Parallelism: Talking Baby Jesus
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For the full article with many more examples than are included in this series, see
The story of the baby Jesus speaking is found in Q 19:29-31 and Q 3:46 (similarly Q 5:110).
Gabriel Said Reynolds in his 2018 academic commentary on the Quran remarks, "The reference in verse 46 to Jesus' speaking 'to the people in the cradle' (cf. 5:110, 19:29) refers to a tradition found in the Latin Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (likely written in the early seventh century".[1]
For a discussion of the dating for Pseudo-Matthew, and an earlier 5th century CE source with much the same story, see the page in this series on Jesus, Mary and the Palm Tree. That 5th century source (at the latest) is the Dormition of Mary, which relates that Jesus miraculously spoke to his father at the age of 5 months when the family were thirsty:
A different story found in the Arabic Infancy Gospel (also known as the Syriac Infancy Gospel), is sometimes cited as a possible antecendent of the Quranic tale that Jesus spoke in infancy. However, academic scholars tend to doubt that it is pre-Islamic. The Arabic Infancy Gospel combines elements from the Childhood of the Saviour, Protoevangelium of James, and Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.
See also the sirah passage quoted in the article in this series about Jesus and the Clay Birds, in which three Christians are narrated as having informed Muhammad that Jesus spoke in the cradle as well as other miracles.
References
- ↑ Gabriel Said Reynolds, "The Quran and Bible: Text and Commentary", New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018, p. 120
- ↑ Stephen Shoemaker, Christmas in the Qur’an: the Qur’anic Account of Jesus’ Nativity and Palestinian Local Tradition Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 28, 11-39 (2003) pp. 19-21