The remainder of the scene has no parallels in the canonical Gospels. Elizabeth’s son John is also in danger because of Herod’s threat. Finding no place to hide her son, Elizabeth heads to the mountains to escape the executioners, but when exhaustion prevents her from continuing on, she calls out to the Lord for help; the Lord responds by splitting open the mountain to conceal her (22:5–9). While Elizabeth is able to escape with her son, the fate of her husband is not so bright. Approached by Herod’s henchmen at the temple where Zechariah serves as a priest, he is questioned about his son’s whereabouts. When Zechariah provides no useful information, he is slain at the altar of the temple and his blood is said to have turned into stone (24:9). The narrative concludes with the priest entering the temple to find only dried blood at the altar but no body, the lamenting of Zechariah’s murder, and the appointment of Simeon as Zechariah’s replacement (24:4–14). A brief epilogue ends the Protevangelium with information about James, the brother of Jesus, the supposed author, and the circumstances surrounding the composition of his account—namely, that he was inspired and given wisdom to write the account during Herod’s reign when there was an uproar in Jerusalem (25:1–4) following Herod’s death and his son Archelaus’s subsequent rise to power.
Title
Despite the testimony of the epilogue, the “Protevangelium of James” is neither the original nor the ancient title of the text; over its long and complicated history it has gone by many different names. In 1552, when Guillaume Postel reintroduced the book to the West,12 he called the work, Protevangelium sive de natalibus Jesu Christi et ipsius Matris virginis Mariae, sermo historicus divi Jacobi minoris (The Proto-Gospel or the Births of Jesus Christ and His Virgin Mother Mary, A Historical Discourse of Saint James, the Less), based on a Greek manuscript that has since been lost.13 The Protevangelium Jacobi (or James, as in standard English translation for the Jacobs of the New Testament) is a shortened version of this Latin title. There has been some discussion over whether Postel lifted the title verbatim from the manuscript or whether he simply offered a rendering of it; the latter seems more likely since no other manuscripts attest to this title. The various extant manuscripts only complicate the situation further given that there are a variety of long and confusing titles given to this work. For example, one title reads, “Narrative and History concerning How the Very Holy Mother of God was Born for Our Salvation” (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, gr. 1454) and another, “Narrative of the Holy Apostle James, the Archbishop of Jerusalem and Brother of God, concerning the Birth of the All Holy Mother of God and the Eternal Virgin Mary” (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, II, 82).14 The Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex, our earliest manuscript of the text dating from the third or fourth century,15 provides the simple title, “Birth of Mary, Apocalypse of James,”16 and even still, it is doubtful that the second half of the title is original,17 though the attribution to James is fairly common in the manuscript tradition. Several possible early witnesses exist for this text,18 but only one offers a title for the work. In his commentary on Matthew, Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185–254) refers to Jesus’ brother as Joseph’s son from a previous marriage and states that his source is either the “Gospel of Peter” or the “Book of James” (Comm. Matt. 10:17 on Matt 13:55).19 It is possible that the Protevangelium was originally known very plainly as the “Book of James.”
The Protevangelium of James20 and the Infancy Gospel of James21 or Proto-Gospel of James22 are the most widely used contemporary titles for this work,23 an odd circumstance since neither reference Mary, despite the fact that the text is essentially her biography—all activities and conversations that take place in the narrative are connected to her in some way. More problematic with these two popular titles is that they seem to imply they are something that they are not. The implication of “Protevangelium” is that it is a gospel of sorts. The gospel genre traditionally involves content from the life and ministry of Jesus, which is simply not found in this text. While the pre-script “proto-” is accurate in its suggestion that the text precedes what is found in the canonical gospels, the implication that it is a gospel is still problematic since Jesus appears only at the end of the account and for only brief moments at his birth and infancy. The fully English title, Infancy Gospel of James or the Proto-Gospel of James, runs into similar problems because it implies a similarity in content and style to other writings categorized as infancy gospels, which again are traditionally about Jesus. While Jesus does make an appearance at the end, the crux and overarching concern is for Mary.24 Indeed the birth of Jesus and the minor activities associated with his infancy serve primarily to elevate Mary and her exceptional status and condition.
While there is a clear case for why the title of our text should be changed, the traditional title in its semi-anglicized form, the Protevangelium of James, will be used here mostly for the sake of convenience; it is popularly and widely used25 and changing it will only contribute to confusion about its already complicated history, which offers no clear indication of its original form.
Date
General consensus assigns a mid-second century to early third-century date to the text. While dates as late as the fifth century were proposed at the beginning of the twentieth century, these proposals were debunked with the discovery of the third- or fourth-century Bodmer Miscellanous Codex in 1952, which serves as our earliest manuscript of the Protevangelium.26 In support of the earlier dating of the text scholars have looked for indications of knowledge of the text in the works of early church writers.27 As noted above, Origen (ca. 185–254) cites a “Book of James” or the “Gospel of Peter” as a source for the tradition that Joseph was previously married and had children before his engagement to Mary (Comm. Matt. 10.17). This belief is articulated several times throughout the narrative: Joseph’s protest against taking on Mary is based on his already having children (Prot. Jas. 9:9); Joseph makes reference to his sons and specifically names Samuel as one of his children when contemplating how he will register for the upcoming census (17:2); and Joseph leaves his sons to care for Mary while he searches for a midwife (18:1). Clement (ca. 150–215), an older contemporary of Origen, mentions the tradition of a midwife who aids Mary at the birth and attests to her virginitas in partu (Strom. 7.16). Although Clement does not provide a source for this knowledge, he does relay that it is a widely held belief by most people. Other witnesses to Mary’s post-partum virginity include Irenaeus of Lyon (Epid. 54), Ignatius of Antioch (Eph. 19.1), the Ascension of Isaiah 11:1–16, and the Odes of Solomon 19.28 Finally, the Carthaginian author Tertullian (ca. 160–225) vehemently refutes Mary’s eternal virginity (non virgo quantum a partu; Carn. Chr. 23) as well as the possibility that Jesus’ brothers and sisters were Joseph’s children from a previous marriage (Carn. Chr. 7).
P. A. van Stempvoort has drawn on additional evidence to propose a precise date of composition between 178 and 204 CE.29 The terminus a quo of ±178 CE is based on van Stempvoort’s reading of Celsus’s True Doctrine (preserved in Origen’s Contra Celsum), which attacks Mary’s character most viciously. Celsus questions the legitimacy of Mary’s virginity, respected lineage, high social background, and livelihood. Reading the Protevangelium as an apology, van Stempvoort asserts that the text functioned specifically to counter these slanders. For example, he cites the Protevangelium’s reference to Mary’s wealth and royal lineage as a rebuttal of Celsus’s accusation that Mary was a poor village girl who had to spin for a living (Cels. 1.28–32). His highly scandalous accusation that Mary’s child, born in secret, was the product of an adulterous relationship with a Roman soldier named Panthera (Cels. 1.32) is countered by the emphatic statements and physical proof of her maintained virginity found throughout the Protevangelium. Van Stempvoort adds that Origen knew a Biblos Iakobou and that many of his contemporaries had knowledge of the Protevangelium’s content, thus strengthening the earliest possible date of 178 CE. For his specific terminus ad quem date of 204 CE, Van Stempvoort looks to Hippolytus’s homily on Susanna (in Comm. Dan.). Seeing strong parallels between the depiction of Susanna and the two major female figures in the Protevangelium, he suggests that the parallels are indicative of a shared compositional time period. Van Stempvoort’s incredibly precise dating may give some readers pause,30 but his proposal shines important light on sources that may indicate knowledge of the Protevangelium. If Origen’s, Clement’s, and Tertullian’s source for all these unique details is indeed the Protevangelium, its terminus ad quem can be placed reasonably at the beginning of the third century CE.
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