This phase, as de Strycker has shown, is supported by the evidence of the Georgian, the Armenian, and the Latin versions, alongside further Greek papyri and the reworking of the text in Latin, for instance in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. The second phase of the textual development extends from the fifth century to about 900. Based on manuscript witnesses, consisting of Greek papyri as well as manuscript fragments of Coptic (Sahidic) and Syriac versions, the first phase of textual development of the Protoevangelium of James is to be located between the third century and the middle of the fifth century. 10 Indeed, there continues to be a strong scholarly consensus that the story originated in Greek in the second century.
In 1961, the Jesuit Émile de Strycker published a critical edition of the Greek text, taking into account the important third-century evidence of Papyrus Bodmer 5, which Michel Testuz had published earlier on in 1958. Thus far, scholars have turned their attention primarily to the study of the Greek original of the Protoevangelium of James. These too appear in decorations of religious artefacts and large-scale objects of art from Late Antiquity. Other characteristic elements of this narrative include Mary spinning yarn inside or outside of a building or temple, and her holding a pitcher with water from a well in the annunciation story. 8 For the minds and imaginations of the faithful in the East, the perception of the canonical narrative of the feasts that have been mentioned and the content that shaped the religious devotion was formed and nurtured by the details which the Protoevangelium of James offered. The permanence and practically universal reception of this idea in the Christian East is documented in numerous icons of the Nativity in the Byzantine, Greek, and Russian traditions. The most widely known detail which found its place in the liturgical poetry and visual art of the East is Jesus’ birth in a cave. 7 This narrative, moreover, is the source text for well-known artistic and literary traditions about specific story elements that flesh out for the faithful the events of salvation history. The Feast of Anna’s Conception of Mary (December 9 in the East, December 8 in the West), the Feast of the Birth of Mary (September 8), the Feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple (November 21), also known, in the West, as the Feast of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, and the Feast of Joachim and Anna, Mary’s Parents (July 25 in the East, July 26 in the West) all have their roots in the account of Mary’s childhood experiences that are featured in this apocryphal infancy gospel. In the Christian East, the Protoevangelium of James has been used as a source of inspiration for the development of several important liturgical feasts of the Christian calendar. There, in fact, one might say that the Protoevangelium of James enjoyed a hybrid status which one could describe as being both apocryphal and quasi-canonical at the same time. 6 Whereas the first one remained outside the canon in both the West and the East, the infancy gospel under the name of James the Younger, which was judged to be “apocryphal” in the West, enjoyed an exceptionally wide and intensive reception in the Christian East. Characterizing a long list of writings as texts that were considered as having “been compiled or been recognized by heretics or schismatics,” the Decretum Gelasianum commented that the books in this list of apocryphal writings “the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church does not in any way accept.” 5 Included in this list one finds “the Book on the Infancy of the Savior ( Liber de infantia salvatoris)” and “the Book of the Nativity of the Savior and of Mary or the Midwife ( Liber de nativitate salvatoris et de Maria vel obstetrice),” that is, the Infancy Gospel of Pseudo-Thomas and the Protoevangelium of James, respectively. The Western position depended on the text’s condemnation in the so-called Decretum Gelasianum, a work of late-fifth- or sixth-century Italy or Gaul. 4 In fact, especially in the West, it was referred to explicitly as an apocryphal gospel and was excluded from the canon. 3 Yet the Protoevangelium of James was not a text that had come to be accepted formally as part of the biblical canon. First and foremost it was concerned with the narratives that are included in the initial chapters of the New Testament gospels, which it retold or rewrote and supplemented as deemed necessary, helpful, or advisable. 2 Being a narrative about the earlier stages of the life of Jesus’ mother Mary and about Jesus’ birth, this apocryphal infancy gospel is closely associated with the world of images and events known from the Biblical stories.
1 Its origins go back as far as the second century CE. The Protoevangelium of James is a text, to which scholars at times also refer as the Infancy Gospel of James.