Talk:Syriac Infancy Gospel

Lost?
Why is this categorised as a "lost work"? texts survive, do they not? Johnbod (talk) 15:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

You're right, the article was over-categorized. ʄ! •¿talk?  14:46, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Dating
In "Dating and Disbursment" is says_ WAccording to some critical scholarship, its presence in the Qu'ran may be due to the influence the Gospel had amongst the Arabs. It is not known for certain that the Gospel was present in the Hejaz, but it can be seen as likely.[3] However, Islamic Scholars claim that the Gospel was translated into Arabic in the post-Islamic period due the difficulty that 16th century Europeans would have in translating early Arabic's defective script into Latin as well as the extreme rarity of written texts in Pre-Islamic Arabia.[4]W → I have trouble understanding the logic of this. "Islamic scholars claim...". Everybody claims that, including Henricus Sike, who first edited the Arabic version. The second part is a non-sequitur. The Gospel (the Syriac one, that is) would have been translated into Arabic in the early Islamic centuries. These people obviously read Arabic in any way. 16th century (why 16th?) Europeans, just as all those who did translations from Spain to Russia do not exhibit such problems. This is a rather absurd assertion which really has no place in an encyclopedia (unless qualified). The extreme rarity of written texts in Pre-Islamic Arabia is also an unwarrented assertion. There is plenty of epigraphic material and as to other texts, lack of evidence, isn't evidence of lack. At any rate, maybe someone can explain what the above section is supposed to say. Thank you. Simha (talk) 17:58, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Importance
The categorisation as "Low importance" seems unhelpful. For certain times and regions, this Gospel had an enormous influence. It is, together with other apokryphal texts, still the source of much of Christmas iconography etc. Scholars would have different views of this but why would Wikipedia even come up with such an, mostly unapplicable, controversial category? Simha (talk) 18:08, 29 February 2016 (UTC)