The Protevangelium Of James

The Protevangelium of James tells stories about the life of the Virgin Mary that are absent from the New Testament Gospels: her miraculous birth to Anna and Joachim, her upbringing in the temple, and her marriage at the age of twelve to the aged widower Joseph. The text also adds significant details to the well-known stories of Jesus’ conception, birth, and escape from the slaughter of innocents perpetrated by Herod the Great. Despite its noncanonical status, the Protevangelium of James was extremely influential in churches of the East, and since its publication in the West in the sixteenth-century has captured the imagination of readers all over the world. This study edition presents a fresh, new translation of the text with cross-references, notes, and commentary. The extensive introduction makes accessible the most recent scholarship in studies on Mary in Christian apocrypha, offers new insights into the text’s provenance and relationship to Judaism, and discusses the text’s contributions to art and literature.

As a prehistory to the Nativity accounts of the gospels of Matthew and Luke the Protevangelium of James, dated to the second half of the second century, aimed to fill in alleged gaps in the canonical accounts of Jesus' and his mother's ancestry and births. Thus, it describes the birth of Mary, the mother of Christ, the Annunciation, the Nativity and the death of Zachariah, the high priest and father of John the Baptist. The edition of the original Greek text has an English version on its facing pages. There are also editorial notes to enable all interested parties to benefit from reading this important and influential text. The commentary challenges earlier attempts by showing the text as embedded in second-third century debates with an anti-gnostic (anti-Marcionite) agenda. Against earlier views it shows that the Protevangelium is primarily a theological work in narrative form and that the main issue is not so much Mariology, but a primitive Christology. It also shows that the Protevangelium presupposes much of the New Testament, albeit in a different form as the canonical (majority) text.

The second in George T. Zervos' two-volume critical investigation of the Protevangelium of James. Whereas volume 1 offers a critical edition of the Greek text together with English translation and critical introduction this second volume considers the wide-ranging critical questions in greater depth. Zervos presents a detailed study of the critical questions regarding the ProtJas - authorship, date, origins, purpose - and offers conclusions concerning the textual and compositional history of the ProtJas within the framework of the historical and theological development of the Christian Church. Together these two volumes tell the fascinating story of how an early apocryphal gospel provided the developing church with doctrinal material that was incorporated into both the theology and the ecclesiastical liturgical cycle of the medieval Church, and became a significant part of the standard catechism.

The various versions of the Infancy Gospels illustrate how stories about the Virgin and Child lend themselves to be told and retold - much like the stories in the canonical Gospels. This first translation of the full text of the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, itself derived from a sixth-century Syriac text that no longer exists, provides two variants of the famous narrative and several recensions or ancient editions. Stories about Jesus, many of them unique to this gospel, are included to show how he exercised his sovereign and divine will even as a child. This edition also contains three early Armenian versions of the Protevangelium of James, which with other ancient sources dependent on it (like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew) constitute the basic tradition in the formation of the later Infancy Gospels. These writings are our earliest sources about the parents of the Virgin Mary (Joachim and Anne) and her miraculous birth. They also form the basis for the dogma of her Immaculate Conception and perpetual virginity after the birth of Jesus, and lay the ground for certain of the Marian feasts celebrated since the fourth century. Terian's engaging introduction and annotation of the texts place this rare document clearly in its cultural and historical context and provide extensive references to the surrounding textual tradition. These extraordinary stories will appeal to all with an interest in the early church.

The Gospel called the Protevangelion: An Apocryphal Gospel by Archbishop Wake. Or, an Historical Account of the BIRTH of CHRIST, and the perpetual VIRGIN MARY, his Mother, by JAMES THE LESSER, Cousin and Brother of the Lord Jesus, chief Apostle and first Bishop of the Christians in Jerusalem. This Gospel is ascribed to James. The allusions to it in the ancient Fathers are frequent, and their expressions indicate that it had obtained a very general credit in the Christian world. The controversies founded upon it chiefly relate to the age of Joseph at the birth of Christ, and to his being a widower with children, before his marriage with the Virgin. The Gospel of James, also known as the Infancy Gospel of James or the Protoevangelium of James, is an apocryphal gospel probably written about AD 145, which expands backward in time the infancy stories contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and presents a narrative concerning the birth and upbringing of Mary herself. It is the oldest source outside the New Testament to assert the virginity of Mary not only prior to, but during (and after) the birth of Jesus. The ancient manuscripts that preserve the book have different titles, including "The Birth of Mary", "The Story of the Birth of Saint Mary, Mother of God," and "The Birth of Mary; The Revelation of James." The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives.

Written by an L. A. County homicide detective and former atheist, Cold-Case Christianity examines the claims of the New Testament using the skills and strategies of a hard-to-convince criminal investigator. Christianity could be defined as a “cold case”: it makes a claim about an event from the distant past for which there is little forensic evidence. In Cold-Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace uses his nationally recognized skills as a homicide detective to look at the evidence and eyewitnesses behind Christian beliefs. Including gripping stories from his career and the visual techniques he developed in the courtroom, Wallace uses illustration to examine the powerful evidence that validates the claims of Christianity. A unique apologetic that speaks to readers’ intense interest in detective stories, Cold-Case Christianity inspires readers to have confidence in Christ as it prepares them to articulate the case for Christianity.

Bart Ehrman--the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus and a recognized authority on the early Christian Church--and Zlatko Plese--a foremost authority on Christian Gnosticism--here offer a valuable compilation of over 40 ancient gospel texts and textual fragments that do not appear in the New Testament. This comprehensive collection contains Gospels describing Jesus's infancy, ministry, Passion, and resurrection, and includes the controversial manuscript discoveries of modern times, such as the Gospel of Thomas and the most recent Gospel to be discovered, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. Each translation begins with a thoughtful examination of important historical, literary, and textual issues in order to place the Gospel in its proper context. This volume is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in early Christianity and the deeper meanings of these apocryphal Gospels.

The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew is one of the most important witnesses in Western Europe to apocryphal stories about the lives of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and Mary’s parents, Anna and Joachim. This apocryphon was also used as the basis for another, the Nativity of Mary, which gained equal popularity. As bestsellers of medieval Christianity, these Latin apocrypha are major witnesses to the explosion of extra-biblical literature in the Western Middle Ages. Despite their apocryphal status, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary proved influential throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, as their popularity and influences may be traced in Christian literature, visual arts, liturgy, and theological perspectives still revered by Roman Catholic theologians. These apocrypha also remain significant works for considering the history of monasticism and the cult of the Virgin Mary. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary draws upon a range of manuscript sources to present comprehensive English translations of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary with full introductions and commentaries, as well as translations of related works with accompanying commentaries.