Protévangile of Jacques

The Protévangile of Jacques is a Gospel of childhood placed under the authority of Jacques, either Jacques Major the, or, generally, Jacques the Minor.

Protévangile means “which is located at the beginning of” or “which is immediately former to” the Évangile; this name was given by the French scholar Guillaume Postel which made a Latin translation of it, because it relates to events former to those which are reported in the canonical Évangiles. The original title was Nativité of Marie .

There are versions in Greek, Syriaque, Armenian, Géorgien, Slavic Vieux. Its initial form is dated from the 2nd century and was made up in Egypt or, rather, in Palestine. The received text implies that it was composed or, rather, revised by pagan rather little with the fact of the Jewish habits, with strong tendencies Gnostique S.

Clément of Alexandria and Origène refer there, but probably in a different form (in particular with regard to the martyrdom of Zacharie father of Jean, at the end of the account) that the text known later on. The Décret of Gélase condemns it like apocryphal book, but it remained in favor in Eastern Christendom and it had a great influence on the iconography. It is used to found the orthodoxe doctrines concerning the “brothers” of Jesus quoted in the New Testament, who would be thus half-brothers born of a first marriage of Joseph, and that of the perpetual Virginité of Marie of which it testifies that it is about a very old belief.

A modified version is known under the name of Évangile of the Pseudo-Matthieu.

The text tells that the child of Anne and Joachim, which will be Marie, was devoted to the Lord by a wish of his mother, then that Joseph, already old man, widower and having wire, was selected to take the young girl under her guard, then how this one fell pregnant without it losing her virginity and put at the world Jesus. He tends, in fact, to refute the attacks which, to its time, aimed at discrediting the Christian faith, in particular that Jesus is the son of Joseph and Marie; he insists in a naive way on the virginity of Marie which would have been noted by the midwife and Salome, even after the setting in the world of Jesus.

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