This drawing shows Jesus as a child, taking the birds he has just shaped out of clay and turning them into real sparrows. It is a sweet story, part of a passage from a (possibly late first century) text known as “The Infancy Gospel of St Thomas,” never accepted as cannonical by the Church. We might well consider this lack of inclusion to be a positive thing, considering other vignettes in the narrative. For instance, in another episode the young Jesus angrily kills a boy for bumping his shoulder and then blinds the people who complain about his ruthlessness. (Later in the text Jesus does return the boy to life and fixes up the blindness.) (Drawing from early 15th century copy of the text from the Ambrosian Library _L58 sup._)
Source(s): Infancy Gospel of Thomas | Tony Burke – http://www.tonyburke.ca/infancy-gospel-of-thomas/ .
