[1672] The Greek MSS are of the 15th and 16th centuries; Tischendorf examined only partially a Latin palimpsest of it which is probably of the fifth century.
[1673] So argues The Catholic Encyclopedia, 608; Tischendorf seems inclined to date the Gospel of Thomas a little later than that of James, and to hold that we possess only a fragment of it.
[1674] Evang. Inf. Arab., cap. 25, “fecitque dominus Iesus plurima in Egypto miracula quae neque in evangelio infantiae neque in evangelio perfecto scripta reperiuntur.”
[1675] Tischendorf (1876), p. xlviii. As I have already intimated on other occasions, it seems to me no explanation to call such stories “oriental.” Christianity was an oriental religion to begin with. Moreover, as our whole investigation goes to show, both classical antiquity and the medieval west were ready enough both to repeat and to invent similar tales.
[1676] It may be noted, however, that the chief miracles of the Gospels were attacked as “absurd or unworthy of the performer” nearly two centuries ago by Thomas Woolston in his Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour, 1727-1730. The words in quotation marks are from J. B. Bury’s History of Freedom of Thought, 1913, p. 142.
[1677] Migne, PL, 59, 162 ff. The list was reproduced with slight variations by Hugh of St. Victor in the twelfth century in his Didascalicon (IV, 15), and in the thirteenth century by Vincent of Beauvais in the Speculum Naturale (I, 14).
[1678] Tischendorf (1876), pp. xxiii-xxiv.
[1679] Mâle (1913), pp. 207-8.
[1680] Since writing this, I find that Mâle has been impressed by the same resemblance. He writes (1913), p. 207, “Some chapters in the apocryphal gospels are like the Life of Apollonius of Tyana or even like The Golden Ass, permeated with the belief in witchcraft and magic.” The resemblance to Apuleius is also noted in AN, VIII, 353.
[1681] Tischendorf, Evang. Infantiae Arabicum, caps. 20-21.