Blant dei nytestamentlege apokryfane finn me to kjente barndomsevangelier; Jakobs Protoevangelium frå ca år 150 og Thomas’ barndomsevangelium frå det andre eller tredje århundre. Dette er “fromme” forteljingar om Jesu oppvekst, forteljingar som var svært populære i oldkyrkja.
Nyleg fortalde den israelske avisa Ma’ariv om ein forskar som har omsett og publisert Det armenske barndomsevangeliet som han har funne i det armenske kvarteret i Gamlebyen i Jerusalem. I dette skriftet meiner han det er ein referanse til at Jesus som barn dreiv med ballspel ved Gennesaretsjøen!
Ma’ariv, August 11, 2008
According to research published by Armenian scholar Dr. Abraham Terian, Jesus may have played a game similar to cricket in his childhood in the Galilee. An ancient Armenian manuscript which he has analyzed suggests that Jesus played a game in which a ball is hit with a club. In his recently-published translation of the “Armenian Gospel of the Infancy,” a manuscript he discovered a decade ago at the Saint James Armenian Monastery in the Old City of Jerusalem, Terian has ostensibly identified a reference to Jesus playing with a ball with a group of friends. Instructed to watch his master’s house, the young apprentice runs off, “carrying a bat and ball in his hand,” to play with his friends “on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and thus demonstrated to them his ability to walk on water.”
