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are told that the angels, before the infant's birth, thus addressed Mary:
And he shall speak to men in the cradle ....And he shall say, Verily I come unto
you with a sign from your Lord, for 1 shall make unto you of clay the figure as
it were of a bird; then I will blow thereon and it shall become a bird, by
permission of God.1 And again in another Surah:
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When God said, O Jesus son of Mary! remember my favour towards thee, and
towards thy Mother; when I strengthened thee by the Holy Spirit, that thou
shouldest speak unto men in the cradle, and when grown up; and when I taught
thee the Book and wisdom, and the Torah, and the Gospel; and when thou
createdst of clay as it were the figure of a bird by my permission, and didst
breathe thereon, and by my permission it became a bird. And when thou didst heal
one born blind, and the leper, by my permission; and didst raise up the dead by
my permission; and when I held back the children of Israel from thee at the time
thou camest unto them with evident miracles; and when such of them as believed
not said, This is nothing but manifest sorcery. 2
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It need not be repeated that tales of our Saviour's childhood such as these
have nothing to do with the Gospel, but like those before of the cradle,
palm-tree, etc., have been taken from imaginary and fabulous Christian writings,
such as the following from a Greek story-book called The Gospel of Thomas the
Israelite:
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The child Jesus, when five years of age, was playing on the road by a dirty
stream of running water; and having brought it all together into ditches,
immediately made it pure and clean; and all this by a single word. Then having
moistened some earth, he made of it twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath day
when he did these things. There were many other children playing with him. Now a
Jew, seeing what Jesus did, that he
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was playing on the Sabbath day, forthwith went his way to his father Joseph;
Behold, he said, thy son is at the stream of dirty water, and having taken up
some mud, hath made of it twelve sparrows, and hath thus desecrated the Sabbath.
On this Joseph went to the spot, and cried out: Why dost thou do these things
on the Sabbath day which it is not lawful to do? Whereupon Jesus, clapping his
hands at the sparrows, cried aloud to them, Go off! So they, clucking, flew
away. The Jews seeing it, were astonished, and went and told their Rulers what
they had seen Jesus do.
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In the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, the whole story is found twice over, in
Chapter 36, and again in a different form in Chapter 46, because the latter part
of the book is taken from The Gospel of Thomas the Israelite.
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In reference to the supposed fact that Jesus spoke when an infant in the
cradle, we find it said in the Qur'an (Surah xix. 29-31) that when the Virgin
Mary's people reproached her, she pointed to Jesus, implying that they should
ask him about the matter. And when they asked her, How can we speak to a child
in the cradle? then Jesus answered them and said, Verily I am the servant of
God, who hath given the Book, and made me a Prophet.
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So also in the Gospel of the Infancy, Chapter 1, it is thus written:
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In the Book of Josephus, High Priest, who lived in the time of the Messiah
(and men say he was Caiaphas), we find it said that Jesus spake when he was in
the cradle, and called out to his mother Mary: "Verily I am Jesus, the Son
of God, the Word, whom thou hast given birth to according to the good tidings
given thee by the Angel Gabriel, and my Father hath sent me for the Salvation of
the World."
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Now if we compare the above, taken from this
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