In their introduction to this large volume, the editors show how the term ‘infancy gospels’ has often been used in English-speaking countries to designate apocryphal infancy gospels (the term ‘infancy narratives’ being reserved for the canonical accounts) and on the continent, especially France, to designate the canonical accounts. Their usage, reflecting changing attitudes to apocryphal material from the early Christian tradition, includes both pertinent canonical and apocryphal material.

The volume is divided into three parts: ‘Infancy gospels and stories’; ‘Stories and identities in the infancy gospels’; and ‘Infancy gospel stories and identities’. In the first part questions relating to the contexts of the infancy gospels are addressed as well as broader interpretative questions. Christian Grappe, for instance, looks at the midrashic readings of the lives of biblical figures and others in Jewish writings of the intertestamental period as a possible background to the accounts in the canonical Gospels; Christophe Guignard argues that Africanus’ geneaology comes from early Palestinian traditions relating to the holy family; and in an illuminating piece Joseph Verheyden shows how Luke i–ii is taken up with diminishing the importance of John the Baptist in relation to Jesus. In the second half interest is focused on the ‘stories and identities as told in the canonical infancy narratives’. Essays here range from Jörg Frey's suggestive piece on why there are no birth narratives in the Gospels of Mark and John to Andrea Taschl-Erber's feminist reading of the presentation of Mary in Matthew i–ii and Luke i–ii, to an ecclesiological reading by Elian Cavallier of Matt. i–ii. The third part is mainly focused on apocryphal infancy gospels. The essays here raise interesting questions about the Jewish character of some of these writings (Lily Vuog on the Protevangelium Jacobi and Frederic Amsler on the Padikia Iesou), their relationship to the canonical Gospels (Gerd van Oyen on the re-reading of biblical traditions in the infancy Gospel of Thomas), and examine some of the later uses of these Gospels and traditions in ancient writings (Philip Alexander on the Toledoth Yeshu as an example of an anti-infancy gospel, here arguing for a much earlier dating for some of this material and for the view that study of the Toledoth should be an important part of any study of the apocryphal infancy gospel tradition), and early modern and Enlightenment sources (Daniel Barbu on Voltaire's use of the Toledoth Yeshu).

This is, like many collections of essays, somewhat of a hodge-podge: as the editors comment, ‘such a volume can hardly have a conclusion’. But most of the essays are well-researched and stimulating pieces in an area of study which is growing and, if the editors have their way, with their suggestion at the end of their introduction of the need for more work on the artistic dimension of the subject, and the place of infancy stories in the Islamic tradition, will grow further.