Word: protevangelium
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...most influential one elaborating Joseph's story was a 2nd century text called The Protevangelium of James. Its story runs, in part, like this: the girl Mary, herself the product of a miraculous pregnancy, grows up in the great Jewish Temple receiving food from the hand of an angel. But as she approaches puberty, she can live there no longer, and the High Priest searches for a chaste caretaker to look after her. Under divine guidance, he collects the wooden staffs of all the widowers of Israel and prays over them, awaiting a sign. One by one he returns each...
...making Joseph an old man, the Protevangelium made his impregnating Mary less likely. By assigning him children from a first marriage, it answered the question of who Jesus' siblings were. The Protevangelium portrays Joseph's initial agitation with Mary far more fully than Scripture. It also tells how the dismayed High Priest later puts them both through a trial by ordeal (they must drink a potentially lethal "water of conviction") before he accepts that the pregnant Mary is still a virgin. A bright light obscures Joseph's view of the birth, but the Protevangelium has already assigned him a beautiful...
Mary, mother of Jesus: Earnest Christians will find little in the Bible of the birth and early life of Mary. The so-called "Protevangelium Jacobi" written in about the 2nd Century A. D. gives more, says that Joachim (supposedly of the royal house of David) was her father, Anna (supposedly of the priestly house of Aaron) was her mother. Late in life, after angelic visitations, to Anna and Joachim was born a daughter, Mary. Roman Catholic dogma says that she was herself immaculately conceived.? Early theologians, while maintaining the freedom of Mary from earthly sin, held that...
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