The Gospel of James also sometimes known as the Infancy Gospel of James or the Protevangelium of James probably written about AD 150. It is an apocryphal gospel, that was widely read but never accepted into the New Testament canon. The Gospel of James may be the earliest surviving document attesting the veneration of Mary and claiming her continuing virginity.

Authorship and date

The document presents itself as written by James: "I, James, wrote this history in Jerusalem." Thus the purported author is James the Just, which the text claims to be a son of Joseph from a prior marriage, and thus a step-brother of Jesus.

Scholars have established that, based on the style of the language and the theological concerns, and the fact that the author is apparently not aware of contemporary Jewish customs, the work is pseudepigraphical (written by someone other than the person it claims to be written by). The echoes and parallels of the Old Testament appear to derive from its Greek translation, the Septuagint, as opposed to the hebrew Masoretic Text, which is noticeable due to several peculiarities and variations present in the Septuagint.

The Gospel of James depends on hints in the Septuagint (Greek translation

As for its estimated date, the consensus is that it was actually composed some time in the 2nd century AD. The first mention of it is by Origen, who says the text, like that of a "Gospel of Peter", was of dubious, recent appearance, and shared with that book the claim that the 'brethren of the Lord' were sons of Joseph by a former wife. In the same train of thought, though, he admits that, while the notion might seem pious, it was not unlikely that the obvious interpretation of Scripture (that Mary bore them for Joseph) was true and acceptable.

Manuscript tradition

Some indication of the popularity of the Infancy Gospel of James may be drawn from the fact that about one hundred and thirty Greek manuscripts containing it have survived. The Gospel of James was translated into Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Georgian, Old Slavonic, Armenian, Arabic, Irish and Latin. Though no early Latin versions are known, it was relegated to the apocrypha in the Gelasian decretal, so must have been known in the West. As with the canonical gospels, the vast majority of the manuscripts come from the tenth century or later. The earliest known manuscript of the text, a papyrus dating to the 3rd or early 4th century, was found in 1958; it is kept in the Bodmer Library, Geneva (Papyrus Bodmer 5). Of the surviving Greek manuscripts, the fullest surviving text is a 10th century codex in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (Paris 1454).

Genre

The Gospel of James is one

Content

The Gospel of James is in three equal parts, of eight chapters each -

• the first contains the story of Mary's own unique birth and childhood, and assignment to the temple
• the second concerns the crisis posed by Mary's becoming a woman and thus her imminent pollution of the temple, her assignment to Joseph as guardian, and the tests of her virginity,
• the third relates the Nativity, with the visit of midwives, hiding of Jesus from Herod the Great in a feeding trough, and even the parallel hiding in the hills of John the Baptist and his mother (Elizabeth) from Herod Antipas.

One of the work's high points is the Lament of Anna. A primary theme is the work and grace of God in Mary's life, Mary's personal purity, and her perpetual virginity before, during, and after the birth of Jesus, as confirmed by the midwife after she gave birth, and tested by "Salome" who is perhaps intended to be Salome, later the disciple of Jesus who is mentioned in the Gospel of Mark as being at the Crucifixion.

Besides the perpetual virginity of Mary, this is also the earliest text that explicitly claims that Joseph was a widower, with children, at the time that Mary is entrusted to his care. This is the feature which appears in its earliest mention, which is in a text of Origen, who adduces it to demonstrate that the 'brethren of the Lord' were sons of Joseph by a former wife. Since the text was regarded as heresy by the time of the Gelasian Decree, its dismissal may be due in part to this reading of the adelpoi, which corresponded to the developed Eastern Orthodox view rather than the western, i.e. Roman Catholic, view, which treated them as cousins.

Among further traditions not present in the four canonical gospels are the birth of Jesus in a cave, and the martyrdom of John the Baptist's father Zechariah during the slaughter of the infants. The Nativity reported as taking place in a cave, with its Mithraic overtones, remained in the popular imagination; many Early Renaissance Sienese and Florentine paintings of the Nativity, as well as Byzantine, Greek and Russian icons of the Nativity, show such a chthonic setting.