Genre, Purpose, and Possible Audience
The Protevangelium’s genre, purpose, and even possible audience are closely connected to the text’s overarching goals. Scholarship on the text has proposed a number of reasons for its creation including, “filling in gaps,” “expanding,” and “interpreting” the writings of the New Testament (see also the section on sources below).70 In many ways, the Protevangelium does fill in gaps by providing its readers with rich and detailed descriptions of an incredibly prominent woman in Christian history, but for whom we receive precious little information in the canonical Gospels about her character, history, or background. Some have suggested that the popularity of infancy gospels (cf. the section on title above) inspired interest in creating literature about the early life of Mary, a process that ultimately developed into a need to provide her with her own biography. Many have read the Protevangelium as a vital part of the ancient biographical genre that sought to better understand and to help quench the desire to know more about the lives of the “rich and famous.”
Another popular genre of literature among early Christians, especially prior to Constantine, was apologetics. As a tradition that had not yet gained complete legitimacy throughout the Roman Empire, Christianity felt the need to craft writings that were apologetic in nature or at least had apologetic aims. The Protevangelium’s specific claim that Mary conceived and gave birth as a virgin seems to respond to various Jewish and/or “pagan” polemics against Mary. A number of scholars have argued that the work shows clear signs of being motivated by apologetic concerns.71 Van Stempvoort takes this proposal a step further by suggesting the text is specifically intended to counter Celsus’s attacks on Mary. He views the specific details of Mary’s proven and enduring purity and virginity, the description of her parents as wealthy and respected members of the community (1:1–3), and Mary’s weaving of the temple curtain (12:1) as direct responses to Celsus’s accusations that Mary had a child out of wedlock with a Roman solider, was the daughter of poor and socially insignificant parents, and that she spun for a living.72
Galit Hasan-Rokem traces the roots of Celsus’s polemic to folkloric Jewish tradition that may have begun in the first century.73 Two rabbinic references come to mind that offer some parallels. In the Tosefta (t. Hull. 2.22–24) there is a reference to a “Yeshu ben Panthera” who might be a thinly-veiled Jesus given that various versions of the illegitimate birth of Jesus claimed he was the son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. In the later traditions of b. San. 106a, there is also a reference to an unnamed woman who is described as playing the “harlot with carpenters”—a possible reference to Mary given Joseph’s frequent association with carpentry. That the Protevangelium repeatedly affirms Mary’s virginity by having a number of different and independent witnesses—including the angel (11:5–8), Joseph (14:5), the priest and people of Israel (16:5–8), an unnamed midwife (19:14), and Salome (20:1–2, 10)—attest to her certainly indicates an attempt to refute any slanderous and defamatory remarks made against her character. Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše remind us, too, that doctrinal debates and theological discussions about Mary’s purity and eternal virginity, which occupied various councils from the fourth century and beyond, were rooted in the Protevangelium’s apologetic discourse.74
The incredibly flattering depiction of Mary in the Protevangelium has encouraged Hock to suggest another possible reason for its creation. Namely, Hock reads the consistent praising of Mary as an encomium consistent with the Greco-Roman standards of literature written with the purpose to praise. While he does not deny that the narrative serves apologetic concerns, he asserts that it “hardly needs to be the principal purpose [and] does not explain the gospel as a whole.”75 Indeed, the Protevangelium’s overwhelming focus on Mary’s purity greatly exceeds any proof needed to defend accusations made against her status. To offer support, Hock compares the text with the expectations of Hermogenes’ Progymnasmata to argue that the Protevangelium was crafted and guided with these criteria in mind. As a teaching manual, the Progymnasmata provides instructions and examples of common characteristics for encomium writing. Family, national origin, upbringing, achievements, and virtuous deeds are several aspects commonly found in Greco-Roman encomiums, all of which Hock sees as being directly addressed in the Protevangelium.76 Consistent with Hock’s claim, Mary Foskett argues that the driving force behind the narrative is “praise of Mary—rather than the need to defend her.”77
The deliberate focus on Mary and her extraordinary features has also convinced Stephen Shoemaker that the main motivation of the text must be the extolling of Mary for her own sake, rather than, for example, Christological reasons that sought to confirm Jesus’ divinity though his mother’s virginal birth. No doubt, the Protevangelium addresses these concerns by making clear that Jesus was truly born of a virgin, but the narrative’s focus is wholly devoted to Mary;78 indeed Jesus seldom appears and only in the context of his mother giving birth to him. Mary no longer functions as the protagonist in the final section of the narrative (22–25), but Jesus is absent also. The reality of Jesus’ virgin birth need not require an entire book to demonstrate what can easily be made plain in a single chapter.
Authorship, Sources, and Literary Unity
The epilogue of the Protevangelium attributes the work to James, the brother of Jesus and the bishop of Jerusalem (Matt 13:55; Mark 6:3; Gal 1:19; Acts 15:13–21) and sets the time of its composition during the period in which Herod was king of Judea (25:1–4). The Protevangelium, however, is a pseudonymous work and as such, its authorship, as well as date and provenance are difficult to determine with precision and have spurred some debate among modern scholars. While more recent trends in apocrypha scholarship have cautioned against offering exact identities about authors and intended readers/audiences,79 especially based on approaching texts through “mirror reading,”80 some general inferences can certainly be made of the author’s educational exposure and cultural background. For example, like Matthew and Luke, the author has a clear knowledge of the Septuagint, as evident in the close affinities between the depiction of Mary and the biblical matriarchs including Sarah (Gen 18, 20–21) and Hannah (1 Sam 1–2) mentioned above, but also because the tone, thought, language, usages, and motifs found in the Protevangelium resemble Septuagint texts too closely to be coincidental.81 Other Hellenistic Jewish sources such as Susanna (Dan 13:1–64), Tobit, and Judith also seem to have a deep influence on the Protevangelium in terms of style and motifs.
Literary elements and social conventions from Greco-Roman romances also have been detected in the Protevangelium. In particular, Hock has argued that Anna’s lament in the garden (3:2–8), Joseph’s wailing in response to Mary’s condition (13:1–5), and the bitter water test (16:3–8) all parallel the style, language, and motifs found in the Greek romances of Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe and Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon.82 In the former case, Daphnis’s lament also takes place in a garden (4.28.3). In Achilles Tatius’s novel, Clitophon expresses a lament closely resembling Joseph’s (5.11.3) and Leucippe is also required to take a water test to prove her purity (8.3.3; 6.1–5; 13.1—14.2). Furthermore, Hock argues that certain Greco-Roman conventions may also help understand details that would be understood easily by the audience of the Protevangelium, but might be lost on a modern reader. For example, he cites Chloe’s discussion with her mother Nape, who warns that her virginity might be more safeguarded at home spinning rather than out frolicking on the hillsides, as an aid to understanding why Mary rushes home to her threads upon hearing a bodiless voice (Prot. Jas. 11:1–4). For Hock, Greek novels share with the Protevangelium a deep concern for sexual purity, providing insight not only into the intentions of the writing but also, by implication, the audience who valued and “read” these works.
Questions regarding specific sources for the text have also proven difficult to answer.