ABSTRACT
As Averil Cameron points out in her Introduction to this volume, the apocryphal text known as the Protevangelion of James, or sometimes as the ‘Infancy Gospel’,1 remains something of a puzzle in the history of devotion to the Virgin Mary in the early Church.2 Scholars have largely accepted the dating of this text to the middle or end of the second century on the basis of both Origen’s and Clement of Alexandria’s references to it in their writings.3 Further, the hypothesis that it is a composite work, which may have received additions in later centuries,4 has been convincingly refuted by E. de Strycker in his study and critical edition of the earliest manuscripts and versions of the Protevangelion.5 What is most striking about this text, which provided most of the inspiration for later liturgical and iconographical development of the story of the early life of the Virgin Mary, especially in the Byzantine and oriental Christian traditions, is that it stands so much on its own in the earliest period. As most scholars now agree, devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus, did not begin to receive formal expression in most liturgical or theological sources
1 A critical edition of the Protevangelion of James may be found in E. de Strycker, S.J., La forme la plus ancienne du Protévangile de Jacques. Recherches sur le Papyrus Bodmer 5 avec une edition critique du texte grec et une traduction annotée, Subsidia Hagiographica 33 (Brussels, 1961). English translations exist in J.K. Elliott, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament. A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation Based on M.R. James (Oxford, 1993; rev. edn 2004); R.J. Miller, ed., The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version (San Francisco, 3rd edn, 1994). For ease of reference, I will refer to Elliott’s translation throughout this chapter.
