Here, too, as in the Oxyrhynchite fragment (cf. p. 499), the attempt to describe the conditions of Jewish ritual shows the writer's ignorance. That Joachim should be repelled from his right to offer in the Temple on the score of childlessness (P), and that girls could remain within the Temple like vestals, are only two of the unhistorical touches which indicate unfamiliarity with the praxis of Judaism. The romancer knows his OT better.
And he knows it in Greek. The attempt to establish a Hebrew original for the Protevangelium has been unsuccessful ; it is bound up with a desire to put it earlier than the Synoptic Gospels, on which, as on the LXX, it plainly depends. But, as it is uncertain whether Justin Martyr owes to it touches like that of the cave i| and the curious
* Perhaps, like the emphasis on the wealth of her parents, a reply to the current depreciation (Orig:. Cels. i. 28 f.) of their position. But the wealth of Joachim is probahly taken over from that of his namesake in Sus !■•.
t The obscure sentence in 10, ' At that time Zechariah was dumb, and Samuel took his place, until Zechariah spoke,' may be an interpolation ; but even if ' Simeon ' (cf. Lk 225) \^ xg&A for ' Samuel ' with some MSS, it remains an erratic block. It seems to presuppose the story (or the tradition) of Lk 16f%
J Studien iiber Zachariaa • Apokryphen und Zachariaa • Legenden, 1895, p. 37 f.
§ Some details from this seem to underlie the Armenian version in ch. 3.
II According to Chaeremon, the Eg^yptian historian (quoted by Josephus, c. Apion. 1. 32 [292]), the mother of Rameses also bore him in a cave.
phrase about Mary in Dial. 100 (cf. Protev. 12'), the date of the earliest section cannot be assigned definitely to the first quarter of the 2nd century.
In the Armenian Church the Protevangelium formed the basis for the first part of a large work which included a Gospel of the Infancy and later apocrypha on the life and miracles of Jesus. According to F. C. Conybeare, who prints one or two chapters of the section based on the Protevangelium {AJTh i. [1897] 424- 442), the entire work consists of 28 chapters, and goes back to an older S3riac text which was used by Ephrem Syrus. The short S3'riac fragment published by \ir\%\\\, {Contributions to the Apoc- ryphal Literature of the NT, p. 17 f.) gives merely a somewhat abbreviated form of 17-25. The larger, complete, Syriac version published by Mrs. A. S. Lewis (Studia Sinaitica, xi. [1902]), is in all probability a version of some Greek text practically corre- sponding to Tiscliendorf's. Both in the Syriac and in the Armenian versions the Protevangelium forms only the intro- duction for subsequent apocrypha on the Nativity or on Mary. Versions of the Protevangelium abound, testifying to its wide popularitj' as a reliirious story-book in the early Church. In addition to the Armenian, there were Arabic and Slavonic versions or editions, as well as Egyptian. A small Sahidic fragment has been edited by Leipoldt {ZNTW, 1905, p. 106 f.).
The popialarity of the Protevangelium, even apart from its advocacy of the absolute virginity of Mary, is not unintelligible. The story is told with much simplicity and pathos, in its original form. There are vignettes of peasant life, of nature, and of domestic all'ection, which single it out from the other uncanonical Gospels — glimpses, for example, of Anna standing at the door as her husband drives home his flocks, and running to embrace him ; of Elizabeth dropping her needlework and running to the door when Mary knocks ; or of Anna (in the Armenian text) tossing her baby merrily in her arms. None of the Infancy Gospels is so free from extravagance and silliness. The child Jesus is a child, and, if the halo has begun to glow round the head of Mary, she is still a woman. No tinge of Docetism makes her unreal. Even the narrator keeps himself strictly in the background. The skill with which the author has contrived to tell his story is best appreciated when we compare the crude, coarse handling to which some of its materials are subjected in the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew.
Occasionally there are touches which remind the reader of Buddhistic legends ; e.g. in the 1st cent. (A.D.) life of Buddha (cf. Chinese version in SBE xix. [1883]) Buddha is born miraculously, 'with- out causing his mother pain or anguish' (11*), and at his birth ' the various cries and confused sounds of beasts were hushed, and silence reigned ' (IP*). But the proofs of Buddhistic influence are not cogent (cf. von Dobschiitz in ThLZ, 1896, pp. 442- 446); the comparative study of folk-lore in its modern phases renders hesitation on this point prudent.
Special Literature. — L. Conrady's hypotheses of its Semitic original and its priority to the birth-stories of Matthew and Luke are printed in SK (1889) 728-784, and Die Quelle der kanonischen Kindheitsgeschichte Jesus,, Qottingen, 1900. The best editions are both French, by Emile Amann, Le Prot- ^vangile de Jacques et ses remaniements latins, Paris, 1910 (Greek text of Protev., Latin texts of pseudo-Matthew 1-17 and the Nativity of Mary, with French translation, introduction, and notes) ; and C. Michel, ProtAvangile de Jacques, pseudo- Matthieu, £vangile de Thomas, textes annotin et traduits, Paris, 1911 (with the Coptic and Arabic versions of the History of Joseph the Carpenter, translated with notes by Peeters); cf. Haase, pp. 49-60.