A. Mary as Virgin Mother

It is precisely this mixture which is reflected in a little treatise known as the Protoevangelium of James, As the title indicates, the treatise deals with history prior to the nativity of Jesus as recorded in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Joachim belonged to one of the twelve tribes of Israel. He was a very rich man and he used to offer twofold sacrifices: one for the people and one for himself. On the “great day of the Lord” he was on his way to offer a sacrifice when a man named Reuben went to him and told him that he should not be the first to offer sacrifice because he had no children. Joachim was greatly offended by this remark and when he searched the records of the twelve tribes of Israel he found that all the righteous in Israel had children. He recalled the story of Abraham and Sara and became depressed. Joachim did not go back to his wife, but went instead into the wil­derness where he fasted for forty days and forty nights. At home his wife, Anna, was being insulted by her servant because of her childlessness. In a tree, she caught sight of a nest of sparrows which reminded her of her childless condition and she broke out in a lamentation. After her lamentation the angel of the Lord appeared to her and announced that she would conceive and bear and a child that would be spoken of in the whole world. There­upon Anna vowed that, regardless of the child’s sex, she would consecrate her child as a sacrifice to the Lord.

When Mary reached the age of twelve, the priests met to dis­cuss her status. They were afraid, that Mary, having reached the age of puberty, would pollute the temple if they kept her there any longer. They finally decided to give the high priest, Zacharias, a free hand in the matter. Upon divine inspiration, he decided to assemble the men of Israel. Each man gave a rod to the high priest who then handed the rods back to them: when he gave the last rod back to Joseph, a dove sprang forth from it and sat upon his head. The high priest thereupon announced that Joseph should take Mary into his care. Joseph was very embarrassed and protested saying: “I am an old man and have sons, but she is a girl...” But the priest warned him that unless he wanted to suffer the same fate as Dathan, Abiram, and Korah, who were swallowed up by the earth, he had better take the girl.² So Joseph obeyed and took Mary into his home while he went off to build his buildings.

While engaged at this task, Mary went to the well to draw water. There she heard a voice saying: “Hail, thou favored one...” She looked about but did not see anything, and trembling with fear she went back to the house to resume her work at the purple. Suddenly an angel stood before her and announced that she would conceive by the word of the Lord. But she questioned in herself: “Shall I conceive and bring forth like other women?” The angel answered: “Not so Mary; a power of the Lord shall over­shadow you...” Mary then finished the scarlet and the purple and delivered it to the priests. After that she went to visit her kins­woman, Elizabeth, who greeted her respectfully as “the mother of my Lord.” But Mary forgot the mysteries that Gabriel the archangel had told her, and she said: “Who am I, that all women of the earth shall praise me?” She stayed three months with Elizabeth and her womb grew larger day by day. Then she went home and hid herself in her house. She was sixteen years old when all this happened. In the sixth month of Mary’s pregnancy, Joseph came home. He was very bitter. At first he accused himself of not having taken proper care of Mary, but then he turned against her and asked from where the baby came. She answered: “As the Lord my God lives, I don’t know...” At that, Joseph stopped talking to her, and after some thought he decided to send her away quietly. That night, however, the angel appeared to him and revealed that the child was from the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph magnified the Lord and continued to take care of Mary, but one day the scribe came to inquire why Joseph had not come to the assembly and discovered that Mary was pregnant. He ran to break the news to the high priest, who sent officers to bring both Mary and Joseph before him.

The decree for the census went out from Augustus, and Joseph was uncertain how to enroll Mary, as his wife or as his daughter. He was ashamed to do the first, and everyone knew Mary was not his daughter. “I will enroll my sons,” Joseph said, “but what shall I do with this child?” He decided to leave the solution up to the Lord, saddled a she ass, put Mary upon it, and they set out for Bethlehem. One of his sons led the ass while Joseph followed.

Three miles from Jerusalem Joseph noticed that Mary was mak­ing a sad face at one moment and laughing the next. When Joseph asked her about this she explained that she saw two people: one weeping, the other rejoicing. Soon Mary asked to be taken down from the ass because she was in labor and the baby was about to be born. Finding a cave, Joseph left his sons to stay with Mary while he himself went in search of a midwife. (At this point the narrative changes from the third person to the first person: Joseph is speaking.) As Joseph was walking he suddenly realized that nature stood still; the birds stopped in flight, people stopped moving, even the river stopped flowing. After awhile everything resumed its normal course. A midwife came along and she went with Joseph to the cave. (The narrative then returns to third person.) A bright cloud overshadowed the cave, after which a great light was seen, and when, little by little, the light withdrew, the child Jesus appeared and he went immediately to Mary’s breasts.

The midwife was amazed at what she had seen, and as she went out of the cave she met Salome and told her that a virgin has brought forth a child. Salome expressed doubts, but the midwife took her to the cave and told Mary: “Make yourself ready because no small controversy has arisen concerning you!” Salome then inserted her fingers to examine the condition of Mary’s hymen and her hand immediately dried up.

The wise men came to Bethlehem looking for the king of the Jews. When Herod heard of this he was troubled and sent officers to seek out the wise men. He ordered them to inform him when they found the child, but the wise men, having presented their gifts to Jesus, returned to their country by another way. Herod, then, ordered the “slaughter of the innocents.” Meanwhile, Mary hid Jesus by wrapping him in swaddling cloths and laying him in an ox-manger. Elizabeth took John into the mountains where a mountain opened and hid them. Herod’s soldiers came and asked Zacharias where his son was, and when he could not give an answer, he was killed. The priests found his blood turned to stone, but his body had disappeared. The people observed three days of mourning for Zacharias, after which they elected Simeon as his successor. It was Simeon of whom the Holy Spirit had said he would not see death until he saw Christ in the flesh. The Proto- evangeliwn ends with the statement by “James” declaring that he had written this book in Jerusalem and that, when Herod died and a tumult had arisen in Jerusalem, he withdrew himself into the wilderness until the tumult ceased.^[606]

If the apocryphal gospels and acts were the Sunday supplement literature of the early Christians, the Protoevangelium of James is a superb example of the genre. But apocryphal stories were more; they often expressed popular beliefs which tended to become parts of the body of faith. Undoubtedly, this pseudo-Jamesian tract was written in honor of the mother of Jesus, and it is worth noting that even at such an early date, before other major doctrines of the church were fully developed and even before the canon of the New Testament was fully established, faith in the "‘virgin mo­ther” of the Savior found such powerful expression. This must have happened in the eastern provinces of the Roman world where the “mother goddess” image was more intense and where Christians were more under the influence of female divinities than in the west.

Neither the place of composition nor the authorship of the Protoevangelium of James can be identified any closer. Attempts to identify Palestine as the place of origin and a Jewish Christian^{[607] [608] as the author failed because the work betrays serious ignorance of Palestinian geography and Jewish customs. It is quite impossible, to mention only a few examples, that Mary, as a child, was at the “third step of the altar” in the temple,[609] and even more impossible that she had access to the Holy of Holies[610] where only the high priest could enter, and even he only once a year.[611] Furthermore, there are many incidents in the book which betray pagan rather than Jewish influence. Bringing a woman into such close rela­tion to priestly functions is not Jewish but pagan. In Greco-Roman religions, priestesses and other female religious officials, such as the Vestal Virgins in Rome, were known, but in Judaism they were not. Another curious reference is to the midwife, Salome, whose name recalls the name of Semele, mother of Dionysus, who was also born in a cave, deep in the “womb” of mother earth. The cult of Dionysus, a fertility god whose retinue included the female maenads, originated in Phrygia, where religion and ferti­lity were closely associated.[612] The name Semele came from the Phrygian “Zemelo”, i.e., the Anatolian earth-mother. If indeed the author of the Protoevangelium of James did borrow the name Salome from Semele, a connection with near-Eastern mother god­dess ideas is more than likely. In this case we find ourselves again in the distinguished company of Cybele, Dionysus, Apollo, the Montanists, Paul, Melito, and others, including the Muslim mystics. Of course, it is also possible that the name Salome is nothing more than a borrowing from the New Testament,[613] but the context of a divine birth in a cave at least suggests Semele. We observe also that according to Protoevangelium 7.?>, when the child Mary was placed upon the altar, “the Lord God put grace upon the child, and she danced for joy with her feet... ” Dancing, rhyth­mic bodily movement often accompanied by music, is an expres­sion of joy, an expression that was part of ancient Near Eastern religious services up to the time of early Christianity.[614] [615] [616] It is impossible to think that Mary actually danced on the steps of the altar, but the author may very well have meant that Mary was filled with the spirit of joy in the presence of God. This was the case with the female followers of Dionysus, the maenads, who, when they felt themselves filled by the god, broke out in uncon­trollable dancing. As we have seen, worshippers of Cybele, the Great Mother, were famous for their singing, dancing, and the use of musical instruments. Of course, this is not an exclusively pagan phenomenon; it was part of Hebrew religion and even of early Christianity.12 But around the middle of the second century, religious dancing is reported mostly of pagans; after a double devastation of their country[617] [618] not many Jews danced for joy. We conclude that the inspiration of the Protoevangelium's author came from pagan experiences. We assume that he was a Christian of pagan cultural background with only a superficial knowledge of Jewish religion and history. Perhaps it is not be too much to suggest that the author was deeply influenced by the practices of Cybele’s worship, which he or she may have known intimately.}

Apparently the author’s aim was to elevate Mary to the level of the great virgin-mother goddesses of the Greco-Roman world. Thus he should perhaps be placed in the distinguished group of second century Christian apologists who, in other areas of theo­logy, tried to reconcile Christianity with the world in which it lived. The Protoevangelium presents Mary as a virgin prior to her conception of Jesus and affirms that she remained so after his birth. Why is Mary’s physical condition so important in the history of salvation? Why would any one make her virginity a matter of such concern? For the Christian claim of salvation, the death and resurrection of Jesus were central issues, not the con­dition of Mary’s hymen. But for minds accustomed to thinking in the categories of the prevalent pagan culture, the mother of the Son of God could have no lesser dignity than the Great Mother of the gods, the favorite subject of popular piety in the East. So the author lifted Mary out of the ordinary and elevated her to a god­dess-like figure: her feet did not touch the ground until she was taken to the temple, her bedchamber was made into a sanctuary, and the “undefiled daughters of the Hebrews” attended her. Even after her marriage to Joseph she labored in the company of “pure virgins” at making a veil for the temple, much the same way that the girls of Athens worked at making the new peplos for the statue of the Virgin Athene.

The Protoevangelium was, in the long run, a very successful book. The ideas it promulgated gradually became universally ac­cepted, and eventually even the resistance of Rome disappeared.

The Lateran Council of 469 under Pope Martin I declared: “If any­one does not confess in harmony with the holy Fathers that the holy and ever virgin and immaculate Mary is really and truly the mother of God, inasmuch as she in the last times and without semen by the Holy Spirit conceived God the Word himself specially and truthfully, who was born from God the Father before all ages, and she bore him uncorrupted, and after his birth her virginity remaining indissoluble, let him be condemned.”^[619] The perpetual virginiy of Mary thus became an official teaching of the church: Mary was a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Jesus.^[620] In 1555, the Council of Trent confirmed this dogma in the Constitution of Pope Paul TV known as “Cum Quorun- dam.” Here the pope warns against teaching that “the same bles­sed Virgin Mary is not truly the Mother of God, and did not remain always in the integrity of virginity, i. e., before birth, in birth, and perpetually after birth.”^[621] Yet, despite the fact that these official formulations are of a rather late date, this dogma is by no means an innovation but belongs to a very early deposit of the Christian faith. Assuming, then, that the author of the Proto­evangelium did not originate these ideas but found them already in some form, perhaps in an oral tradition circulated by popular piety, the roots of the dogma reach back to the first half, perhaps even to the first third, of the second century.^[622]

The image of the “woman clothed with the sun” was the first expression of popular emotional piety centered on Mary; the con­templation of Mary as the new, more perfect Cybele, the mother of God, was next. In the development of Christian doctrines, popular piety precedes and points the way to the crystallization of an article of faith. “ Legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi” “The law

of faith is determined by the law of prayer.”^[623] The Protoevangelium shows how Christians who were formerly pagans could find a place in their daily devotional life for the mother goddess. But this is only the beginning; pious practice eventually became a part of the faith of the church, which, in turn, gave rise to further clarifications and specifications of the role of Mary in the divine economy. Faith in the perpetual virginity of Mary and her divine motherhood led directly to the development of faith in her imma­culate conception, total sinlessness, and fullness of grace, i.e., her gradual assimilation into the divine nature.

“Immaculate conception” means that the Virgin Mary “in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the savior oF the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.”^[624] “Original sin” is the sin committed by Adam and Eve as described in Genesis 3, and by virtue of the fact that all human beings are descendants of Adam and Eve, all are subject to this sin which is inherited by birth. The Virgin Mary was exempted from this sin because she was destined to become the mother of God; had she been subject to sin even to such a nominal degree, she could not have conceived and borne Jesus. Such thoughts began to circulate in the Christian church very early. Nestorius (ca. 381-ca.451) and Pelagius (died after 418) made references to it.^[625] But the full development came only during the Middle Ages, after much, often bitter discussion. There was an early proclamation of the dogma by the reform council of Basel in 1438, but this was condemned by Pope Eugenius IV (1431-1447) until the act of 1854 settled the issue as a “doctrine revealed by God.”^[626] This dogma was unanimously rejected by Protestants and it is still a subject of scholarly criticism, yet it fits eminently in the system of salvation as understood by Roman Catholics. The aim of the Christian religion is to assist men to attain everlasting life in the presence of God; this is made possible by salvation from sin, the overcoming of mortality, and the bestowal of divine nature upon men by union with the incarnate and immortal Son of God. He became man in order that man might become God^[627] and, by his death and resurrection, already accomplished this work of salvation. Incarnation took place by the miraculous con­ception in and birth through the Virgin Mary. How could a human being tainted by original sin be a vehicle for such a privilege? Restoration of the human race to its condition prior to the Fall means the restoration of the image of God,^[628] and that could be done only by elevating Mary above a fallen, sinful state. By thinking of Mary as free of all sin, including original sin, Christian theology developed the concept of a human being restored to Paradise, prior to the Fall. She is Eve before she was corrupted, the female par excellence who alone is capable of the hieros gamos, impregnation by the Spirit of God. As we have seen, the Eve-Mary parallel is nearly as early as Christian theology itself. The basic concern of this theology of salvation is, however, that communication between God and man is impossible if they are totally alienated from each other, if there is no point where divine and human can connect. The Immaculata, representing earthly humanity in its unspoiled state, is the one with whom communion with God was restored. It follows logically from this line of thought that Mary would come to be thought of as the symbol of the church, the spotless bride whose marriage will be the eschatological consummation of divine and human, the union of all that was divided.

The fact that these doctrines are rooted in popular piety that was motivated by pagan precedents, more precisely, by the worship of Cybele, means only that Christianity is firmly anchored in the historical process; it does not mean that Christianity reverted to an earlier, primitive state of paganism. The fact that popular piety developed the ideas of the “perpetual virginity” and “immaculate conception” was a positive contribution to the life of the church because it rescued a crucial part of religion which Christianity nearly lost, namely, the feminine aspect of the divine. The entire development may be looked upon as the response of the Christian genius to a challenge posed by paganism.^[629] Paganism had its own elaborate system of thought to account for the divisions and opposites that people experience in the world and in their lives. By positing the existence of goddesses as well as gods, the pagans acknowledged male and female as having equal dignity because only the two together are “one,” separately they are halves. By raising Mary to the level of goddess, Christianity provided a cos­mic framework for its theory of salvation: salvation is universal, it is vastly more than the bestowal of eternal life on isolated souls. Salvation involves the cosmos, as Paul declared in Romans 5. But where there is a second Adam, there is also a second Eve. And when the two become one, that is the final redemption.