The infancy gospels reflect the early Christian interest in how Jesus was born and raised. The Infancy Gospel of James narrates the story of Mary, mother of Jesusher birth, infancy and childhood, up to her pregnancy. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas recounts stories depicting Jesus as a petulant child prodigy. Featuring the acclaimed Scholars Version translation side-by-side with the original Greek texts, this dual language edition makes the infancy gospels readily available and truly accessible for the first time ever.

This book provides the first translations in English and a preliminary analysis of the commentaries on the chreia chapter in Aphthonius's standard Progymnasmata, a classroom guide on composition. The chreia, or anecdote, was a popular form that preserved the wisdom of philosophers, kings, generals, and sophists. Aphthonius used the chreia to provide instructions on how to construct an argument and to confirm the validity of the chreia by means of an eight-paragraph essay. His treatment of this classroom exercise, however, was so brief that commentators needed to clarify, explain, and supplement what he had written as well as to situate the chreia as preparation for the study of rhetoric-the kinds of public speeches and the parts of a speech. By means of these Byzantine commentaries, we can thus see more clearly how this important form and its confirmation were taught in classrooms for over a thousand years.

Replacement for p. iv (copyright page) is included with this hard copy.