler of the city they came to from leprosy. In another city, Jesus cured a cursed man of impotence simply by spending the night in his house. Near another city, the family met three sisters crying over a richly decorated mule standing nearby.
Maria was surprised that such honors were given to a beast of burden, and the sisters told her a heartbreaking story: their brother was turned into a mule by witch brides, inflamed with jealousy towards each other. Placing Christ on the back of the animal, Mary asked to make the mule back a man. The mule immediately turned into a young man, and they decided to give him the companion of the holy family, a former leper, as his wife.
The family then went in search of a source of water and discovered a fig tree standing in the desert. Christ showed his family a source, Mary washed his shirt in it, and then saw that a balm appeared in that area from the sweat of the divine baby. Arriving in Bethlehem, Mary again helped a woman whose son was dying: she sprinkled him with the water in which she bathed Jesus, and he was saved. With the same water she healed a neighbor's boy, who was almost blind from an eye disease. Through the miracles of Christ, Mary also saved a child with a fever - a shirt was made for him from her son’s diapers. The mother of this child was envious, and she tried to kill the survivor: she pushed him into a hot oven, threw him into a well.
However, each time he was saved thanks to the intercession of the baby Jesus - the oven instantly cooled down, and the water in the well kept the boy on the surface. The envious woman ended up falling into the well herself, getting tangled in a rope.
Mary saved another local child, dying of illness, by putting him in bed with Jesus and covering him with the clothes of the god-man. Mary healed another woman with leprosy (and another of her acquaintances), again with the help of water. In the same city there lived a young woman who was tormented by Satan in the form of a dragon - he appeared to her and sucked the blood out of her. Mary again gave this girl some of the water in which she had bathed Jesus, as well as his swaddling cloth. Placing the veil on her head, the girl witnessed a miracle - a flame burst out of the rag and burned the dragon.
Further, the “Arab Gospel” tells how one Bethlehem youth named Judas was possessed by demons, and then he bit everyone around him or himself. One day, Jesus was taken to play with other children, and there he met Judas, who decided to kill the Lord. However, only after wounding Christ’s side did he burst into tears, and the demon in the form of a dog came out of him. This boy was the same Judas who, a few decades later, would betray the Savior.
Then the text reproduces the story about the clay sparrows - with the difference that here the seven-year-old Jesus molds various animals from clay, which he then makes move, and the birds fly, as well as eat and drink.
The same apocrypha describes a very popular story in later adaptations about how Jesus met a dyer named Salem. Running into his shop in the midst of games with other children, Christ took expensive fabrics and threw them into a vat of indigo (the most expensive dye). The enraged dyer began to scold the boy at all costs, but Christ began to pull the fabrics out of the vat, and they were now dyed exactly the colors that the artisan wanted to achieve.
This story relates to the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, in which God himself is called the dyer: “As good colors, which are called true, die along with what is painted with them, so also what God has dyed. For his colors are immortal, they become immortal thanks to his colors. So God baptizes those whom he baptizes in water.” In the apocrypha, the young Jesus himself clearly demonstrates the meaning of this parable, changing the colors, that is, human life, with the help of the Christian faith.
The Arab Gospel, unlike other sources, presents Joseph as a not very skilled carpenter, since “wherever he went, the Lord Jesus was always with him. And every time Joseph needed to do something the size of a cubit or three-quarters of a cubit, longer than that or shorter, wider than that or narrower, as soon as the Lord Jesus stretched out his hand to that thing, it became the way Joseph wanted, and his own he didn’t have to work with his hands.”
There is also a separate story about a carpenter's miracle: the king wanted to order a throne from Joseph, and when two years later it was ready, it turned out that the size of the throne was wrong. Joseph was very afraid of the king's anger, but his son simply pulled one side of the throne and straightened it.
In the next episode, the Son of God wanted to play with the neighbor kids, but they ran away from him in fear. Then he asked their mothers where they had gone and pointed to the children under the shed - but the women assured Jesus that they were just kids. Then he turned the hidden children into kids, and their mothers, fearing his power, begged for mercy and called him “the true shepherd.” In the Latin text, this episode, due to a copyist’s mistake, confusing the word “canopy” (in fornice) with “oven” (in fornace), gave rise to an additional version of the legend.
In another scene, Christ gathered all the youths around him and, laying his clothes on the ground, sat on them like a king. The children placed a crown on his head and began to behave like his courtiers. They asked everyone who walked by to honor the king. One day they carried past them a boy who had been bitten by a snake - Christ commanded the poisonous snake to come out of its hole, bow to him and suck the poison back out of the boy. After the snake healed the young man, Jesus told it to die, and so it did. And the cured boy turned out to be one of the Savior’s future disciples, Simon the Canaanite.
Then the text follows stories that are already familiar to us: about the healing of someone stung by a viper; about a boy who fell from a roof and was resurrected by Christ; about water collected in a cloak; about clay sparrows and the punishment of a boy who ruined a dam; the murdered youth who pushed Jesus; punishment of the teacher who dared to hit Christ. The Arab Gospel ends with a slightly modified story about the stay of the twelve-year-old Savior in the Temple of Jerusalem. There he talks with scientists, explaining to them the law, doctrine, and the structure of celestial bodies, talking in detail about the secrets of medicine and physics.
Of the eighteen episodes of “The Gospel of Thomas,” only eleven are repeated here, and Christ does not resurrect the boys and teacher he killed. There are also five new stories. All these scenes serve as a kind of foreshadowing of the future acts of the Son of God, which are described in the New Testament. Apparently, the "Arabic Gospel" was not rewritten from the "Gospel of Thomas", but was inspired by oral traditions, which made its stories so similar to oriental tales. This text, as we have already seen, influenced even the Koran and was distributed among Christians in Egypt (Copts) and nomadic Arabs. The “Arab Gospel” penetrated into Europe no later than the 13th century, becoming a source of inspiration for artists who illustrated the story of the Savior’s childhood.
Forgiveness and Justification in Jesus Christ
We are not forgiven because God just wanted it that way. We are legally forgiven. We are forgiven on a basis that no one can dispute. Someone paid for us. Jesus Christ did not have to come and die for us. The religious leaders rejected Him, but God gave them another chance. How did He do it? Jesus cried out on the cross: “Father! forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”
Christ is the Savior of the world. Didn't they know they were driving nails into His hands and didn't they know they were rejecting Him? But Jesus found something they didn't know. They knew that they were hurting Him externally, but they did not know that they were hurting Him internally. He, seeing all their ignorance, said: “Father! Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Thus, He brought them under the Levitical sin sacrifice. It was an offering where people sinned out of ignorance and a lamb was sacrificed.
Having said these words, Jesus protected the entire people with a sacrifice for sin through ignorance - He Himself became this sacrifice.
Medieval “Childhood of the Savior”: how a palm tree gets to heaven
In the 9th–10th centuries, new, Latin versions of the Gospels of Christ’s childhood appeared, which were then translated into the national languages of Europe. In the medieval “Book of the Birth of the Graceful Mary and the Childhood of the Savior”, in the form of correspondence between Jerome, an opponent of the apocrypha, and the bishops (false, of course), on behalf of the former, it is said that the book was written by the Evangelist Matthew himself in Aramaic, and as if Jerome himself translated this work, to cast aside all doubts about hitherto unknown episodes in the life of the Savior and his mother. Matthew, one of the four authors of the history of the life of Jesus, was as indisputable an authority as Jerome, an expert in the Scriptures and its languages. Since Matthew was not actually the author of this Gospel, scholars began to call the apocrypha the “Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.”
Compared to the late ancient apocrypha, it is even more amazing for the reader - Jesus works miracles in it not from the age of five, as in early sources, but from infancy, even the most powerful people and animals are subordinate to him, the Roman and Egyptian authorities are subject to him, not to mention already about heaven, and fantastic creatures live on earth. In addition, since the fight against paganism in the 10th century was no longer relevant, the devil himself becomes the main enemy of Christ, and even the boy who destroys the dams of Jesus is called the devil.
“The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew” begins with stories about Mary’s ancestors, her marriage to Joseph (the right to marry was played out by lot - Joseph miraculously flew out a dove from his staff, indicating that he should be with Mary), about doubts Joseph regarding Mary's virginity and subsequent testing in the temple with bitter water. Christ's first miracle is described in the story of a midwife who doubted Mary's virginity, for which she paid with her own hand (and was later healed by Jesus).
The second miracle of the infant Christ occurs on the way to Egypt - the holy family decides to rest in the shadow of a cave, when it suddenly turns out that this place is inhabited by a great many dragons. Everyone is scared and wants to run, but Jesus gets away from his mother and the dragons begin to bow to him. Leopards and lions come out and also worship the true God, and then even accompany the family, showing the right path.
While resting in the desert on the third day of the journey, Mary wanted to taste the fruit from a very long palm tree, since there was nothing to drink, but Elder Joseph could not climb so high. Then Christ made the tree bend down and everyone was able to be satisfied with the fruits. A source of water opens under the roots of the palm tree, and, as if in gratitude for this service, Jesus, with the help of an angel, carries a branch of this palm tree to heaven to plant it there.
Then Christ shortened the family's journey from thirty days to one, and they immediately arrived in Egypt. When the family entered the local pagan temple, all the idols in it immediately fell to the ground, and the mayor himself came with an army to deal with it. However, instead of attacking Mary and the baby, he bowed to them and recognized Jesus as the true God.
These new episodes are replaced by those already familiar to us from earlier apocrypha: the miracle of clay sparrows and the punishment of the boy who destroyed the dam, here the “son of the devil”; the murder of the “son of perdition”, who ran at Jesus - however, in this version the Savior resurrects him, “taking him by the ear” (and in the illustration he does this completely reluctantly, with a kick); confrontation with teachers; a child falling from a roof and being resurrected; miracle with water in a raincoat; miracle with multiplication of harvest. Then a new story is told about a lioness in a cave, which was tamed by the eight-year-old Christ - he crossed the river, which parted before him, right along with the lions, and entered the city with them, frightening the inhabitants.
Afterwards there are familiar stories again - about helping Joseph with a carpentry order, the murder of a teacher, healing from a snake bite, as well as a variation on the theme of reviving the dead - the resurrection of a person who died from illness with the help of Joseph's handkerchief. The apocrypha ends with the following phrase: “When Jesus slept, day and night the light of God shone upon him”; she emphasizes his supernatural abilities.
Jesus Christ - Savior of the world
Israel was under the law, and God dealt with them until they fell into idolatry, that is, they turned to pagan gods. Then God allowed the pagans to come. First to the Babylonians, then to the Persians and Medes, and then to the Greeks and Romans.
At a time when Rome ruled over Israel, in the small town of Bethlehem, Christ, the Savior of the world, was born.
God looked at the people of Israel and said, “I gave you priests, but you rejected them and killed them.”
God said, “I will send you prophets.” But they rejected the prophets and did not listen to the words of God delivered through the mouth of the prophets. Then they wanted a king. God told them, “Okay, I will give you a king.”
But they wanted a king not from God, but their own. As a result, King Saul failed miserably.
Priest, prophet, king - nothing succeeded.
Apocrypha options: transformation into pigs and death jumps
In some versions of the three childhood gospels discussed in this article, another story appears, possibly coming from Ethiopian collections of apocryphal tales. In it, Jesus rides in front of other children in the sun's rays. They, carried away by his fun, try to do the same, but fall, breaking their arms and legs.
The Savior, of course, heals them - however, in some versions of the text the author indicates that Christ foresaw the future, and therefore specifically tempted other children so that they would suffer by breaking their limbs.
In European manuscripts there are numerous versions of the stories listed above, in which they become even more fantastic. For example, in the episode with the hiding children, they climb into the oven, and Jesus asks their parents what is there. In response, they tell him that there are pigs there, and, opening the valve, they are surprised that the guys really turned into pigs. However, Jesus immediately casts a spell on them so that he can finally play with someone.
In another version, a townsman, afraid for his son because of Jesus, locks him in the house, but Christ rescues his playmate by pulling him right through the keyhole.
In an alternative version of the scene with the broken pot at the well, it is deliberately broken by boys who do not like Jesus. In response, the Son of God calmly puts it back together from the fragments and hangs it to dry on a ray of sunlight (a medieval artist misunderstood this word and turned the ray into a wooden beam). The boys beat their pots to mold them back together, as Christ had just done, but nothing works out for them - then the Savior repairs their pots and also hangs them on the beam.
The story of jumping off the roof also has an alternative - in it, children jump from slides, which also leads to their death.
In many versions of the dyer's apocrypha, Jesus even becomes his apprentice. In this version, seven-year-old Christ was impatient to quickly go home from his hated work, and out of anger he threw all the fabrics into a vat of indigo. The upset dyer began to scold the disobedient student, but Christ, pulling the fabrics back, miraculously changed their colors to the required ones (in some versions, the Virgin Mary, annoyed with the behavior of her son, asks him to do this). The episode with the vat was especially loved by the medieval dyers' workshop, who considered Jesus one of the patron saints of their craft.
In addition, in some medieval illustrations to the early Christian apocrypha about the childhood of the Savior, he helps his parents with homework, washes clothes, lights the fire, or serves it on the table.
The tradition of such images, where the young Jesus is busy with housework, survived until recently. In them, the Holy Family appears as an ideal for every family, and the diligent youth Jesus (who, for example, sweeps the floors) becomes a model of behavior for any child.
In Russia since the end of the 18th century. sometimes they painted instructive icons on the plot of the “Physical Labor of the Holy Family” according to European models: in them Jesus helps his stepfather Joseph work on wood, and the Virgin Mary is engaged in yarn. They were also widespread in the Soviet period during renovationism, a movement that tried to adapt Orthodoxy to new socialist realities.
The hammer with which Christ worked could resemble the hammer of the Soviet coat of arms on such icons, and the icon itself was renamed in the spirit of the slogans of a socialist poster: “The Holy Family is a teacher of labor.” This image had a didactic function and showed the diligent and obedient youth Jesus as a model of behavior for a Soviet child.
Surprisingly, the apocrypha has survived to this day not only thanks to memorable stories about the childhood of Christ and illustrations to them, but also because new texts of this kind appeared even in the 20th century. For example, in 1910 in Germany, a publisher claimed to have found an ancient Coptic manuscript about the childhood of Christ, which he himself translated into German. It told on behalf of the Egyptian doctor Benan, allegedly a childhood friend of Jesus, how the Savior was raised by a certain Egyptian astronomer, and also how he was then initiated into the secret art of healing.
Ten years later, scientists realized that this was a fake, but today it can also be considered as an original literary monument, showing what an indelible impression the authentic apocrypha about the childhood of Christ made on connoisseurs of ancient literature in the 20th century.
Christ - Savior of the world, Son of God, Priest, Prophet and King
(Matt 12:24)
The Pharisees, having heard
this
, said: He does not cast out demons except by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit Contents of the tip
Jesus preached to the leaders of Israel. They rejected Him. In this chapter the Pharisees blasphemed the Holy Spirit and finally rejected Jesus Christ in His three-part glory. Jesus says of Himself: “Here is He who is greater than the temple.”
A temple is a place where priests serve. Thus He is greater than all the priests. The leaders continually rejected Him. Jesus preached about the kingdom, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Jesus had not yet preached the gospel of grace, although he was full of grace and truth. The fullness of the revelations has not yet been revealed. Jesus opened the ears of the deaf, opened the eyes of the blind. He cleansed lepers, raised the dead, and loved children. He multiplied two fish and five loaves, and there was such abundance that there were twelve baskets of food left. Jesus Christ is the King, the Savior of the world in their midst. Despite all this, they rejected Him. But Jesus still loved them.
(Matthew 13)
Jesus left the house and went to the sea, and first spoke seven parables about the Kingdom of God.
Proverbs hide the truth from those who do not seek it. And reveals her wonderful treasures to those who thirst for her.
LUCIAN, satirist and atheist
What other famous evidence can be cited? There is evidence from Lucian, a satirist and atheist who lived in the 2nd century. He is called the “Voltaire of classical antiquity,” and even Engels sees in him a flat rationalist point of view. Lucian has an essay “On the Death of Peregrin”, or “On the Death of Peregrin”, where the name of Peregrin means a specific historical figure. Peregrine is engaged in gaining the trust of Christians, and then behaves in such a way that he is expelled from the community. And this is what Lucian writes about Christians:
“So to this day they honor that great man who was crucified in Palestine for introducing this new cult.” And here is the characteristic of Christians: “These madmen are convinced that they are immortal, that they will live forever, so they despise death and go to it voluntarily. Their first legislator inspired them that they were brothers to each other since they renounced the Hellenic gods. They adore their crucified sage and live by his law. They look at earthly goods with contempt and consider them to be common property. But this teaching is not based on anything. It is enough for some deceiver who wants to take advantage of their position to come to them and declare himself a Christian in order to immediately get rich, which does not in the least prevent him from laughing in the eyes of these simpletons.”
Peregrine, portrayed in the satire, was such a deceiver.
Did Jesus walk on water?
In this case, it was His hologram that moved across the surface of the water, and not Himself. It was a hologram picture, and an underdeveloped person could not distinguish the real from it. Modern man is already well acquainted with material holograms, although they still remain motionless.
Thus, many of Christ’s miracles were prepared technically by hierarchical Systems called the “Union”*. In addition to technical devices, miracles also required energy. Miracles are usually very expensive for the Highest, and they have always been difficult to implement on the material plane, since transferring something from the subtle plane to the physical is a large expenditure of energy and the use of various techniques of the subtle plane, so They are reluctant to perform miracles and do them in rare cases.
The demonstration of miracles is caused by the need to turn the souls of people into Faith, into the existence of those Higher than man. He had to be firmly aware of this in order to tame his wild and base desires. But any miracle affected only some segments of the population and had a short-term effect. Therefore, the Highest had to send people from their Higher planes back to the earthly world with a special mission - to return public opinion to the previous miracle. And they returned and raised it to the proper height in the consciousness of ignorant earthlings, turning the miracle into legends. In this way, miracles traveled through the centuries, strengthening faith in the Highest Ones, God, and Christ. Miracles, although technically difficult to achieve and requiring large amounts of energy, nevertheless contributed to the maintenance of the Faith for thousands of years, and thus, over time, justified the costs of them. But the Highest value more the Faith of a person without any miracles and religious parables. Faith based on the understanding of the Highest and Their knowledge is higher than Faith based on the vision of miracles.
Was there a hologram of the death of Jesus Christ?
Several times in the contact literature of other authors there was information that said that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was not real, but was holographic.
But Christ was crucified in reality, this is already a proven historical fact, and everything else is the fabrication of sensationalists. However, compassionate and loving believers who love Jesus, realizing the physical torment He experienced, still hope that, possessing many unusual properties, Christ, as a magician and psychic, could suppress pain, easing his fate. However, he had to accept the torment in full, since He participated in energetic and social processes, this was his purification and karma.
Opening of the causal channel in Christ through John the Baptist
The Higher consciousness of Christ alone was not enough to fulfill his mission among the low consciousness of those around him. It was necessary to stir up their undeveloped consciousness and, as they say, to reach others’ understanding of their truths. And it was possible to influence low consciousness only by attracting a miracle. It shocked, destroyed old stereotypes, forcing me to think about something new and unusual. Therefore, the task of Christ was to reach the consciousness of low individuals with the help of miracles.
He was initially prepared for this type of activity, so He had a special energy structure on the subtle plane, which included channels of communication with the Higher World, more precisely, with those Higher Essences that participated in his work on Earth. They allocated energy to him for everyday life; each situation required its own types of energy. And when Christ began to perform miracles, it was necessary to additionally turn on the main energy channel in order to transmit special miraculous energy through it from Above to the Earth, to some for healing, to others for revival.
Before the baptism of John the Baptist, all six channels were open in Christ (physical, etheric, astral, mental, buddhial, atmic), except for the causal channel - the channel of action through which energy was supplied to perform various miracles. This was all linked to his personal program; without it, no energy could help a person act correctly or miraculously. But in order to turn on the Savior’s causal channel into work, it took a person with more powerful energy in the physical body than that of Christ.
In order for Christ to work miracles, He needed to open the channel of his communication with the Highest. But it was not just any person who could reveal it to Christ, but someone with very high energy.
John, later nicknamed the Baptist, possessed such energy. John was not a simple man with a primitive construction of thin shells; he was not the first person he met. Where did he get this powerful energy from his physical and subtle bodies? Where did he get it?
One could say that it was immediately built for this mission. But although John was indeed sent to Earth with the main mission - to open the causal channel of Christ, he accumulated powerful energy in his past life, in which he was Elijah the Prophet (that’s why his head was cut off in this life, after the baptism of Christ, since, fulfilling mission, he was simultaneously working off past karma). That is, in the previous incarnation, Ilya himself possessed unusual properties, was a conductor of cosmic energy, and the structure of his soul contained powerful potential and was prepared for sacred rites.
John and Christ built their subtle structures accordingly during past developments. And only thanks to their own improvement they were able to participate in the grandiose project of introducing a new program for the development of mankind. Random souls cannot participate in God's project. Worthy people participate, and for each one the path is determined that corresponds to its karmic achievements and at the same time contributes to its advancement.
Therefore, Christ and John corresponded precisely to the role that was predetermined for them from Above. And the essence of Jesus’ baptism was not so much the ritual initiation of him into a certain egregor and the opening of channel communication, but rather the opening of the seventh channel, the seventh chakra.
John baptized Jesus on the day a powerful flow of energy from Above was sent to Earth (January 19, present style). The ritual took place on the water, since it was supposed to take on the powerful potential of energy passed by John through Christ and going into the feet, and then into the water. Since John possessed powerful energy accumulated in past incarnations, he was able, with his greater energy, to unblock the main, causal channel for Jesus, but Jesus himself could not do this.
Baptism took place in water not just from the purely ritual side of the process, but due to the fact that water has a high energy intensity. And after John opened a channel for Christ to clear all other channels, they gave another powerful charge from Above, which passed through the body of Jesus and went through the feet into the water. In addition to the main channels, all other energy channels of his physical body were cleaned, which could only be done with a powerful discharge, which was then absorbed by the energy-intensive river water.
Thus, Christ's miracles of healing began after clearing the channels and unblocking some of His qualities. John the Baptist opened a channel of communication with the Cosmos for Him. And the essence of Christ’s baptism was precisely the opening of this main channel of action. After John, with his powerful energy, opened the energy lock in the subtle structure of Christ, higher energy freely flowed through the energy channels of the Savior’s biological structure, and He became able to heal and perform miracles.
After such cleaning and activation of all energy channels, Christ was able to take on huge flows of energy, due to which he began to carry out his miraculous activities. Thus, John the Baptist opened Christ to receive a large flow of energy and tied the future church ritual of Baptism to a specific day of the year (January 19), on which, year after year, the hierarchical Systems began to release pure energy to Earth.
Saving humanity
Christ came to Earth to save humanity, which is why they call him the Savior. But what is this salvation?
The essence of salvation lies in the energetic renewal of man. Christ brought new energies to humanity for the next 2000 years. His teachings, the Bible, his prayers - everything was built on the energies of a new range of energies, covering the period from the coming of Christ until the end of the 20th century. Humanity had to rise to the next Level of development, and for this it needed to fill its thin shells with these new types of energies, and they (these energies) themselves raise a person to the Level to which they belong. Whoever absorbed new energies into himself rose higher and moved to a higher level of development, since these were the energies of the next range of development; and those who did not accept the new teaching remained at the lower Level, and the Higher Ones always work with them separately, sending them to the lower worlds or decoding them. Therefore, the one who absorbed the necessary energies and rose higher was saved.
To save humanity, you don't need to swing swords, rattle weapons and kill someone. Salvation can take place quietly, calmly and unnoticed by the person himself. He learns a new teaching, and it seems to him that he is not doing much, but it turns out that in this way he saves himself, letting into his thin shells, along with new knowledge, the energy of a higher Level.
Healing by Jesus Christ of a man born blind
For example, Christ met a blind man, and people asked him: “For what sins was this man punished: for his own or for his parents?” Christ answered: “Not for his own, and not for his parents, but to show the power of God through him.” .
That is, this blind man was also part of the Creator’s project to create a new religion; he was the performer who was supposed to play the role of the blind man who had received his sight. And for this, from birth his vision was blocked from seeing this world. Jesus, again, with his powerful energy, removed this blockage from the optic canals - and the blind man received his sight. In fact, neither in the first case nor in the second was there a miracle, but rather knowledge and the ability to apply it in practice.
Powerful energy is capable of removing blockages in the subtle structures of people with lower soul potentials. In this case, all this was done purposefully. Therefore, this person was given blindness not because of karma, but for the sole purpose of showing the unusual abilities of Christ and the power of God, since everything is done according to His great plans. Of course, here everything could be described in more detail, in the details of the technical implementation of the programs, but our goal is to enable the reader to see the hidden meaning that is hidden behind the words of Jesus.
The higher ones said during our contacts about how Christ performed miracles, they responded like this: “A special program was developed for this. Any miracle involves subtle technical means. This is an accurate calculation and great work of Hierarchical Systems. Christ performed a miracle, and the Systems prepared this miracle. Each of them required a huge amount of work and energy expenditure.”
TACITUS, Roman historian
The next classical source is Tacitus, a historian of the Roman Empire at the end of the 1st century. The heyday of his work occurred at the end of the reign of Domitian and the reign of Trajan (this is already the beginning of the 2nd century). This is what he writes in his famous “Annals” (book 15, chapter 44), describing events dating back to the reign of Nero (he committed suicide in 69) - the fire of Rome caused by Nero. “But neither by human means nor by the generosity of the princeps was it possible to stop the rumor that dishonored him that the fire was started on his orders. And so Nero, in order to overcome rumors, found the culprits and subjected to the most sophisticated executions those who, with their abominations, had brought upon themselves universal hatred and whom the crowd called Christians. Christ, from whose name this name comes, was executed under Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Suppressed for a while, this harmful superstition began to break out again, and not only in Judea, where this destruction came from, but also in Rome, where everything that is most vile and shameful flocks from everywhere and where it finds adherents. So, first those who openly admitted that they belonged to this sect were captured, and then, on their instructions, a great many others were convicted not so much of malicious arson as of hatred of the human race. Their killing was accompanied by mockery, for they were dressed in the skins of wild animals, so that they would be torn to death by dogs; crucified on crosses; those doomed to death by fire were set on fire at nightfall for the sake of night illumination. Nero provided his gardens for this spectacle. He also gave a performance at the circus, during which he sat among the crowd dressed as a charioteer or drove a team, participating in a chariot race. And although the Christians were guilty, and they deserved the most severe punishment, yet these cruelties aroused compassion for them, for it seemed that they were being exterminated not for the sake of public benefit, but as a result of the bloodthirstiness of Nero alone.”
Despite all the hostility towards this “evil sect,” Tacitus breaks out words of pity for the victims of Nero’s persecution. Apparently, this is what gave some pundits reason to suspect some kind of interpolation here: all these words, they say, were later inserted by Christians themselves - and all in order to emphasize that Christ really existed. This is the so-called long-maintained artificial version of the “silence of the century” - the same silence with which various historians allegedly avoided the historical figure of our Lord Jesus Christ. There were a great many arguments in favor of interpolation: it was believed that in the 1st century. There could not have been “a great multitude of Christians” under Nero. But, most likely, this expression “great multitude” in Tacitus has a figurative meaning. It was also believed that Pontius Pilate should be called not a procurator, but a prefect - this is the correct designation of this position in the Roman code of offices. However, the latest historical science proves that these two positions are interchangeable. All these curses against Christians, who are accused of hatred of the human race, of abominations, etc., speak in favor of undoubted authenticity.
Jesus was not crucified
Even during the Middle Ages, the idea that Jesus escaped execution and crucifixion was widespread. Moreover, the prophet had children who stood at the origins of the now extinct Merovingian royal dynasty. Many secret societies are built on this knowledge.
It is difficult to judge today how true this is. But the fact remains: in the south of France there was a state of Albigenses, or Cathars, who held similar views. The Vatican dubbed them heretics and declared a crusade.
What is this preface for? The fact is that in 1885, a certain priest Bérenger Saunière was sent to serve in the village church of Rennes-Le-Chateau, built in the early Middle Ages and located exactly on the former lands of the Cathars. During repairs, he discovered ancient scrolls with writing in a hollow column.
What is written in them remains a mystery. But, apparently, the priest sold his knowledge at a high price to the church authorities, becoming fabulously rich. He was paid millions of francs for his silence. In the church he restored, mysterious frescoes were painted that do not fit into the canons of the Vatican and are full of hints.
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CELUS, Roman publicist
The following evidence belongs to Lucian’s contemporary, Celsus (also 2nd century). Celsus is actually a blasphemer who blasphemed Christianity. There is a famous essay by Origen “Against Celsus”, which contains quotes from the writings of this man (“Against Celsus”, chapter 7, verse 9):
“Many anonymous preachers, taking advantage of every opportunity, teach in churches or outside churches without the slightest hesitation. Others go around the cities and places of troops, collecting donations and speaking to the crowd, making body movements as if possessed by the spirit of prophecy. They are usually expressed like this: I am God, or I am the son of God, or I am a divine spirit, or I am coming, for the world is destined to perish, and you people will perish because of your sins, but I want to save you, and you will see me again returning with heavenly powers. Blessed is he who now honors me. I will plunge all others into eternal fire along with their countries and cities. Those who do not believe in the punishments awaiting them will repent and groan in vain. But I will forever preserve those who believe in me.” Celsus puts all this into the mouths of Christian preachers, and then he writes from himself:
“To such tempting promises they add others - incomprehensible, fantastic, mysterious, so reckless that even a scientist could not find meaning in them. But they open wide scope to the arbitrary and hypocritical interpretations of any fool or deceiver.”
Remember how ap. Paul says that “the word of the cross is a temptation to the Jews, but madness to the Greeks.” The works of Celsus are a clear confirmation of this.
