Home > Surah 3 - The Family of Imran
The Quran Verse
Surah 3:49:
And a messenger to the Children of Israel, 'Indeed I have come to you with a sign from your Lord in that I design for you from clay like the form of a bird, then I breathe into it and it becomes a bird by permission of Allah.
The Relevant Source Text (Apocryphal Gospel)
Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Chapter 2:
He made soft clay and fashioned twelve sparrows from it... Jesus clapped his hands and cried to the sparrows, "Off with you!" And the sparrows took flight and went away chirping.
This miracle is not found in the canonical Gospels. It is plagiarized from a rejected, late 2nd-century Gnostic text that was popular as a myth in the Middle East, treating the fable as a divine miracle.