5 (1) 1On the next day he presented his gifts, saying to himself, “If the Lord God is merciful to me, the leafed panel of the priest’s headdress will make it come to me. 2And Joachim presented his gifts and looked attentively at the priest’s leafed headdress until he went up to the altar of the Lord; and he saw no sin in himself. (Lily C. Vyong, The Protoevangelium of James [Early Christian Apocrypha 7; Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2019], 58)
priest’s leafed headdress: the leafed panel possibly also functioned as a mirror given Joachim’s description of looking attentively at it in order for it to reveal his state through divine revelation as sinful or sinless (Hock, Infancy Gospels, 39 n. 5:1). The leaf panel may be reference to the oracular power of Urim and Thummin as described in Exod 28:30 (1 Sam 14:41; 28:6; Num 27:21; Deut 3:38; Ezra 2:63. Cf. m. Yoma 7.5 where Urim and Thummin are described being embedded into the clothing). In Josephus’s description of Urim and Thummin, these items were more stones than panels and they were positioned on the shoulder rather than forehead of the priest in order to determine the presence of God during sacrifices (Horner, Jewish Aspects, 319-20). Additionally, the more elaborate garments worn by the priest as described with the detail of the leafed panel, in contrast to the more simple linen clothes described in Lev. 16:4 may indicate that Joachim’s offerings are being made on a special day. The extra offering of gifts, the ornate clothing of the priest, and the references to the forgiveness of sins point to the observance of a special day, perhaps Yom Kippur . . . (Ibid., 58 n. C)
