Clement mentions details about the life of Mary absent from the NT
Gospels but included in the Protevangelium of James. These details
center on Mary’s virginitas in partu (Prot. Jas. 9:8; 19:18) and
occur in the context of Clement’s discussion of a midwife who attends Mary and
claims that she is indeed a virgin in Strom. 7.16. Clement refers to
this declaration made directly after Mary gives birth:
But, just as most people even now believe, as it seems, that Mary
ceased to be a virgin through the birth of her child, though this was not
really the case – for some say that she was found by the midwife to be a virgin
[παρθενος]
after the delivery (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.16.93).
Whereas Clement is vague about his source (“some say”), his
younger contemporary
Origen is more explicit. In his Commentary on Matthew (Comm.
Matt. 10:17),7 Origen makes reference to Jesus’ brothers as belonging to Joseph
from a previous marriage, in the context of discussing Jesus’ brethren, and he
names the “Gospel of Peter” or the “Book of James” as his sources:
As for the brothers of Jesus, some people pretend [i.e., the
people in the synagogue in Jesus’ hometown, cf. Matt 13:5], by leaning on a
tradition in the Gospel according to Peter, or as it is entitled, the Book of
James [της
βιβλιου ‘Ιακωβου], that they would be the sons of Joseph, born
from a former woman whom he would have lived with before Mary (Origen, Comm.
Matt.10:17).
Traditions about Joseph’s sons by a previous marriage are found in
Prot. Jas. 9:8, 17:2, 5. In fact, Joseph’s protest against taking Mary
as a wife at Prot. Jas. 9:8, even though he has been selected by God for
this task, is based on the fact that he is old and already has children. In the
context of registering his family for Augustus’ census, Joseph again makes
reference to his sons and Samuel is even named as one of them. If Origen’s
reference to “the Book of James” does indeed refer to the Protevangelium of
James, then it might be possible to place its terminus ad quem in
the third century CE. (Lily C. Vuong, Gender and Purity in the Protoevangelium of James
[Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 358, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013],
32-34)
On
the title “Protoevangelium of James” for the text, Vuong provides the following details:
Note that the Protevanglium of James is a title that was
given to our text when Guillaume Postel reintroduced the document to the Latin
West in 1552 and thus is not the original designation. The Papyrus Bodmer V has
“Birth of Mary, Revelation of James,” but even most recent editors have
questioned whether the second half is original since some Greek manuscripts
exclude the reference to James (Hock, Infancy Gospel of James, 4;
Cullmann, “Protevangelium of James,” 423). If James was not always included in
the title, it is worth asking if Origen was indeed making reference to our
text. Origen’s lack of a precise title for his source (i.e., “Gospel According
to Peter and “Book of James), however, seems to indicate his concern more for
the content than title. Origen’s reference to both the “Gospel according to
Peter” or the “Book of James” for his source is noteworthy. The extant texts
seem to suggest no direct parallels between the two sources since the Protevangelium
of James focuses mainly on Mary and her conception and birth of Jesus,
whereas the Gospel of Peter is centered on Jesus’ passion narrative. On
their study of the Greek manuscript of the Gospel of Peter, however,
Thomas J. Kraus and Tobias Nicklas remind us that the manuscript is so
fragmented that it is difficult to determine exactly what the original gospel
contained. Since the whole of the Gospel of Peter is not available, it
may also be worth pondering the possibility that the original contained an infancy
story since Origen seems to refer to the Gospel of Peter as a text which
comments on the virgin birth; see Das Petrusevangelium und die
Petrusapokalypse: Die griechischen Fragmente mit deutscher und englischer
Übersetzung (GCS NF 11; NA 1; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 3–8, 16. (Ibid., 34 n. 9)
