HERE'S AN ARTICLE ON THE APOCRYPHAL INFANCY GOSPELS:

The Gospel according to whom?

By Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune

If you think the Christmas pageant with its bathrobe-clad shepherds and wise men, white-sheeted angels, demure Mary and dogs dressed up like sheep is a tad predictable, try adding plot and players from traditions that never made it into the Bible.

Then you can have Jesus' half-siblings, midwives, magic swaddling clothes that withstand fire, a cave with supernatural light, and even, as the family is fleeing into Egypt, dragons who adore the Christ child. You might see infant Jesus walking through the forest of Sinai, driving away serpents or spouting theology from the manger (hey, a speaking part for the baby).

These are details culled from so-called infancy narratives, stories about Jesus' birth and childhood that were circulating in the first few centuries after his death. Some were considered forgeries by Christian leaders who selected the 27 books that make up the New Testament. Others came many years after the second-century establishment of the Christian canon.

Brigham Young University professor John Gee describes these stories as a kind of entertainment, like an early Christian version of "Amahl and the Night Visitors" or "Little Drummer Boy," which add fictional characters to the traditional nativity. Or they were like ancient analogs to today's National Enquirer, which often fills in missing information with unsubstantiated details.

"We simply don't know why they were written," says Gee of BYU's Institute for the Preservation and Study of Ancient Religious Texts. "Were they someone's creative Christmas story meant to inspire their family or local congregation but which spun out of control? Or were the writers trying to be historical?"

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It has descriptions of many of these Gospels and a list of them at the end. You can read them online in J. K. Elliott's The Apocryphal New Testament (OUP website).