in philadelphia is a leading historian in the catholic church. >> one of the purposes of the apocryphal gospelside the details that writtens wondered about the lives of jesus, mary and joseph. >> the stories in the apocryphal, particularly about a young jesus, proved to be very popular and were treated like dimestore novels. >> one very, very interesting book, actually, is the story of thomas, and it's a marvelous story because it starts to imagine what must it be like for god to be a child, as it were. and one sentence starts off like dennis the menace, he was a divine brat. you can see, he starts off awful. >> other stories depicted joseph as a 90-year-old widower with several children. or an incompetent carpenter whose mistakes in woodworking were miraculously repaired by the power of jesus. >> it's like the education of god as a child growing up. by the end of the story, and the end of the gospel of thomas, he's got his wisdom under control and he's ready to use it only for good. >> so why are the everyday lives of mary and joseph shrouded in mist try? joseph virtually disappears after the