The canonical gospels offer little information about the life of Mary of Nazareth before the birth of Jesus, and less still about what happened to her after Jesus’ death. Christian imagination filled in these gaps in Mary’s biography through additional texts, some that include Mary as a peripheral character to stories focused on Jesus, just as in the canonical gospels, and some that focus entirely on Mary. This latter group of texts do more than simply supply information absent from earlier gospels, they also introduce some key aspects of doctrine—such as the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, the Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption—and form the basis of feast days celebrating the Theotokos, the mother of God. Two texts in particular form the book ends for the following discussion of the ‘apocryphal Mary’: the Protevangelium of James, which focuses on the birth and early life of Mary, and the Dormition of the Virgin, which focuses on her final days. Between these two are numerous texts that expand and reflect upon Mary’s birth and early life, upon her role as the mother of Jesus, and upon her depiction as a mediator between God and humanity. The apocryphal Mary encompasses also appearances of a disciple named Mary who is not clearly identified—she is as much Mary Magdalene or Mary of Bethany as Mary of Nazareth, or maybe all of these women at once. Another phenomenon observable in the texts is the combination of Marian apocrypha into sprawling life of Mary biographies that were used for devotional reading in the churches of the East. Together, all of these texts show that Mary of Nazareth is a much more nuanced figure in Christian literature than one might expect from reading the canonical gospels alone. She is wife and mother, yes, but also disciple, visionary, matriarch, heavenly sojourner, and mediator.
The earliest apocryphal Marian text, and indeed one of the earliest texts of the entire corpus of Christian apocrypha, is, appropriately enough, the one that focuses on her conception, birth, and early years. The Protevangelium of James tells the story of Anna and Joachim, a wealthy couple living in Jerusalem who long for a child (text and translation in Ehrman and Pleše 2011: 31–71). When their prayers are answered, they dedicate their little girl, Mary, to the company of virgins who live in the temple. At the age of twelve Mary must leave the temple, so she is given into the care of Joseph, an aged widower with children of his own. The text then weaves together material from the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke with some traditions of its own—most notably, Jesus is born in a cave (not an inn), the birth is not like that of normal children (a bright cloud overshadows the cave and when it departs, a great light appears within, which becomes an infant), and the event is attended by two midwives. The Protevangelium concludes with the flight of Elizabeth and John the Baptist to escape the slaughter of the innocents and an account of the murder of Zechariah by the soldiers of Herod.
The Protevangelium of James was an extremely popular text throughout its history. Little is known about its origins, but it had to have been composed sometime between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (ca. 80–90) and the career of Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215), who is aware of the tradition of the midwife Salome (Stromata 7.16.93; see also Origen, Commentary on Matthew 10.17 and Contra Celsum 1.51). It is attributed to James, the brother of Jesus (a step-brother in this text), but the true identity of its author remains a mystery, although there are indications that it hails from a Jewish-Christian environment (Vuong 2011). The original title of the text seems to have been simply ‘The Birth of Mary’ or ‘The Book of James’; it only became the Protevangelium of James when published in 1552 by Theodore Bibliander (Postel 1552), who believed it to be a source for the canonical infancy narratives. Few scholars today would agree with that argument but the name has endured and nevertheless captures the content of the text as an account of events set largely before the New Testament accounts. The Protevangelium was widely copied in the Greek world—more than 150 manuscripts are extant, including one in the Bodmer collection (Papyrus Bodmer V) that dates to the fifth century (de Strycker 1961). It travelled east in translations into Syriac, Arabic, Georgian, Armenian, and Slavonic, south into Coptic, and west into Latin and European romance languages. And its stories were captured in art, iconography (Cartlidge and Elliott 2001: 21–42; Jensen 2015), and drama (Fitzgerald and Sebastian 2012: 245–82). The impact of the Protevangelium is felt also in the institution of several feast days: the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, the Conception of Anna, and the Feast of Anna and Joachim (Elliott 2015: 285–6).
The Protevangelium does much more than simply fill in gaps left by the canonical gospels. For one, it may have been crafted in response to calumnies against Mary reaching back to the mid-first century, if Matthew’s genealogy was indeed constructed to show how the messianic line was guarded through the efforts of several women who, like Mary (presumably), were of questionable character. Such slanders continued to circulate into the second century with some incorporated into Celsus’ True Doctrine, a critique of Christianity that depicts Mary as an impoverished, unmarried woman seduced by a Roman soldier (see Origen, Contra Celsum 1.28–39) and later in the fifth-century Acts of Pilate 2 (text and translation in Ehrman and Pleše 2011: 419–63) where the Jewish elders at Jesus’ trial claim that he was born of fornication (i.e. Mary and Joseph were not married when he was conceived), and in the anti-Christian Life of Jesus (Toledot Yeshu), where Mary is depicted as a low-class hairdresser who, though married, conceived Jesus with another man (Alexander 2011). The Protevangelium shows instead that Mary was from a wealthy family and that she was well-protected from corrupting influences: she was kept in her bedroom until, at two years old, she entered the temple where she received her food from an angel. Even her conception is depicted as exceptional. Joachim is in the wilderness when Anna receives word from an angel that she will give birth. The manuscripts differ about how long the couple were separated, and it is never made explicit that Mary’s conception was a miracle on par with that of Jesus, but the story can be used to support, and perhaps even gave rise to, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which states that Mary was born without the stain of original sin. The Protevangelium also supports the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, by depicting Joseph as Mary’s reluctant guardian rather than her husband, by explaining the brothers and sisters of Jesus (mentioned particularly in Mark 6:3/Matt. 13:55–56 and John 7:3–5) as Joseph’s children from a previous marriage, and by having the newborn Jesus magically pass through Mary without rupturing her hymen.
The Protevangelium became such an authority about Mary that it was used as a source by other writers in their crafting of new apocryphal texts. Take, for example, On the Priesthood of Jesus, written around the seventh/eighth century and extant today in several Greek forms, as well as Arabic and Georgian (translation in Adler 2016). It uses portions of the Protevangelium in a story about the candidacy of Jesus for the temple priesthood. According to the account, newly appointed priests must be of Levitical lineage and the names of their father and mother must be added to a registry safeguarded in the temple. By this point in Jesus’ life, Joseph has died, so Mary is brought before the priests to testify about Jesus’ lineage. In one form of the tale, Mary is said to be a descendant of both priestly tribes (Aaron and Judah), in another the concern is over Joseph’s ancestry and it is determined that he is from the tribe of Aaron. The text then moves on to address the conception of Jesus, since the families of all candidates for the priesthood must be above reproach. The priests promise no harm will befall Mary if she admits to infelicity; in fact they will forgive her for it if she answers honestly. In response, Mary tells how Joseph doubted Mary’s loyalty and this led her to a trial by the water of accusation (On the Priesthood of Jesus 21; cf. Protevangelium 16). Pressed further, she tells the priests that she ‘did not know a man; as natural proof of this I offer the seal of my virginity’ (24:3). The priests test her claim by fetching midwives to prove that Mary is still a virgin (26; cf. Protevangelium 20) and interrogate her neighbours and family. Convinced by the evidence, the priests admit Jesus into their ranks. Elements of the Protevangelium appear also in the Coptic History of Joseph the Carpenter (Joseph as a widower and father, chapter 2; Mary dedicated to the temple and later appointed to the care of Joseph, chapter 3; and the birth of Jesus in a cave, chapter 4; text and translation in Ehrman & Pleše 2011: 157–93) and in a range of texts narrating the life of John the Baptist (the Life of John the Baptist by Serapion, the Decapitation of John the Forerunner, and the Martyrdom of Zechariah), although these expand on the portion of the Protevangelium that focuses on the flight of Elizabeth and John and on the murder of Zechariah (Burke 2014: 285–91).
The most dramatic repurposing of the Protevangelium episodes comes in two expansions, one in Armenian and the other in Syriac, that continue the story of Mary beyond the birth of Jesus. The Armenian Infancy Gospel, translated from Syriac some time before the end of the sixth century (translation in Terian 2008), begins with a recounting of the entire Protevangelium (chapters 1–14), then reveals what transpired during the Holy Family’s time in Egypt (chapters 15–16), and the remainder tells a series of stories of miracles performed by Jesus in various Palestinian cities (chapters 18–37). For the most part Mary, along with Joseph, operates in the background in these tales, astonished at Jesus’ miracles and troubled over how to parent a child with such abilities and wisdom. The second of these expansions is the Gospel of the Infancy, extant in Arabic (as the Arabic Infancy Gospel) and in Syriac (as part of the East Syriac History of the Virgin), both derived from a Syriac original composed some time before the seventh century (translation of Arabic in Genequand 1997; Syriac in Budge 1899; see also Burke 2017: 99–119). The new stories included in this text also take place during Jesus’ childhood in Egypt (chapters 10–23) and then Palestine (chapters 24–44), but Mary plays a far more active role here than she does in the Armenian Infancy Gospel. The miracles of exorcism and healing are effected through the application of the infant Jesus’ bathwater and swaddling bands, but the supplicants approach Mary for intercession, she chooses who is to be cured, and the villagers praise and adore her in response. Mary has become an intermediary figure between Jesus and the people, between God and humans, a role that she takes on also in texts about her death and afterlife.
Although banned in the West, the Protevangelium took on a new life in an expanded Latin form attributed, in some manuscripts, to Matthew. This Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew was extremely popular and exists now in around 200 manuscripts, some expanded with additional stories, as well as further translations into European vernaculars (text and translation in Ehrman and Pleše 2011: 73–113). One branch of the manuscript tradition, referred to as the J Compilation, incorporates portions of another, now otherwise-lost infancy gospel (Kaestli 2011). And Pseudo-Matthew was subsequently edited to create the Nativity of Mary, a text focusing solely on Mary’s life; it too was copied widely and presently exists in over 130 manuscripts (translation in Beyers 1997). Among the changes made to the Protevangelium in Pseudo-Matthew is a further heightening of Mary’s asceticism and sexual abstinence. The depiction of her life among the temple virgins in chapter 6 is enhanced with parallels to the monastic lifestyle dictated by the Rule of Benedict and the Rule of the Master, both composed in the sixth century, as well as other patristic literature about virgin ascetics (Beyers 2011). Later in the text, when Mary’s pregnancy is discovered, she declares: ‘As the Lord of all hosts lives, in whose presence I stand, I have never known a man; indeed, I decided long ago, while still a young child, never to know one. And this is the vow I made to God from my childhood, that I would remain in the purity of the one who created me. By this vow I am confident that I will live for him alone, and serve him alone, and abide in him alone, without any pollution, as long as I live’ (Pseudo-Matthew 12:4). Mary is so exceptional that she is even able to heal people with her touch (6:3). Another profound change is the elimination of the flight of John and the death of Zechariah, replaced by new tales of Jesus’ infancy set during the flight to Egypt (chapters 18–25). In one particularly memorable episode, Mary rests from their travels beneath a palm tree and longs for refreshment from the fruit of the tree. Jesus commands the tree to ‘Bend down and refresh my mother with your fruit’ (20:2). It bends down to Mary’s feet and they all eat the fruit.
Finally, mention should be made of several other texts about Jesus’ birth and childhood in which Mary is featured. The first of these is the Odes of Solomon, an early Christian hymnbook dated to the late first or early second century (translation in Charlesworth 1983) and extant in Greek and Syriac, with portions in Coptic and Latin. Ode 19, preserved only in Syriac, depicts the conception and birth of Jesus as follows:
The womb of the Virgin took [the milk of the two breasts of the Father],
and she received conception and gave birth.
So the Virgin became a mother with great mercies.
And she labored and bore the Son but without pain,
because it did not occur without purpose.
And she did not seek a midwife,
because he caused her to give life. (19:6–9)
A midwife is also mentioned in the Ascension of Isaiah, a second-century Christian-authored Old Testament pseudepigraphon, this one available in Ethiopic with portions in Greek, Latin, and Coptic (translation in Müller 2003). The latter half of the text presents a vision of Isaiah as narrated to his son Hezekiah. One portion of this vision retells events from the canonical infancy narratives (11:2–6) and then adds, ‘after two months, when Joseph was in his house, and his wife Mary, but both alone, it came to pass, while they were alone, that Mary straightaway beheld with her eyes and saw a small child, and she was amazed. And when her amazement wore off, her womb was found as it was before she was with child’ (11:7–9). When people in Bethlehem hear of the birth, they cannot believe it and some say, ‘She has not given birth: the midwife has not gone up [to her] and we have heard no cries of pain’ (11:14).
A second pair of additional texts includes expansions of the story of the Visitation of the Magi (Matt 2:1–12). In the Revelation of the Magi preserved in the Chronicle of Zuqnin, which today exists in only a single eighth-century Syriac manuscript, Jesus is portrayed as the star that guides the Magi to Bethlehem (translation in Landau 2010). After his incarnation, the infant Jesus praises his mother, saying: ‘you shall receive the reward for your service and shall have blessing and remembrance in all (the) generations’ (Revelation of the Magi 25:1). In the Legend of Aphroditianus, found in a number of languages (Greek, Slavonic, Romanian, and Armenian) but likely originating in Greek in the fifth century, the star appears in the temple of Hera at Jesus’ birth, not before (translation in Heyden 2016). It descends through the opened roof and rests above the statue of Hera, also named Pege (Source), announcing a birth in her through Helios (Zeus): ‘he produces a blameless childbirth for you, who is becoming the mother of the first of all ranks, bride of the triple-named single divinity’ (Legend of Aphroditianus 3:1). The Magi follow the star to Bethlehem, and meet Mary, who is described as ‘small in stature even when she stood upright, and had a delicate body, wheat-coloured; and she had her hair bound with a simple, very beautiful hairstyle’ (8:4). An attendant of the Magi paints images of mother and child and brings them back to Persia where they are placed in the temple in which the oracle was given. The curious features of the Legend appear to be the result of the Christianization of the cult of the Syrian goddess Atargatis in Hierapolis described by Lucian of Samosata in De Dea Syria (Heyden 2016: 6–7). Atargatis was called ‘Syrian Hera’ and adored as ‘Source’ and ‘Virgin’. In her temple, a precious stone above her statue would light up at night, and statues of other gods would move and give oracles.
A third pair of Mary related texts depict the difficulties endured by Mary as she learns to parent the wonderworking son of God. The first of these is the Vision of Theophilus, which purports to be the record of a vision of Mary seen by Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria from 385 to 412, and recounted by Cyril of Alexandria (412–44) on the feast day of her Dormition (text and translation in Mingana 1931). The text focuses on Egyptian pilgrimage sites and was probably composed in Coptic, from which it was translated into Ethiopic, Arabic, and Syriac. According to the story, Theophilus visits Qusqam in Upper Egypt and stays in a house where the Holy Family once lived. While there, he has a vision in which Mary tells him of the family’s time in Egypt and how they were denied the hospitality of the townsfolk because the idols in the villages were destroyed by Jesus’ presence. The family were pursued by the authorities and priests and, later, by the soldiers of Herod. They ended up staying in a house that, in time, became a pilgrimage site. In Mary’s recounting, wherever the family went in Egypt, the young Jesus cured the sick, exorcized the possessed, and created healing springs of water. The text ends with Mary describing how she returned to the house later in life with the risen Jesus and the apostles to sanctify it as a church and conduct the first mass. The story of Mary shifts forward in time to Jesus’ later childhood in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, composed in the late second century and extant in Greek, Syriac, Latin, Old Slavonic, Irish, Ethiopic, and Georgian (text and translation in Ehrman and Pleše 2011: 3–23). One story features the six-year-old Jesus fetching water for his mother and bringing it back to her in his cloak. Mary is amazed at this wonder and, as in Luke 2:19 and 2:51, ‘She kept to herself the mysterious deeds that she saw him do’ (Infancy Gospel of Thomas 11:2). Later, Joseph commands her to not let Jesus out of the home because he is afraid the boy will murder someone (14:3). But the situation improves in Thomas’s retelling of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:41–52); in this version the scribes and Pharisees tell Mary: ‘You are most fortunate among women, because God has blessed the fruit of your womb’ (19:4). Mary also appears in a prologue added to one version of Thomas narrating, once again, episodes set in Egypt (text and translation in Ehrman and Pleše 2011: 25–9). Surprisingly, Joseph is mostly absent in these tales; even the angel who announces that it is safe for the family to return home appears to Mary, rather than to Joseph as in Matthew 2:19.
Considerably fewer apocryphal texts narrate activities of Mary set during Jesus’ adult years. But the ones that do are notable particularly for how they confuse or conflate Mary of Nazareth with other biblical Marys, particularly Mary Magdalene. The Lament of Mary, a text attributed to a certain (perhaps fictional) Bishop Cyriacus of Behnesa and extant in Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic, intertwines the events of Jesus’ passion and resurrection with poetic lamentations of his mother (text and translation in Mingana 1928). The Lament is one of a number of texts composed in fifth-century Egypt that set newly ‘discovered’ apocryphal texts within a homiletic framework (Suciu 2017: 85–8); the narrative of Mary is said here to be a quotation from the memoirs of Gamaliel the Elder. It opens with Mary seeking one of the apostles to accompany her to the cross but all have fled except for John. The two arrive at Calvary and Jesus puts Mary in John’s care, as reported in John 19:26–7. Seeing her son in such pain, Mary calls out: ‘Oh my son, would that I had with you a crown of thorns on my head, and would that I could make it as painful as yours’ (Mingana 1928: 190). As Mary is led away, some women say to her: ‘Our vengeance has come today on you and on your Son, because it is through you that our wombs have become childless from the year in which you brought Him forth’ (Mingana 1928: 191). Easter morning comes and Mary goes to the tomb and laments that she cannot see Jesus’ body. Recalling the scene with Mary Magdalene from John 20:11–18, Jesus appears to his mother, but she thinks him to be the owner of the garden. Jesus reveals his identity and sends Mary to tell the apostles he has risen. This substitution of Mary of Nazareth at the tomb for Mary Magdalene is not unique to this text; it is found in other Coptic writings and in Syriac tradition from as early as the second century (Shoemaker 2001: 561–7; Suciu 2017: 87).
A figure named Mary also makes frequent appearances in dialogues between the disciples and the risen Jesus. Sometimes it is clear that this figure is Jesus’ mother, at other times it is not; yet scholars have frequently assumed it to be Mary Magdalene. In the Dialogue of the Saviour, preserved only in a fourth-century Coptic codex from Nag Hammadi, Jesus speaks with Matthew, Judas (presumably Judas Thomas), and someone named Mary. No particular identifying features are provided about any of the speakers, but Jesus responds to one of Mary’s questions by calling her ‘Sister’ (Dialogue of the Saviour 131, 22; translation in Meyer 2007: 297–311), although this does not preclude the woman being his mother. The similar Wisdom of Jesus Christ, also in Coptic from Nag Hammadi but extant as well in a second Coptic manuscript and a fourth-century Greek fragment, again features questions posed by several disciples, including one named Mary (translation in Meyer 2007: 283–96). In the same way, the Mary of Gospel of Thomas 114, of whom Peter says ‘Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life’ (translation in Meyer 2007: 133–56) and the Mary of the Gospel of Mary, to whom Peter says ‘Sister, we know that the Saviour loved you more than the rest of women’ (10:1–3; cf. 18:14–15; translation in Meyer 2007: 737–47), is identified as neither the Virgin, nor the Magdalene, nor Mary of Bethany, for that matter. The Pistis Sophia, another post-resurrection dialogue preserved in Coptic, is only slightly clearer (text and translation in Schmidt and MacDermot 1978). Both Mary of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene ask Jesus questions, and sometimes the identity of the speaker is made explicit, but sometimes it is not. Perhaps a precise identification is not the concern of the authors of these texts, who may have been content to have the characters blend into one composite ‘Mary’ (Shoemaker 2001, 2002a, 2005). Such a spirit may lie behind the memorable statement from the Gospel of Philip: ‘Three women always walked with the master: Mary his mother, [his] sister, and Mary of Magdala, who is called his companion. For “Mary” is the name of his sister, his mother, and his companion’ (59, 6–11; translation in Meyer 2007: 157–86).
One additional dialogue text unequivocally features Mary of Nazareth, and in a fairly prominent role. The third-century Questions of Bartholomew, extant in Greek, Latin, and Church Slavonic, features a number of the apostles but Bartholomew is often selected from among them to be the one to ask Jesus questions (translation in Scheidweiler 1991). At one point, however, they have Bartholomew ask Mary a question: ‘You who are highly favoured, tabernacle of the Most High, unblemished, we, the apostles ask you, but they have sent me to you. Tell us how you conceived the incomprehensible, or how you carried him who cannot be carried or how you bore so much greatness’. Mary is reluctant to answer fearing that ‘fire will come out of my mouth and consume the whole earth’ (Questions of Bartholomew 2.2, 5). But she relents and tells them about an encounter she had with God while she was being fed in the temple by angels (recalling Protevangelium 8:1). God performed the Eucharist and then announced that in three years he would send his Word and she would conceive a son (Questions of Bartholomew 2:15–21). Just as Mary finishes talking, fire comes out of her mouth, just as she feared, but Jesus makes it cease. Later, Peter asks Mary to ‘ask the Lord to reveal to us all that is in heaven’ (4:1) and Mary again tries to defer, saying that Peter should ask the question since he is the rock of the church and because he is a man (4:2, 5); in the end, Bartholomew must step in and speak to Jesus.
The apocryphal Mary is also a letter writer. In a set of four Pseudo-Ignatian epistles composed in Latin around the eleventh century (translation in Roberts and Donaldson 1867: 490–3), Ignatius twice writes to the apostle John expressing a desire to visit Jerusalem and see Mary, on whom he lavishes praise, saying: ‘as we are informed by those who are worthy of credit, there is in Mary the mother of Jesus an angelic purity of nature allied with the nature of humanity’. A third letter is addressed directly to Mary, asking for verification of information about Jesus given to Ignatius by John. In her response, Mary calls herself a ‘fellow disciple’, confirms John’s report, and promises that she and John will one day visit Ignatius.
Mary’s life story comes to a close in a textual tradition extant in many forms and under many names, although the most well-known is the Dormition (or ‘falling asleep’) of Mary. The Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamenti (Geerard 1992) lists seventy-seven versions of this text, in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Irish, and Church Slavonic. Like the Protevangelium, its contents are represented in art and iconography, particularly in life cycles of Mary. The texts essentially reflect two approaches to Mary’s death: either she dies and after three days she is taken body and soul into Paradise, or Mary dies and her body remains on earth awaiting reunion with her soul at the end of time. Both approaches originated in the fifth century and gave rise, many centuries later, to the dogma of the Virgin’s bodily Assumption—meaning that Mary ascended body and soul to heaven just like her son.
The standard Greek version, entitled the Discourse on the Dormition and attributed to the apostle John (translation in Shoemaker 2002b: 351–69), is found in over 100 manuscripts. Despite its obvious popularity, it is a poor representative of the original text—it is merely a summary of a much lengthier text that survives in a Syriac translation divided into six books (text and translated by Wright 1865). In this Six Books Dormition, Mary goes to the tomb of Jesus daily to pray but the Jews of Jerusalem have forbidden such behaviour, so she returns to Bethlehem, attended by three virgins who minister to her. In Bethlehem she falls ill and prays that John and all the other apostles, some of whom have died, may attend her in her final days. In answer to her prayer, the apostles come to her on a cloud and bow down before her. Mary’s home becomes the site of miraculous signs and the sick and demon-possessed come to her for healing; also noble women come from afar with gifts and worship her. Mary has taken on, once again, the role of intercessor; this is made most explicit in the apostles’ request that she ‘leave a blessing … that those who make unto you commemorations and offerings be delivered from grievous afflictions’ (Wright 1865: 151). Mary then prays to Jesus asking for blessings to be bestowed on those who honour her or call on her name in times of distress, and the apostles institute feast days for her commemoration. After her death, Mary’s body is placed on a chariot of light which speeds off to the Paradise of Eden. In the final book of the text, Mary is taken on a tour of the heavens and shown Gehenna where the wicked will be cast on the day of judgement.
Another early version of the Dormition, represented in the Ethiopian Liber Requiei Mariae (the Book of Mary’s Repose; translation in Shoemaker 2002b: 290–350), begins with a lengthy discourse between the resurrected Jesus and Mary. He reminds Mary of the time he commanded a palm tree to bend down to them so they could pluck its fruit (a story found also in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew). Jesus reveals that the palm tree was expelled from Paradise and then he restores it to its former home as a display of his ability to reward ‘also those people who humble themselves before God’ (Book of Mary’s Repose 10). Mary then asks Jesus about the conditions of redemption—‘what is the sign of those who will be brought?’ (11) and ‘what will we do when we rest our body, because we do not want to abandon it on earth?’ (12)—to which Jesus responds with esoterica reminiscent of demiurgical texts (e.g. ‘and even if a person has gained the whole world, and he has been abandoned to the beast with the body of a lion and the tail of a snake, what is his profit?’ (15).
Mary’s tour of Gehenna in the early Dormition texts was expanded into a separate text known as the Apocalypse of the Virgin (translation in Shoemaker 2016). A variety of dates have been suggested for its composition, all depending on where one places it in the development of Marian piety; somewhere in the seventh century seems likely (Shoemaker 2016: 497–9). The text opens with Mary praying at the Mount of Olives. The archangel Michael appears and she asks him: ‘How many punishments are there, by which the human race is punished?’, and says: ‘Tell me of the things in heaven and on the earth’ (Apocalypse of the Virgin 1–2). The two travel to Hades and witness the punishments being meted out to three groups of sinners: 1. unbelievers who did not confess the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Mary’s role as the Theotokos, and other non-Christians guilty of various social and sexual transgressions (e.g. not honouring their parents, usury, and swearing false oaths); 2. Christian clergy and laypeople who have committed ecclesiastical sins (not attending church, blasphemy, hypocritical clergy who do not practise what they preach and embezzle church funds); and 3. those situated on the ‘left parts of Paradise’ who suffer the ‘great punishments’ (Apocalypse of the Virgin 24): torments reserved for the Jews, murderers, and sorcerers, and those guilty of incest and infanticide. In the same location is a river of fire where Christians are punished. Mary is so moved by the Christian sinners’ misery that she asks to be punished along with them. Michael tells her that it is not possible, so she calls upon God to have mercy upon them. She is joined by a chorus of voices: the angels, the prophets, and Christian saints (Paul and John). After several refusals, God finally sends down his son to the sinners and he allows them a period of respite every year during Eastertide—the fifty days from the Resurrection to Pentecost. Such intercession is a typical role of the seer in these apocalyptic tours of hell—for example, Peter in the Apocalypse of Peter, Paul in the Apocalypse of Paul, Ezra in the Latin Vision of Ezra and 6 Ezra—but it is particularly appropriate for Mary given how frequently she is acclaimed as the mediator between God and humans; the Apocalypse of the Virgin was not the first apocryphal text to depict Mary this way but it surely contributed to the portrayal.
Many Christians encountered the early apocryphal traditions of Mary in the form of compendia aimed at presenting readers with a complete biography of Mary (Mimouni 1994; Naffah 2009; Burke 2017). The same biographical urge is observable in the West in combinations of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Nicodemus, which together a form a Latin apocryphal life of Jesus. In Mary’s case, these biographies take the form of two collections in Syriac and several others in Greek. The West Syriac Life of Mary combines the Protevangelium (divided into two books), the Vision of Theophilus, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Six-Books Dormition into a five-book collection. In some manuscripts this Life is combined with homilies and miracle stories to create an even more expansive collection of texts devoted to Mary. The East Syriac Church created its own History of the Virgin by combining the Gospel of the Infancy with a version of the Dormition of Mary and, in some manuscripts the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, to form one lengthy text without divisions (text and translation in Budge 1899). Something similar occurred in the Byzantine world, beginning with the Life of the Virgin attributed to Maximus the Confessor (translation in Shoemaker 2012). If truly composed by Maximus, then the text originated in the seventh century; it exists now only in a Georgian translation. It was so influential that it formed the basis of later lives written by George of Nicomedia (ninth century), Symeon the Metaphrast (tenth century), and John the Geometer (tenth century) (Shoemaker 2012: 21). Maximus’s Life of the Virgin draws upon both canonical and non-canonical sources, including the Protevangelium, the Dormition, and perhaps one of the texts that presents Mary of Nazareth as the Mary in the garden (see Life of the Virgin 92–3), and adds a large portion of new material that casts Mary as an important leader in the Church following Jesus’ death. The author declares that ‘she was also a co-minister with the disciples of the Lord. She helped with their preaching, and she shared mentally in their struggles and torments and imprisonments’ (97). Mary is portrayed not only as a mediator between God and humanity but as a virtual replacement for her son in the Christian movement: ‘And she was the model of goodness and the teacher of excellence in the place of her Lord and son, and she was a mediator and intercessor with him for all the believers, and she asked that her mercy and assistance be spread forth for all’ (99).
The Byzantine lives of Mary demonstrate most effectively the often-blurry distinction between canonical and non-canonical traditions in Christian literature. These authors felt no hesitation in blending scripture and apocrypha and even inventing new stories to achieve their aim of honouring Mary. But in doing so, they have made Mary of Nazareth into a superwoman who has been stripped of much of what makes her human. Together or separately, the Marian apocrypha depict a woman who conceives without sex and gives birth without pain; she cures the sick, journeys through the heavens, cools the wrath of God, and is worshipped like a goddess. Occasionally verisimilitude is achieved through her frustrations over raising her powerful child and her lamentations over his horrible death, but often the parent–child relationship is overshadowed by having Mary kneel before him like any other disciple. The most positive aspect of the apocryphal Mary’s character is her active engagement in the Church after Jesus’ death, as both interlocutor with the risen Jesus and as leader of the apostles, yet these are the aspects that are the least known to readers of the literature, in part because they are so obscured in the texts due to ambiguous descriptions of the composite ‘Mary’. The apocryphal Mary is far more than the pure vessel of the Protevangelium and aged matriarch of the Dormition. She is as multivalent as the texts that honour her, the readers who composed them, and the woman who inspired them.