Sure, Jan

 
You gotta admit Jesus looked a lot better as a long-haired blond.

Although these days who’d care. Not even Mary Magdalen would be caught dead looking at a blond guy like this walking down the street, they’re that out of style. Swipe left honey.
 
 

 

Someone wrote it down only 400 years later in black ink and so maybe it’s worth validating a bit more than they would have otherwise. Kid Jesus.

We think learning about Catholic and Lutheran orthodoxy is fun, and so is reading about the early 19th-century intellectual struggles of a Cardinal Newman or Samuel Taylor Coleridge over an eventually adopted Trinitarianism. But if there’s anything that could drive us to an unforgiving Christopher Hitchens’ style of atheism it’s gonna be nonsense like this…
 
 

A newly deciphered manuscript dating back more than 1,600 years has been identified as the earliest known account of Jesus Christ’s childhood.

The manuscript, written on papyrus in either the 4th or 5th century, had been stored at a library in Hamburg, Germany, for decades and was long believed to be an insignificant document.

However, two experts have now decoded the text and say it is the earliest surviving copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

“The papyrus fragment is of extraordinary interest for research,” Lajos Berkes, a theology lecturer and one of the two men who deciphered the document, declared in a press release.

 

There’s a good reason why this wasn’t fitted in anywhere official. It certainly doesn’t give you a whole lot of confidence in the rest of the goings-on:

 

The so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT) or Paidika is an apocryphal document that narrates episodes from Jesus’ youth from the age of five up until his twelfth year. With the exception of the Temple narrative based on Luke 2:41–52, the episodes are not found in the New Testament. While the deeds attributed to the youthful Jesus—such as healing—sometimes foreshadow those of the adult Jesus, they also include a number of curses and punishment miracles, where Jesus kills or harms those who thwart him. These punishment miracles tend to taper off as Jesus matures, but it is disputed among scholars whether this change reflects a transformation on the part of Jesus or on those around him.

 

It doesn’t seem like much of a historical dilemma to have to figure out. We’d be on our best behavior too if this kid had been living down the street.

No, no Billy Mumy.