The Gospel of James (or the Protoevangelium of James) is a second-century
infancy gospel Infancy gospels (Greek: ''protoevangelion'') are a genre of religious texts that arose in the 2nd century. They are part of New Testament apocrypha, and provide accounts of the birth and early life of Jesus. The texts are of various and uncertain or ...
telling of the miraculous conception of the
Virgin Mary
Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of ...
, her upbringing and marriage to
Joseph
Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the m ...
, the journey of the couple to
Bethlehem
Bethlehem (; ar, بيت لحم ; he, בֵּית לֶחֶם '' '') is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000,Amara, 1999p. 18.Brynen, 2000p. 202. and it is the capital ...
, the
birth of Jesus
The nativity of Jesus, nativity of Christ, birth of Jesus or birth of Christ is described in the biblical gospels of Luke and Matthew. The two accounts agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judaea, his mother Mary was engaged to a man ...
, and events immediately following. It is the earliest surviving assertion of the
perpetual virginity of Mary
The perpetual virginity of Mary is a Christian doctrine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin before, during and after the birth of Christ. In Western Christianity, the Catholic Church adheres to the doctrine, as do some Lutherans, Anglic ...
, meaning her
virginity
Virginity is the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. The term ''virgin'' originally only referred to sexually inexperienced women, but has evolved to encompass a range of definitions, as found in traditional, modern ...
not just prior to the birth of Jesus, but during and afterwards, and despite being condemned by
Pope Innocent I
Pope Innocent I ( la, Innocentius I) was the bishop of Rome from 401 to his death on 12 March 417. From the beginning of his papacy, he was seen as the general arbitrator of ecclesiastical disputes in both the East and the West. He confirmed the ...
in 405 and rejected by the
Gelasian Decree around 500, became a widely influential source for
Mariology.
Composition
Date, authorship, and sources
The Gospel of James was well known to
Origen
Origen of Alexandria, ''Ōrigénēs''; Origen's Greek name ''Ōrigénēs'' () probably means "child of Horus" (from , "Horus", and , "born"). ( 185 – 253), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and the ...
in the early third century and probably to
Clement of Alexandria
Titus Flavius Clemens, also known as Clement of Alexandria ( grc , Κλήμης ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς; – ), was a Christian theologian and philosopher who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria. Among his pupils were Origen ...
at the end of the second, so is assumed to have been in circulation soon after ''circa'' 150 AD. The author claims to be
James the half-brother of Jesus by an earlier marriage of Joseph, but in fact his identity is unknown. Early studies assumed a Jewish milieu, largely because of its frequent use and knowledge of the
Septuagint
The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond t ...
(a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures); further investigation demonstrated that it misunderstands and/or misrepresents many Jewish practices, but Judaism at this time was highly diverse, and recent trends in scholarship do not entirely dismiss a Jewish connection. Its origin is probably Syrian, and it possibly derives from a sect called the
Encratites, whose founder,
Tatian
Tatian of Adiabene, or Tatian the Syrian or Tatian the Assyrian, (; la, Tatianus; grc, Τατιανός; syc, ܛܛܝܢܘܣ; c. 120 – c. 180 AD) was an Assyrian Christian writer and theologian of the 2nd century.
Tatian's most influential w ...
, taught that sex and marriage were symptoms of
original sin
Original sin is the Christian doctrine that holds that humans, through the fact of birth, inherit a tainted nature in need of regeneration and a proclivity to sinful conduct. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3 ...
.
The gospel is a ''
midrash
''Midrash'' (;["midrash"]
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...
'' (an elaboration) on the
birth narratives found in the gospels of
Matthew
Matthew may refer to:
* Matthew (given name)
* Matthew (surname)
* ''Matthew'' (ship), the replica of the ship sailed by John Cabot in 1497
* ''Matthew'' (album), a 2000 album by rapper Kool Keith
* Matthew (elm cultivar), a cultivar of the Chi ...
and
Luke, and many of its elements, notably its very physical description of Mary's pregnancy and the examination of her
hymen by the midwife Salome, suggest strongly that it was attempting to deny the arguments of
docetists and
Marcion
Marcion of Sinope (; grc, Μαρκίων ; ) was an early Christian theologian in early Christianity. Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ who was an entirely new, alien god, distinct from the vengeful God of Israel who had created ...
ites, unorthodox Christians who held that Jesus was entirely supernatural. It also draws heavily on the Septuagint for historical analogies, turns of phrase, and details of Jewish life. Ronald Hock and
Mary F. Foskett have drawn attention to the influence of Greco-Roman literature on its themes of virginity and purity.
Manuscripts and manuscript tradition
Scholars generally accept that the Gospel of James was originally composed in Greek. Over 100 Greek manuscripts have survived, and translations were made into
Syriac,
Ethiopian
Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of ...
,
Coptic,
Georgian,
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and othe ...
,
Armenian,
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
, and presumably
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...
, given that it was apparently known to the compiler of the Gelasian Decree. The oldest is
Papyrus Bodmer 5 from the fourth or possibly third century, discovered in 1952 and now in the
Bodmer Library, Geneva, while the fullest is a 10th-century Greek codex in the
Bibliothèque Nationale
A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...
, Paris. The first widely printed edition (as opposed to hand-copied manuscripts) was a 1552 edition printed in Basel, Switzerland, by
Guillaume Postel, who printed his Latin translation of a Greek version of the work. Postel also gave the work the Latin name (Proto-Gospel of James) because he believed (incorrectly) that the work antedated the main gospels of the New Testament (
proto- for first,
evangelion for gospel). Emile de Stryker published the standard modern critical edition in 1961, and in 1995 Ronald Hock published an English translation based on de Stryker.
Structure and content
The narrative is made up of three distinct sections with only slight ties to each other:
# Chapters 1–17: A biography of Mary, dealing with her miraculous birth and holy infancy and childhood, her engagement to Joseph and virginal conception of Jesus
# Chapters 18–20: The birth of Jesus, including proof that Mary continued to be a virgin even after the birth
# Chapters 22–24: The death of Zacharias, father of John the Baptist
Mary is presented as an extraordinary child destined for great things from the moment of her conception. Her parents, the wealthy Joachim and his wife Anna (or Anne), are distressed that they have no children, and Joachim goes into the wilderness to pray, leaving Anna to lament her childless state. God hears Anna's prayer, angels announce the coming child, and in the seventh month of Anna's pregnancy (underlining the exceptional nature of Mary's future life), she is born. Anna dedicates the child to God and vows that she shall be raised in the Temple. Joachim and Anna name the child Mary, and when she is three years old, they
send her to the Temple, where she is fed each day by an angel.
When Mary approaches her 12th year, the priests decide that she can no longer stay in the Temple lest her menstrual blood render it unclean, and God finds a widower, Joseph, to act as her guardian: Joseph is depicted as elderly and the father of grown sons; he has no desire for sexual relations with Mary. He leaves on business, and Mary is called to the Temple to help weave the temple curtain, where one day an angel appears and tells her that she has been chosen to conceive Jesus the Saviour, but that she will not give birth as other women do. Joseph returns and finds Mary six months pregnant, and rebukes her, fearing that the priests will assume that he is the guilty party. They do, but the chastity of both is proven through the "
test of bitter waters".
The
Roman census forces the holy couple to travel to Bethlehem, but Mary's time comes before they can reach the village. Joseph settles Mary in a cave, where she is guarded by his sons, while he goes in search of a midwife, and for an apocalyptic moment as he searches all creation stands still. He returns with a midwife, and as they stand at the mouth of the cave, a cloud overshadows it, an intense light fills it, and suddenly a baby is at Mary's breast. Joseph and the midwife marvel at the miracle, but a second midwife named Salome (the first is not given a name) insists on examining Mary, upon which her hand withers as a sign of her lack of faith; Salome prays to God for forgiveness and an angel appears and tells her to touch the Christ Child, upon which her hand is healed.
The gospel concludes with the visit of the
Three Magi, the
massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem, the martyrdom of the High Priest
Zechariah
Zechariah most often refers to:
* Zechariah (Hebrew prophet), author of the Book of Zechariah
* Zechariah (New Testament figure), father of John the Baptist
Zechariah or its many variant forms and spellings may also refer to:
People
*Zechariah ...
(father of
John the Baptist
John the Baptist or , , or , ;Wetterau, Bruce. ''World history''. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1994. syc, ܝܘܿܚܲܢܵܢ ܡܲܥܡܕ݂ܵܢܵܐ, Yoḥanān Maʿmḏānā; he, יוחנן המטביל, Yohanān HaMatbil; la, Ioannes Bapti ...
), and the election of his successor Simeon, and an epilogue, telling the circumstances under which the work was supposedly composed.
Influence
Christianity
The Gospel of James was a widely influential source for
Christian doctrine regarding Mary. According to Bernhard Lohse, it is the earliest assertion of her
perpetual virginity, meaning her virginity not just prior to the birth of Jesus, but during the birth and afterwards. Its explanation of the gospels' "brothers of Jesus" (the ''
adelphoi
The brothers of Jesus or the adelphoi ( grc-gre, ἀδελφοί, adelphoí, of the same womb)Greek singular noun ''adelphos'', from a- ("same", equivalent to homo-) and delphys ("womb," equivalent to splanchna). are named in the New Testament a ...
'') as the offspring of Joseph by an earlier marriage remains the position of the Eastern church, but in the West, influential theologian
Jerome
Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian priest, confessor, theologian, and historian; he is co ...
asserted that Joseph himself had been a perpetual virgin, and that the'' adelphoi ''were cousins of the Lord. Due to Jerome, the Protoevangelium was condemned by
Pope Innocent I
Pope Innocent I ( la, Innocentius I) was the bishop of Rome from 401 to his death on 12 March 417. From the beginning of his papacy, he was seen as the general arbitrator of ecclesiastical disputes in both the East and the West. He confirmed the ...
in 405 and rejected by the
Gelasian Decree around 500, but despite being officially condemned, it was taken over almost ''in toto'' by another apocryphal work, the
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew
The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (or The Infancy Gospel of Matthew) is a part of the New Testament apocrypha. In antiquity the text was called The Book About the Origin of the Blessed Mary and the Childhood of the Savior. Pseudo-Matthew is one of a ...
, which popularised most of its stories.
The Gospel of James was the first to give the name
Anne to the mother of Mary, taking it probably from
Hannah, the mother of the prophet
Samuel
Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bib ...
, and Mary, like Samuel, is taken to spend her childhood in the temple. Some manuscripts say of Anne's pregnancy that it was the result of normal intercourse with her husband, but current scholars prefer the oldest texts, which say that Mary was conceived in Joachim's absence through divine intervention; nevertheless, the Gospel of James does not advance the idea of Mary's
Immaculate Conception
The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception.
It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, meaning that it is held to be a divinely revealed truth w ...
.
Various manuscripts place the birth of Mary in the sixth, seventh, eighth, or ninth month, with the oldest having the seventh; this was in keeping with both the Judaism of the period, which had similar seventh-month births for significant individuals such as
Samuel
Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bib ...
,
Isaac
Isaac; grc, Ἰσαάκ, Isaák; ar, إسحٰق/إسحاق, Isḥāq; am, ይስሐቅ is one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites and an important figure in the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He was ...
, and
Moses
Moses hbo, מֹשֶׁה, Mōše; also known as Moshe or Moshe Rabbeinu ( Mishnaic Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, ); syr, ܡܘܫܐ, Mūše; ar, موسى, Mūsā; grc, Mωϋσῆς, Mōÿsēs () is considered the most important pr ...
, as the sign of a miraculous or divine conception. Further signs of Mary's supremely holy nature follow, including Anne's vow that the infant would never walk on the earth (her bedroom is made a "sanctuary" where she is attended by "undefiled daughters of the Hebrews"), her blessing "with the ultimate blessing" by the priests on her first birthday with the declaration that because of her God will bring redemption to Israel, and the angels who bring her food in the Temple, where she is attended by the priests and engages herself in weaving the temple curtain.
The
ordeal of the bitter water
The ordeal of the bitter water was a trial by ordeal administered to the wife whose husband suspected her of adultery but who had no witnesses to make a formal case. The ordeal is expanded in the Talmud, in the seventh tractate of ''Nashim''.
Ac ...
serves to defend Jesus against accusation of illegitimacy levied in the second century by pagan and Jewish opponents of Christianity. Christian sensitivity to these charges made them eager to defend both the virgin birth of Jesus and the immaculate conception of Mary (i.e., her freedom from sin at the moment of her conception).
Islam
The
Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , ...
ic stories of the Virgin Mary and the birth of Jesus are similar to those of the Protoevangelium, which was widely known in the Near East. These include its mention of Mary fed by angels, the choice of her guardian (Joseph) through the casting of lots, and her occupation making a curtain for the Temple immediately before the Annunciation. Nevertheless, while the Quran holds Mary in high esteem and modern Muslims agree with Christians that she was a virgin when she conceived Jesus, they would see the idea of her perpetual virginity (which is the central idea of James) as contrary to the Islamic ideal of women as wives and mothers.
See also
*
Acts of the Apostles (genre)
__NOTOC__
The Acts of the Apostles is a genre of Early Christian literature, recounting the lives and works of the apostles of Jesus. The ''Acts'' (Latin: ''Acta'', Greek: Πράξεις ''Práxeis'') are important for many reasons, one of them b ...
*
Apocalyptic literature
Apocalyptic literature is a genre of prophetical writing that developed in post- Exilic Jewish culture and was popular among millennialist early Christians. ''Apocalypse'' ( grc, , }) is a Greek word meaning " revelation", "an unveiling or u ...
*
''Castelseprio'' – early fresco depiction of the trial by water
*
Gospel
Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...
*
History of Joseph the Carpenter
*
List of Gospels
A gospel (a contraction of Old English , meaning "good news/glad tidings", comparable to Greek , ) is a written account of the career and teachings of Jesus. The term originally meant the Christian message itself, but came to be used for the b ...
*
List of New Testament papyri
*
New Testament apocrypha
*
Pseudepigraphy
Pseudepigrapha (also anglicized as "pseudepigraph" or "pseudepigraphs") are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past.Bauckham, Richard; "Pseu ...
*
Perpetual virginity of Mary
The perpetual virginity of Mary is a Christian doctrine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin before, during and after the birth of Christ. In Western Christianity, the Catholic Church adheres to the doctrine, as do some Lutherans, Anglic ...
*
Salome (Gospel of James)
Salome appears in the apocryphal Gospel known as the Gospel of James as an associate of the unnamed midwife at the Nativity of Jesus, and is regularly depicted with the midwife in Eastern Orthodox icons of the Nativity of Jesus, though she has lo ...
*
Meeting of Joachim and Anne at the Golden Gate
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
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External links
Early Christian Writings website:''Infancy Gospel of James''
The Protoevangelium of James based on the Greek text of Ronald F. Hock
The Protoevangelium of James based on the critical Greek text of Émile de Strycker.
Protoevangelium Jacobi in Greek.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gospel Of James
Apocryphal Gospels
2nd-century Christian texts
James
Pseudepigraphy
James, brother of Jesus