This is a topic that I'm also very interested in. There are also quite a number
of Middle English texts on the infancy and childhood of Jesus, derived, as
Robert Kraft has said, from the medieval pseudo-Matthew and from other
independently circulating texts. Hopefully, I'll complete an edition of these
Middle English texts suitable for student use sometime before the new year (in
the TEAMS series-Teaching Medieval Studies out of the University of Rochester).
What is especially interesting is the reception history of these texts--how the
medieval _compilators_ supplement the received texts with folkloric material
indicative of their own cultural moment, as Patrick Nugent indicates.
Dan Kline
U of Alaska Anchorage
[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> >>> Patrick Nugent >>>
> The Protoevangelium of James, for example, contains horrific stories of
> Jesus as a small boy exercising his divine power in some fairly vengeful
> ways.
> <<<
>
> I haven't heard of this text, but I'm familiar with one such story from an
> English folksong (Jesus as a child uses divine power to drown three rich
> children in a well for teasing him; Mary beats him with a withy switch as
> punishment, for which he curses withy plants in general ...) and I've been
> curious about its origins. Can you tell me any more about the
> Protoevangelium of James and the stories in it?
>
> Jonathan Gilbert
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