When this boy, Jesus, was 5 years old, he was playing at the ford of a rushing stream. He was collecting the flowing water into ponds and made the water instantly pure. He did this with a single command. He then made soft clay and shaped it into 12 sparrows. He did this on the Sabbath day, and many other boys were playing with him.

But when a Jew saw what Jesus was doing while playing on the Sabbath day, he immediately went off and told Joseph, Jesus' father: “See here, your boy is at the ford and has taken mud and fashioned twelve birds with it, and so has violated the Sabbath.”

So Joseph went there, and as soon as he spotted him he shouted, “Why are you doing what's not permitted on the Sabbath?” But Jesus simply clapped his hands and shouted to the sparrows: “Be off, fly away, and remember me, you who are now alive!” And the sparrows took off and flew away noisily. The Jews watched with amazement, then left the scene to report to their leaders what they had seen Jesus doing.The son of Annas the scholar, standing there with Jesus, took a willow branch and drained the water Jesus had collected. Jesus, however, saw what had happened and became angry, saying to him, “Damn you, you irreverent fool! What harm did the ponds of water do to you? From this moment you, too, will dry up like a tree, and you'll never produce leaves or root or bear fruit.”

In an instant the boy had completely withered away. Then Jesus departed and left for the house of Joseph. The parents of the boy who had withered away picked him up and were carrying him out, sad because he was so young.

And they came to Joseph and accused him: “It's your fault - your boy did this.”

From the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a book that was not included in the Bible. This translation, by Harold Attridge & Ronald F. Hock, has been edited to remove chapter and verse numbers.