The Protevangelium of James

The Protevangelium of James — known also as the Protoevangelium, the Infancy Gospel of James, and by its original title Genesis Marias, “The Birth of Mary” — is a second-century apocryphal narrative (c. AD 145–150 by scholarly dating) whose colophon names “James” as its author, presenting him as a son of Joseph and so the Lord’s brother. It is not in fact the work of the Apostle James: it is a pseudonymous infancy gospel, valued by the Church for the Marian traditions it transmits but never received as Scripture or as eyewitness history. This file describes what the text is, why it is judged apocryphal and pseudonymous, and how the Church drew feasts and devotion from it without canonizing it.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

What the Text Is, and What It Is Not

The work conventionally called the Protevangelium of James is a short narrative of the origin and early life of the Virgin Mary and the infancy of Christ. Its oldest title, preserved in the third-century papyrus that is our earliest copy (Papyrus Bodmer V), is Genesis Marias, “The Birth of Mary”; the now-familiar name “Protevangelium” — “the gospel before the Gospel,” because it precedes the canonical infancy narratives — was given to it by its sixteenth-century Western editor (Elliott 1993, 48–49; Hock 1995, 3–4). It survives in Greek and in many versions, attesting to its enormous popularity in the early Church.

Two things must be stated plainly at the outset, because they govern everything that follows. First, the text is pseudonymous: its closing colophon claims, “Now I, James, wrote this history” — placing the narrative in the mouth of James, presented as a son of Joseph and therefore the Lord’s brother (Protevangelium of James 25.1; trans. ANF Vol. 8). But the work is not by the Apostle James and makes no genuine claim on his authorship beyond this literary device; the attribution is a second-century author’s bid for authority, not a historical signature (Hock 1995, 11–13; Elliott 1993, 48–52). Second, the text is apocryphal: it stands outside the canon of Scripture, was never received by the Church as a Gospel, and is to be classed among the New Testament apocrypha — specifically the infancy gospels (Elliott 1993, 46–52; on the Church’s canon and how Tradition handles such writings, see Holy Scripture and The Church Fathers).

Date and Authorship

The scholarly consensus dates the Protevangelium to the middle of the second century, c. AD 145–150 (Hock 1995, 11; Elliott 1993, 49). The terminus is fixed at both ends. It cannot be much earlier: it presupposes and harmonizes the infancy narratives of both Matthew and Luke, weaving their data into a single continuous story, which places it after the canonical Gospels were in circulation (Hock 1995, 11–13). It cannot be much later: Origen, writing in the early third century, already knows the tradition — found in this “Book of James” — that the brothers of the Lord were sons of Joseph by a former wife (Origen, Commentary on Matthew 10.17; cf. Elliott 1993, 48). The author was almost certainly not a Palestinian Jew of the apostolic circle, for the text betrays unfamiliarity with Palestinian geography and with Jewish custom — for example its picture of temple practice and of Mary being reared within the temple precincts — which tells decisively against the colophon’s claim of authorship by James (Hock 1995, 12–13; Elliott 1993, 49). The pseudonymous “James” is therefore a literary persona, and the real author an anonymous Christian writer of the mid-second century who wished to glorify the Mother of God.

The Content of the Narrative

The story falls into three movements. The first concerns the birth of Mary herself to the aged and childless Joachim and Anna. Reproached for their barrenness, Joachim withdraws to the wilderness to fast and Anna laments in her garden, until an angel announces to each of them that Anna will conceive; the child is Mary, vowed to God before her birth (Protevangelium of James 1–5; trans. ANF Vol. 8). The second movement is Mary’s consecration: at three years old she is brought to the Temple and “presented” there, set on the steps of the altar, where she is reared as a temple virgin and “received food from the hand of an angel” (Protevangelium of James 7–8; ANF Vol. 8). When she reaches the age at which she can no longer remain in the temple, the priests seek a guardian for her, and by a sign — a dove issuing from his rod — the choice falls on Joseph, who is presented as an aged widower with sons of his own already grown; he protests, “I have sons, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl,” but takes her into his keeping (Protevangelium of James 8–9; ANF Vol. 8). The third movement retells the Nativity with vivid additional detail: the journey to Bethlehem, the birth in a cave, a great light, and the episode of the midwife and Salome, in which Salome, doubting the virgin birth, tests it and is struck and then healed — a narrative dramatization of Mary’s virginity in partu (Protevangelium of James 17–20; ANF Vol. 8).

Influence on Marian Tradition and the Feasts

Whatever its canonical status, the Protevangelium exercised an influence on later Christian devotion out of all proportion to its size. From it the Church received names and scenes that became permanent fixtures of her Marian piety. The very names Joachim and Anna for the parents of the Theotokos are known to the tradition only through this text and the writings dependent on it; they appear nowhere in canonical Scripture (Elliott 1993, 48; Hock 1995, 4–5). Two of the Great Feasts of the Orthodox year take their narrative content directly from it: the Nativity of the Theotokos (8 September), which celebrates the birth of Mary to Joachim and Anna recounted in Protevangelium 1–5; and the Entrance (Presentation) of the Theotokos into the Temple (21 November), which dramatizes the three-year-old Mary’s presentation in Protevangelium 7–8. The hymnography and iconography of both feasts depend on the Protevangelium’s scenes — the meeting of Joachim and Anna, the temple steps, the angelic feeding — even where the liturgical texts never name their source.

A further and theologically weighty inheritance is the portrait of Joseph as an aged widower already a father. This image — Joseph the elderly guardian who already “has sons” when he receives the Virgin — is the narrative ground of the Epiphanian view of the brothers of the Lord, the reading the Orthodox Church holds: that the “brothers” are Joseph’s sons by his first marriage, not later children of Mary, so that her Ever-Virginity is preserved (see The Brothers of the Lord). Epiphanius of Salamis in the fourth century, defending the perpetual virginity, sets out precisely this picture (Epiphanius, Panarion 78.7–10; trans. Williams), and his “Epiphanian” reading is in substance the Protevangelium’s, transmitted through Origen and the wider tradition (Origen, Commentary on Matthew 10.17). The aged Joseph of Orthodox Nativity iconography — depicted apart, white-bearded, troubled — is the Protevangelium’s Joseph (on the dogma at stake, The Theotokos).

How the Church Holds an Apocryphon

The case of the Protevangelium is a clear illustration of how Orthodox Tradition handles a writing it neither canonizes nor discards (METHODOLOGY §3.5). The Church drew devotional and feast traditions from this text — the names of Joachim and Anna, the scenes of the two Marian feasts, the figure of the aged Joseph — without receiving it as Scripture, without treating it as eyewitness history, and without endorsing the apostolic authorship its colophon claims. The traditions it preserves were received because they cohered with what the Church already confessed of the Theotokos and were taken up into her worship; the text itself remained an apocryphon. This is the proper status it is given here: a second-century pseudonymous infancy gospel, named as such, important for the traditions it transmits and for its shaping of the Marian feasts, but not the work of the Apostle James and not a source of historical or scriptural authority. To say so is not to disparage it; it is to receive it as the Church has — gratefully, and with discernment (cf. the canonical question in Holy Scripture, and on James himself, James the Just and Reception and Legacy).

References

The Protevangelium of James (The Book of James). Trans. in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8. Ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1886. (The birth of Mary to Joachim and Anna, chs. 1–5; the temple presentation, chs. 7–8; Joseph the aged widower with sons, chs. 8–9; the Nativity, the cave, the midwife and Salome, chs. 17–20; the “I, James” colophon, ch. 25.)
Hock, Ronald F. The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas. The Scholars Bible 2. Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 1995. (Greek text and translation; the c. AD 145–150 dating; the pseudonymity and non-Palestinian provenance, esp. pp. 3–13.)
Elliott, J. K. The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. (The Protevangelium among the infancy gospels; the title Genesis Marias; dating and reception, esp. pp. 46–52.)
Epiphanius of Salamis. Panarion (Adversus Haereses) 78 (“Against the Antidicomarianites”), 78.7–10. Trans. Frank Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Books II and III (Sects 47–80). Leiden: Brill, 1994. (The patristic statement of the prior-marriage view that the Protevangelium grounds.)
Origen. Commentary on Matthew 10.17. (Early witness to the “Book of James” tradition that the Lord’s brothers were sons of Joseph by a former wife.)