JESUS PLAYED CRICKET, MANUSCRIPT SUGGESTS:

Dr Abraham Terian, recently a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, points to a rare manuscript as his source.

He notes that in the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, translated into Armenian in the 6th century from a much older lost Syriac original, a passage tells of Jesus playing what may well be the precursor of cricket, with a club and ball.

Terian discovered the manuscript more than a decade ago at the Saint James Armenian Monastery in the Old City of Jerusalem.

His English translation of the book has been published by Oxford University Press.

[...]

"The most amazing part of the story of the nine-year-old Jesus playing a form of cricket with the boys at the sea shore, is that he would go on playing the game on water, over the sea waves.''

He gives the following translation: "He (Jesus) would take the boys to the seashore and, carrying the playing ball and the club, he would go over the waves of the sea as though he was playing on a frozen surface, hitting the playing ball. And watching him, the boys would scream and say: 'Watch the child Jesus, what he does over the waves of the sea!' Many would gather there and, watching him, would be amazed.''

[...]

Obviously, this is not about the historical Jesus. But it's very interesting that a Syriac apocryphal tradition that made it into Armenian has Jesus playing something like cricket. The Armenian manuscript is from the thirteenth century, but I would think that the Syriac tradition might well go back to late antiquity, as Professor Terian suggests. I hope Tony Chartrand-Burke takes this one up at Apocryphicity.