The Infancy Gospel of Thomas depicts Jesus in contradictory fashion as both holy terror and benevolent Son of God. This monograph examines this enigmatic portrayal of Jesus in this work, which Cousland prefers to call the Paidika. Chapter 1 deals with introductory matters. After giving a brief overview of the contents, Cousland explores the textual history of the Paidika. The earliest version of the Paidika was most likely written in Greek by an unknown author in the second century somewhere in the Greek East of the Roman Empire. Cousland classifies the genre of the Paidika as parevangelical—it is related to but independent from the canonical Gospels. While the ancients would have given some credence to the stories in the Paidika, its historicity is highly questionable.Chapter 2 focuses on Jesus the holy terror. Cousland begins by surveying and evaluating various explanations for the behavior of Jesus in the Paidika: it evinces literary ineptitude, it depicts Jesus as an intolerant Jewish holy man, it is a children’s story, it is an anti-Christian document, and it depicts Jesus as a developing child. Cousland finds the last explanation to be the most plausible. The Paidika portrays Jesus as a child who is both human and divine and who matures through the years. Cousland contends that Jesus’s ill-tempered behavior in the Paidika exhibits the popular Greco-Roman perceptions of the gods. Jesus evinces the actions and attitudes of Greco-Roman deities. In particular, Jesus exacts retribution for petty offenses and the punishments are often excessive. Cousland draws several parallels from the infancy narratives of Hermes, Dionysus, and Herakles. He also finds a correlation of humor in the Paidika to the Greco-Roman myths in their depictions of the puerile behavior of the gods. He also avers that Jesus is portrayed as a killer in order to make Jesus more palatable to a pagan audience.Chapter 3 explores the portrayal of Jesus as a child. The Paidika covers Jesus’s life from ages 5 to 12. Jesus is depicted as engaging in normal childhood activities such as playing with other children, attending school, and helping his parents with daily chores. At the same time, Jesus’s performance of miracles displays his divine power, and he exhibits divine knowledge and insight. Jesus performs reprehensible deeds during his younger years, but as he grows older he matures and engages in more appropriate behaviors. Hence, while Jesus’s divine nature does not change, his human character must undergo the same developmental process that all human children experience.Chapter 4 examines the Christology of the Paidika. The final episode is heavily dependent on Luke 2:41–51, but the author modifies the story to enhance Jesus’s wisdom and understanding of the Scriptures and to emphasize Jesus’s divine parentage. Cousland claims that the Paidika draws upon Johannine concepts and terminology. In particular, the Paidika focuses upon Jesus’s preexistence, his heavenly origin, and his being sent by God. The numerous miracles that Jesus performs reveal his divine nature. They show his creative capacity, his authority over purity and Sabbath, and his possession of unmediated power. His teachings reveal his divine knowledge and wisdom. His healing miracles and raisings from the dead indicate that he is a savior figure and one worthy of worship. Cousland rounds off the chapter by demonstrating that the Paidika does not show any significant traces of Gnosticism, Docetism, or Ebionism. He classifies the Paidika as a proto-orthodox document.Chapter 5 tries to situate the Paidika within its social context. Cousland contends that the Paidika was most likely geared to a pagan or Gentile Christian audience, likely recent converts. Its lack of literary sophistication and its popular style suggest that it was directed toward an uneducated populace. Cousland surmises that uneducated audiences would have delighted in the miracle stories that intimated Jesus’s divine nature and may have played a part in their conversion. He conjectures that the Paidika’s subversive message, which undermined parental authority, religious institutions, and human learning, may have proved attractive to new converts but was rejected by more established church leaders. The conclusion summarizes the content and argument of the book.Cousland writes with fluid prose. He develops his argument well, and he competently engages with other scholarly literature on the Paidika. While I did not find all of the parallels he draws between the stories of the Paidika and other biblical and extrabiblical accounts to be entirely convincing, I found his overall argument to be rather persuasive. I believe that Cousland has provided us with an engaging and important contribution to an understanding of the so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas.