PREFACE
1. Mary Dzon discusses the image in the context of medieval storytelling about Jesus and Joseph (“Joseph and the Amazing Christ-Child,” 135–36 n. 3).
2. Inf. Gos. Thom. 13.3.
INTRODUCTION
1. An exception is Allen, “The ‘Protoevangelium of James’ as an ‘Historia,’ ” esp. 510, 512–15.
2. Some argue that this reflects the oral transmission of the gospel. See Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 14–34, and Davis, Christ Child, 26–35.
3. The view that curiosity alone—that is, a desire to “fill in the gaps” of canonical narratives—was the impetus for these childhood stories restricts their significance. See, e.g., Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 206. Helmut Koester remarks on the “biographical” interest that prompted the stories (Ancient Christian Gospels, 312). It is not hard to find contempt for the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the literature: “Crudely sensational” (Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 68); “tasteless” (Enslin, “Along Highways and Byways,” 84).
4. Burke, De infantia Iesu.
5. Davis, Christ Child.
6. Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus. See too Bovon on the “curiosité des enfants” (“Évangiles canoniques et évangiles apocryphes,” 25).
7. Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, and Vuong, Gender and Purity.
8. See Voiçu, “Ways to Survival,” 402–17.
9. For a succinct discussion of critical questions and evidence, see Gamble, “The New Testament Canon,” 272–94.
10. Mussies, “Reflections on the Apocryphal Gospels,” 597. Ronald Piper, more persuasively, contends that “the fourfold gospel had begun to achieve widening recognition as authoritative” (“The One, the Four, and the Many,” 271).
11. As Reed notes, when Irenaeus argues for the “four-formed gospel,” he “does not describe a ‘Canon of Christian Scriptures’ in any later sense of those terms. These texts are not yet the literary guarantors of the sacred tradition, merely its special guardians” (“Εύαγγέλιον: Orality, Textuality, and the Christian Truth,” 45). Cf. Kellhoffer, “ ‘How Soon a Book’ Revisited,” 1–34.
12. See Davis, Christ Child, 20–21.
13. See Arnal, “Collection and Synthesis of ‘Tradition,’ ” 193–215. See too Lieu, Christian Identity, 37–45.
14. Gamble, “New Testament Canon,” 273.
15. Although it is likely that ancient Christian commentators did confuse the two. For discussion and sources, see Burke, De infantia Iesu, 38–41.
16. Brakke, “Scriptural Practices in Early Christianity,” 263–80. See too Bovon, “Beyond the Canonical and the Apocryphal Books,” 125–37. A good case for putting canonical and extracanonical on a level playing field has been made by Kazen, “Sectarian Gospels for Some Christians?” 561–78. See too Mitchell, “Patristic Counter-Evidence,” 36–79.
17. On the difference between scripture and canon, see Sundberg, “Toward a Revised History,” 452–61. See too Dungan, Constantine’s Bible, 1–10.
18. Brakke, “Scriptural Practices,” 275–76.
19. Brakke, “Scriptural Practices,” 273.
20. Brakke illustrates this mode with an unlikely pairing: the “heretical” Marcion and Eusebius, the “orthodox” historian. They shared a methodology when it came to scrutinizing the authority attached to certain texts. Both approached Christian texts with a scholar’s eye, each assessing the truthfulness of the writing at hand. See too Bovon, “The Reception and Use,” 289–306.
21. As Brakke observes, “It is simply anachronistic to ask of writers of the second century which books were in their canon and which not—for the notion of a closed canon was simply not there” (“Scriptural Practices,” 266).
22. François Bovon sees a similar relationship—“midway between the use of Luke as a source and the use of Luke as normative Scripture”—implied by the Didache and the Apocalypse of Peter (“The Reception and Use,” 300). See too Mussie, “Reflections on the Apocryphal Gospels,” 597–611; Burke, “Completing the Gospel,” esp. 109–13.
23. Voiçu, “Ways to Survival,” 401–17.
24. See Hock, The Infancy Gospels, 4, 84–85.
25. On the pseudonymous authorship of the family gospels, see Hock, The Infancy Gospels, 8–11, 90–91. The first chapter of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas attributes the account to “Thomas the Israelite,” but this chapter is not found in the earliest versions of the text, leading scholars to conclude that it is secondary (Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 40; see too Burke, De infantia Iesu, 205–6).
26. On the epilogue of the Proto-gospel of James (25.1), attributing the book to James (presumably the brother of Jesus, although this is not stated explicitly), see Vuong, Gender and Purity, 31–34.
27. Lily Vuong argues for a Syrian provenance of the Proto-gospel of James (Gender and Purity, 213–39).
28. Most scholars would accept these parameters on the basis of several factors, including manuscript evidence and allusions in early Christian writings. For discussion of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, see Burke, De infantia Iesu, 3–44, 201–5. Cf. Stephen Davis’s argument for a later dating of the written account (Christ Child, 40–42). For the Proto-gospel of James, see Foster, “Reception of the Canonical Gospels,” 284–88.
29. It is unlikely that either of the family gospels was familiar with the other one.
30. See Sim, “Matthew’s Use of Mark,” 176–92.
31. Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 14. See too Steven Weitzman’s remarks about Jewish storytelling in the ancient world: “Storytelling did not act directly on the world, but it did help Jews to develop certain options and to keep them open, describing the world in ways that made it seem possible to shake off the yoke of foreign rule, or evade its notice or manipulate the king’s power to one’s own advantage” (Surviving Sacrilege, 32). Averil Cameron contends, “We still lack an analysis of late antique Christian writing that would do justice to its social dynamism and intellectual and literary force” (Dialoguing in Late Antiquity, 5). I would add that insights from postcolonial studies can illuminate subtle aspects of cultural negotiation found in ancient sources. Particularly important for my own thinking are Burrus, “Mimicking Virgins”; Jacobs, Christ Circumcised; and Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art.
32. Sternberg observes, “By the narrator’s art, the historical texts applied to the fathers in the world [of biblical narrative] are perpetuated in the discourse addressed to the sons as a standing challenge to interpretation” (Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 48). Characters misunderstand things and thus enact a problem of interpretation, and the audience recognizes themselves in the enactment.
33. Sternberg’s proposals have been subjected to sharp criticism: Fewell and Gunn, “Tipping the Balance,” 193–212. See too Sternberg’s equally sharp retort, “Biblical Poetics and Sexual Politics,” 463–88. For a critical and constructive overview of strengths and weaknesses in Sternberg’s approach, see Berlin, “Narrative Poetics in the Bible,” 273–84.
34. Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 199–222, 235–37. See too Weitzman, “Before and After The Art of Biblical Narrative,” 191–210.
35. Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative. Sternberg offers a few remarks on the difference between narrative in the Tanakh, which presumes a low “threshold of intelligibility,” and narrative in the canonical gospels, which elevates mystery and secrecy and thus creates an exclusive class of “insiders” (48–49). “Nothing is more alien to the spirit of biblical narrative than discourse fashioned or meaning hidden across the sea [cf. Jesus telling parables on a boat in Mark 4], than speaking in riddles, than the distinction between spiritual insiders and carnal outsiders” (49). This view on the canonical gospels, as Sternberg admits, is wedded to Frank Kermode’s brilliant but flawed analysis of the Gospel of Mark (The Genesis of Secrecy).
36. Nor do I ask readers to assume later Trinitarian and Christological propositions in reading the family gospels. Early Christian audiences believed that the figure of Jesus was possessed of supernatural power and authority. Ante-Nicene (no less than later) Christians argued about the scope of this claim. That said, our concern is not Christological propositions but storytelling about crises in the household of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.
37. Canonical in Catholic and Orthodox bibles but not Protestant ones.
38. On the worth of parabiblical writings, see Reed, “Afterlives of New Testament Apocrypha,” 401–25. See too Stephen Shoemaker’s remarks on recent efforts to “remove the early Christian apocrypha from the shadow of the New Testament writings” (“Early Christian Apocryphal Literature,” 521).
39. Kraemer, “Jewish Mothers and Daughters,” 92.
40. Schellenberg, “Suspense, Simultaneity, and Divine Providence,” 316.
41. See, e.g., Foster, “Reception of the Canonical Gospels,” 289.
CHAPTER 1
1. Matt 10:36 includes “and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”
2. See Mark 13:12; cf. Matt 24:21; Luke 21:16. Rejection of family members can be found in other passages: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:25; cf. Matt 10:37–38; see too Luke 9:59–60; cf. Matt 8:21–22).
3. Clark, “Antifamilial Tendencies in Ancient Christianity,” 356–80. See too Cooper, “Approaching the Holy Household,” 131–42.
4. All we know of The True Doctrine comes from quotations embedded in the Christian response of Origen, composed some seventy years later. For discussion, see Martin, Inventing Superstition, 140–59, esp. 147, 156. See too Frede, “Origen’s Treatise Against Celsus,” 131–55, esp. 134.
5. Origen, Against Celsus 3.55 (SC 136:130, ed. Borret; trans. Chadwick, 165–66, modified).
6. Origen, Against Celsus 3.44 (SC 136:104, ed. Borret; trans. Chadwick, 158).
7. On Christians as a threat to Celsus’s vision of society and, specifically, on pagan worries about the “infiltration of family life,” see Francis, Subversive Virtue, 131–79.
8. On adoption in Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans, see Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs. See too Peppard, Son of God in the Roman World, 134–48.
9. Wayne A. Meeks famously connects mobility and the resultant “status inconsistency” to the spread of Pauline Christianity (First Urban Christians, esp. 19–23, 190–92). See too the evocative and still useful sketch of MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 88–120. Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller sound a note of caution (Roman Empire, 123–25).
10. Frilingos, “For My Child, Onesimus,” 91–104. On familial metaphors, see Lassen, “Roman Family,” 115. Michael Penn’s study of the ritual of kissing illuminates the early Christian conception of a “kinship of faith” (Kissing Christians, esp. 31–37).
11. Acts of Paul and Thecla 5 (trans. Elliott, 365).
12. Acts of Paul and Thecla 43 (trans. Elliott, 372).
13. For an illuminating discussion, see Cooper and Corke-Webster, “Conversion, Conflict, and the Drama,” 169–83.
14. Acts of Thomas 12 (trans. Elliott, 452).
15. Acts of Thomas 12 (trans. Elliott, 452).
16. As Judith Perkins observes, “By advocating universal chastity, they implicitly proposed an end to the social structure” (Suffering Self, 29). See too Cooper, Virgin and the Bride, 55.
17. Perkins, Suffering Self, 41–76. Virginia Burrus discerns a far more ironic and ambivalent perspective on identity in a comparison of ancient pagan, Jewish, and Christian novels (“Mimicking Virgins,” 49–88).
18. Jacobs, “Family Affair,” 105–38.
19. Jacobs, “Family Affair,” 125.
20. On the “apostolic love triangle,” see Cooper, Virgin and the Bride, 51–56. See too Schroeder, “Embracing the Erotic,” 123–37.
21. Acts of Thomas 12 (trans. Elliott, 452).
22. Acts of Thomas 13 (trans. Elliott, 452).
23. Advice to the Bride and Groom (trans. Russell, 5–13). On Plutarch, see Jacobs, “Family Affair,” 115–17. Cf. Cooper, Virgin and the Bride, 5–11.
24. For a recent sociohistorical study of Roman-era expectations in marriage, see Caldwell, Roman Girlhood, 134–65.
25. For discussion of scholarship and sources, see Osiek and MacDonald, A Woman’s Place, 118–43.
26. See MacDonald, “Beyond Identification of the Topos,” 65–90. MacDonald contends that “the codes appear to actualize or articulate conventional arrangements in household church communities that were probably always present in the Pauline churches alongside challenges to traditional family structures through various forms of asceticism and the allegiance to church groups of subordinate members of non-believing households” (78). For a different perspective, which argues for mimicry and the “empire-renouncing logic” of Colossians, see Maier, “Sly Civility,” 323–49.
27. MacDonald, Legend and the Apostle.
28. As Harry O. Maier observes, “The Pastorals drew on the vocabulary and commonplaces associated with [homonoia] to articulate the ideals and values addressees are to pursue” (Picturing Paul in Empire, 171–72).
29. As Margaret Y. MacDonald contends, under the Roman Empire, “[n]otions of civic rule are closely tied to the dominion of the paterfamilias” (“Beyond Identification of the Topos,” 66).
30. On “pictures of harmony” in Roman imagery, see Maier, Picturing Paul in Empire, 73. For the late Republic, see Dixon, “Sentimental Ideal of the Roman Family,” 99–113.
31. On the Augustan portrayal of empire as an affectionate and disciplined domus, see Lacey, “Patria Potestas,” 121–44.
32. Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial, 206–75.
33. For discussion of the legislation, see Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 60–80; see too Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 78–97.
34. Brown, Body and Society, 16.
35. Gibson, “Ephesians 5:21–33 and the Lack,” 162–77.
36. Carolyn Osiek argues that Jesus extends but does not abolish family values (“Family in Early Christianity,” 1–24). See too Elliott, “Jesus Movement Was Not Egalitarian,” 173–210.
37. Horsley, Liberation of Christmas, 23–38.
38. On “conflicting details,” see Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 33–37.
39. Burrus, “The Gospel of Luke,” 133–55.
40. On household and family in the infancy narratives, see Moxnes, Putting Jesus in His Place, 32–38.
41. NRSV, modified.
42. NRSV, modified. My translation follows that of De Jonge, “Sonship, Wisdom, and Infancy,” 317–54. In the genealogy of the Gospel of Luke, the claim of Joseph’s paternity is ambiguous: “He was the son (as was thought) [ἐνoμίζετo] of Joseph” (3:23).
43. On the “Marcosians,” see Davis, Christ Child, 121–25.
44. Irenaeus contends that the Marcosians “falsely fit to that standard some of the things put in the Gospel [ἐν Eὐαγγελίῳ]” (Haer. 1.20.2 [SC 264:290], ed. Rousseau and Doutreleau; trans. Unger, 76).
45. “Apocryphal and spurious writings” (ἀπoκρύφων καὶ νόθων γραφῶν; Haer. 1.20.1 [SC 264:288], ed. Rousseau and Doutreleau; trans. Unger, 76).
46. “That he alone knew the unknowable” (ὡζ αὐτoὺ μόνoυ τὸ ἄγνωστoν ἐπισταμένoυ; Haer. 1.20.1 [SC 264:289], ed. Rousseau and Doutreleau; trans. Unger, 76).
47. Inf. Gos. Thom. 13.1–3 is discussed in Chapter 3. Not only the Marcosians appreciated this story, which they take as being about the alpha privative (expressing negation in Greek). The contemporaneous Epistula Apostolorum includes a report of the same story in its opening summary of Jesus’ activities (Ep. Apos. 4 [trans. Elliott, 559]).
48. Haer. 1.20.2 (SC 264:290, ed. Rousseau and Doutreleau; trans. Unger, 76, modified). Origen, meanwhile, fastens on the image of the parents searching for Jesus and turns the story into an invitation to Christians to search the scriptures for truth (Homilies on Luke 18.2–3, 19.4–5).
49. Haer. 1.20.3 (SC 264:294, ed. Rousseau and Doutreleau; trans. Unger, 77).
50. See Blake Leyerle’s study of children in John Chrysostom’s scriptural commentaries and adult “problems of cultural reproduction” (“Appealing to Children,” 243–70, at 270).
51. See Burke, De Infantia, 6.
52. “Childhood deeds” (παιδικά; Hom. Jo. 17.3 [PG 59:110], trans. Goggin, 167).
53. Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 178.
54. Cf. John 6:42: “They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, I have come down from heaven?’ ”
55. Quotations are from John Chrysostom, Hom. Jo. 21.2 (PG 59:130; trans. Goggin, 205–6, modified).
56. “Implanted in her the suspicion” (ἐνἐθηκε τὴν ὑπόνoιαν).
57. See Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 480–81.
58. “He was quickly overshadowed” (ἐξέφηνεν ἐαὺτoν συνησκίασε; Hom. Matt. 10.3 [PG 57:186], my trans.).
59. “Things which the Jews had never seen nor heard”: a striking parallel to language in Inf. Gos. Thom. 17.3. Günther Schmahl suggests that this notion is already incipient in the Lukan story (“Lk 2,41–52 und die Kindheitserzählung,” 249–58, at 252).
CHAPTER 2
1. On virginitas in partu prior to the fourth century, see Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 171–87. See too Lillis, “Paradox in Partu,” 1–28.
2. Prot. Jas. 20.1.
3. Prot. Jas. 20.2.
4. Inf. Gos. Thom. 4.1. Here my translation follows the wording of Jesus’ curse in the vast majority of witnesses to the text. Gs, on which Burke’s edition is based, is the only witness to include the phrase “Cursed be for you and your leader.” See n. 21.
5. Inf. Gos. Thom. 4.2.
6. On intratextual and extratextual audiences, see Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel, 3–40.
7. On Christian spectacles of violence, see the classic essay of Davis, “The Rites of Violence,” 152–87. In a study of the potency of “tableaux of perversion” in religious history, David Frankfurter argues that descriptions of “monstrous” outsiders throw audiences of insiders into a cycle of disavowal and participation (Evil Incarnate, 129–67).
8. On the persuasive power of early Christian storytelling, see Averil Cameron’s claim: “The better these stories were constructed, the better they functioned as structure-maintaining narratives, and the more their audiences were disposed to accept them as true” (Christianity and the Rhetoric, 93). Cf. Morgan, “History, Romance, and Realism,” 221–64, esp. 222.
9. Inf. Gos. Thom. 2.3.
10. Inf. Gos. Thom. 3.1.
11. Inf. Gos. Thom. 3.1.
12. Inf. Gos. Thom. 3.2.
13. Inf. Gos. Thom. 3.3.
14. On the cursing of holy figures, see Burke, De infantia Iesu, 276–81. See too Walter Rebell on the child Jesus as a “trickster” figure (Neutestamentliche Apokryphen und Apostolische Väter, 134–36). On childhood as a symbol for peace in early Christian literature, see Bovon, “The Child and the Beast,” 369–92.
15. Matthew does not remark on whether it was the season for figs (21:18–22). On a parallel between the “fig tree” pericope and the withering of the son of Annas in the Infancy Gospel, see Davis, Christ Child, 90.
16. “Without having done him any harm” (μηδὲν βλάψαν αὐτoν; Luke 4:35).
17. See Hock, Infancy Gospels, 109, n. on 3.2. For examples of retributive curses, see Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding, 175–99.
18. Inf. Gos. Thom. 4.1.
19. See Davis, Christ Child, 64–91.
20. “Tore into” (διερράγη; Inf. Gos. Thom 4.1).
21. Davis appeals to one version of the wording of the curse, which is unique to Gs: “Cursed be your ruler [ὁ ἡγεμών σoυ]!” The story thus is an “agonistic scene—one that dramatizes the fate of a young soul whose hegemon failed to provide sound guidance and who therefore had become a threat to others” (Christ Child, 87 and 265, n. 60). But it is Jesus who clearly poses a threat to others in the Infancy Gospel. On the increasing Christian interest in divine guides in the third and fourth centuries, see Muehlberger, Angels in Late Ancient, 89–118.
22. See variants in Burke, De infantia Iesu, 306 n. 3.
23. Inf. Gos. Thom. 4.1.
24. Inf. Gos. Thom. 4.2.
25. Inf. Gos. Thom. 5.1.
26. Cf. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 307 n. 9.
27. Inf. Gos. Thom. 5.1–2. A different set of manuscripts (Ga) includes here “Every word he says,” they say, “good or bad [εἴτε καλὸν εἴτε κακόν], has become a deed and wonder.”
28. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric, 76.
29. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric, 78–79.
30. “Theatricalization of death” is Steven Weitzman’s phrase (Surviving Sacrilege, 154).
31. See Kathleen Coleman’s discussion of Martial, Liber spectaculorum 8 (“Fatal Charades,” 63).
32. In addition to Coleman, “Fatal Charades,” see Bartsch, Actors in the Audience, and Barton, Sorrows of the Ancient Romans.
33. On Johannine irony, see the classic sociological reading of Wayne A. Meeks in “Man from Heaven,” 44–72.
34. Gleason, “Mutilated Messengers,” 84.
35. Josephus, Jewish War 5.450 (trans. Thackeray, 341). Quoted by Gleason, “Mutilated Messengers,” 82.
36. Gleason, “Mutilated Messengers,” 51.
37. On parental grief in Plutarch, see Keith Bradley, “Images of Childhood,” 183–96, esp. 183–85. See the still valuable assessment of Mark Golden, “Did the Ancients Care?” 152–63. Golden dismantles the idea that widespread infanticide somehow inured parents to the death of offspring, arguing that exposure “could coexist with, and even be caused by, care for other children” (159). For a similar perspective, see Wiedemann on Fronto (Adults and Children, 97), and Nasrallah, “Grief in Corinth,” 109–40. Note Gleason’s apt observation on the importance of empathy in spectacles of bodily violence: “such spectacles would affect the spectators’ behavior only to the extent that they felt connected to the body of the victim,” forcing them to see “what they would rather not see” (“Mutilated Messengers,” 81–82, 90).
38. Inf. Gos. Thom. 4.2.
39. Inf. Gos. Thom. 5.1.
40. Inf. Gos. Thom. 8.1.
41. Inf. Gos. Thom. 8.2. Tony Burke sees in this passage an “appreciation of Johannine thought” (Chartrand-Burke, “Authorship and Identity,” 35).
42. Inf. Gos. Thom. 8.2.
43. Inf. Gos. Thom. 8.2.
44. Inf. Gos. Thom. 9.1.
45. Inf. Gos. Thom. 9.2.
46. Inf. Gos. Thom. 9.3. Gs adds, “Jesus said to him: ‘Fall asleep!’ ”
47. Meir Sternberg defines suspense this way: “In art as in life, suspense derives from incomplete knowledge about a conflict (or some other contingency) looming in the future” (Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 264).
48. Gleason, “Truth Contests and Talking,” 287–313.
49. Gleason, “Truth Contests and Talking,” 294.
50. Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 2.20–30 (ed. and trans. Hanson).
51. Acts of Peter 12 (trans. Elliott, 408–9).
52. Gleason, “Truth Contests and Talking,” 297–302. See too Jeremy Schott’s remarks on oracles and forensic oratory (“Language,” 64–71). On child oracles in antiquity, see Johnston, “Charming Children,” 97–117.
53. Ramsay MacMullen observes, “Common or not [i.e., judicial savagery], depending on time and place, pictures of brutal routines of law in action were no doubt stored away in the memory of every citizen” (“Judicial Savagery in the Roman,” 207). See too Potter, “Performance, Power, and Justice,” 129–59.
54. On Prot. Jas. as an encomium, see Hock, Infancy Gospels, 16.
55. See Vuong, Gender and Purity (52–54), for a survey of scholarship on this problem. See too Andrew T. Lincoln’s recent evaluation of the Proto-gospel of James (Born of a Virgin? 93–94). On the Toledot Yeshu, Celsus, and Celsus’s Jewish informant, see Gager and Ahuvia, “Some Notes on Jesus,” 997–1019.
56. H. R. Smid describes the claim of virginity as “empirically proved” (Protevangelium Jacobi, 142). Clement of Alexandria notes that Mary’s virginity was examined (Stromateis 7.16.93).
57. See David G. Hunter: “Mary’s sole merit, according to the Protevangelium, is her sexual purity, and the sole purpose of the narrative is to exalt and defend that purity” (Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 178). See too Lily Vuong’s argument that the “characterization of Mary as pure involves not her sexual purity and therefore her moral purity, but also a concern for her ritual, menstrual, and even geneaological purity” (Gender and Purity, 243).
58. On Mary as a model of asceticism, see Klutz, “The Value of Being Virginal,” 71–87.
59. See Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, 106. Glancy does not treat Prot. Jas. in isolation but as part of a network of early Christian writings, from the Odes of Solomon to the Ascension of Isaiah to Tertullian, dedicated to the constructing the body of the virgin Mary.
60. See Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, and Vuong, Gender and Purity.
61. “I do not know how it got inside me” (oὐ γινώσκω πόθεν ἐστὶν ἐν ἐμoί; Prot. Jas. 13.3, modified).
62. On the tests, see Vuong, Gender and Purity, 171–89.
63. Prot. Jas. 15.1–4.
64. Prot. Jas. 16.1.
65. Prot. Jas. 16.3. Does the phrase betray literary dependence on the disputed pericope adulterae (John 8:1–11)? See Petersen, “OUDE EGŌ SE [KATA] KRINŌ,” 191–221, esp. 214–15.
66. See Foskett’s overview (A Virgin Conceived, 74–122). Cf. Burrus, “Mimicking Virgins,” 49–88, esp. 49–54.
67. Chew, “Achilles Tatius and Parody,” 64. See too Morales, Vision and Narrative in Achilles, 206–7, 220–26.
68. On Scheintod (“apparent death”) in the Greek novel, see MacAlister, Dreams and Suicides, 23–33. See too Perkins, “Fictive Scheintod,” 396–418.
69. Prot. Jas. 19.2.
70. Prot. Jas. 19.2. Mary breastfeeds immediately, while Anna waits until the end of a period of purification (Prot. Jas. 5.8). On this difference, see Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, 112–14.
71. Prot. Jas. 19.3.
72. Prot. Jas. 20.1.
73. On ancient models of female sexual anatomy, see Foskett, A Virgin Conceived, 33–36, and now Lillis, “Paradox in Partu,” 8–16. On the lack of evidence for Roman-era procedures of inspecting female “intactness,” see Caldwell, Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning, 63.
74. Prot. Jas. 20.1.
75. Salome watching her burning hand is a popular theme in early Christian art (Cartlidge and Elliott, Art and the Christian, 90–94, 4.11–13). Romans told a story of a legendary hero, Mucius Scaevola, who watched his own hand burn; see Barton, “Savage Miracles,” 41–71.
76. See Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, 117, and Vuong, Gender and Purity, 188–89.
77. Glancy observes, “Her virginity, her body, is untouchable” (Corporal Knowledge, 117). See too Vuong, Gender and Purity, 182–90, and Foskett, Virgin Conceived, 36–44.
78. Prot. Jas. 20.2. Hock remarks on the Proto-gospel of James’s “bookish acquaintance” with Judaism and midrash (Infancy Gospels, 10–11). See too Allen, “The ‘Protoevanglium of James’ as an ‘Historia,’ ” 513.
79. Is Salome a “Jewish informant” for an early Christian audience? On the figure of the Jewish informant in early Christian writings, see Jacobs, Remains of the Jews, 56–100. Alternatively, Salome’s aggression may reflect a violent anti-Jewish stereotype; see Matthews, Perfect Martyr, 3–26.
80. On images of Jews and Judaism in second-century Christian texts and the contrast to a more fluid reality “on the ground,” see Lieu, Image and Reality. A complementary analysis of image and reality, reaching deeper into late antiquity, may be found in Boyarin, Border Lines.
81. Prot. Jas. 20.3.
82. On the “haunting sensuality” of the nursing Mary, see Brown, “Notion of Virginity,” 438–39.
CHAPTER 3
1. Inf. Gos. Thom. 6.1–4.
2. Inf. Gos. Thom. 13.1–3.
3. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 287.
4. Inf. Gos. Thom. 13.1.
5. “Minister” (λειτoυργῶν; Prot. Jas. 4.1).
6. “Sanctuary” (ἁγίασμα; Prot. Jas. 6.1).
7. Prot. Jas. 5.1. Lily Vuong remarks on “the continued power and importance of the Temple and its priesthood” in the Proto-gospel of James (“ ‘Let Us Bring Her Up,’ ” 425). See too Horner, “Jewish Aspects of the Protevangelium,” 313–35.
8. See Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 79–82 and 206–7, citing Origen, Against Celsus 3.55.
9. On the “cathartic release” of such stories, see Burke, De infantia Iesu, 316 n. 2.
10. An overview may be found in Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia, 36–46.
11. Kaster, Guardians of Language, 77.
12. Justin Martyr, First Apology 60 (trans. Hardy, 281). On Justin, see Lyman, “The Politics of Passing.” See too Laura Nasrallah’s discussion of the second-century trio of Tatian, Lucian, and Justin (Christian Reponses to Roman Art, 51–84).
13. Beavis, “Pluck the Rose,” 411–23. Whether Christians should be schoolteachers is a different question. Beavis discusses the evidence of Tertullian and the more “lenient” Hippolytus in the Apostolic Tradition 16 (416–17).
14. Beavis, “Pluck the Rose,” 416. See too Clark, “The Fathers and the Children,” 1–28.
15. Beavis, “Pluck the Rose,” 422.
16. On “symbolic capital” and the Hellenistic intellectual tradition, see Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 19.
17. Tim Whitmarsh observes, “The centrality of education to cultural definition is of course definitively Greek and definitively postclassical; paideia is a primary marker of civilized Hellenism” (Beyond the Second Sophistic, 221).
18. Goldhill, “Introduction,” 17. See too Watts, City and School, 6–7.
19. Marrou, History of Education, 99. See too Thomas Wiedemann’s remark: education was responsible for creating the “future citizen community” (Adults and Children, 32). A more recent discussion is Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 1–12.
20. See Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities, 27.
21. Plutarch, Life of Cicero, 45.
22. On the “commodification of paideia,” see Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 258. For a contemporary study of the commodification of knowledge involving, in this case, the packaging of Islamic law as a “discrete body of knowledge” to be acquired by American Muslims from “authentic” experts in cities abroad, see Grewal, Islam Is a Foreign Country, esp. 199.
23. Greg Woolf observes, “Romans drove an ideological wedge between the inventors of civilization and the Greeks of their own day” (“Becoming Roman, Staying Greek,” 120).
24. On Salaried Posts 25 (trans. Harmon, 453).
25. Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art, 64.
26. Tim Whitmarsh remarks, “Teaching is both conservative in that it replicates the social order, and subversive, in that it transforms statuses and redistributes social power” (Greek Literature, 93, italics mine). So too Whitmarsh contends that redistribution was constantly occurring along multiple axes in the Roman period, a result of the ostensible “pluralist accessibility” of paideia, which made “power and prestige accessible to those who [were] notionally excluded” (Greek Literature, 130).
27. See Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 118–29.
28. On examples such as Favorinus of Gaul, see Gleason, Making Men, 3–20.
29. Note the salient point made by Virginia Burrus: “Who is a ‘Greek’? Who is a ‘Roman’? (Who, for that matter, a ‘barbarian’?) Such questions, although answered with confidence by many ancient writers, raise particular challenges for the contemporary historian” (“Mimicking Virgins,” 49). See too Schott, “Porphyry on Christians and Others,” 277–314.
30. The Dream 1 (trans. Harmon, 215). On The Dream, see Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 122–23.
31. “Thrashings” (πλήγαζ; Dream 2 [trans. Harmon, 217]).
32. Lucian, The Dream 2 (trans. Harmon, 217).
33. Lucian, The Dream 7 (trans. Harmon, 221). The personified Craft “speaks in barbarisms” (βαρβαίζoυσα; The Dream 8).
34. The Dream 11 (trans. Harmon, 225).
35. Lucian would be forced to confront criticism. He later retracted his sarcastic put-down of Greek masters in On Salaried Posts, acknowledging in The Apology (for On Salaried Posts) that he had also turned acquired paideia to advantage, and his performance had been rewarded with an administrative post in Roman Egypt. See Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (1986).
36. The Dream 13 (trans. Harmon, 227).
37. The Dream 3 (trans. Harmon, 217).
38. The Dream 16 (trans. Harmon, 231).
39. The Dream 9 (trans. Harmon, 223, modified).
40. The Dream 15 (trans. Harmon, 229).
41. The Dream 18 (trans. Harmon, 233).
42. On the role of parents in Roman-era Greek education, see Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 102–24.
43. On the coherence of the three classroom episodes, see Paulissen, “Jésus à l’école l’enseignement,” 153–75. While the classroom stories were likely inspired by the Lukan story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, differences in setting and characters set it off as a distinct case to which I will return in Chapter 5.
44. Davis, Christ Child, 100.
45. Davis, Christ Child, 104.
46. Readers of the Gospel of Luke know a tax collector named Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10).
47. Inf. Gos. Thom. 6.2.
48. Inf. Gos. Thom. 6.2b.
49. Inf. Gos. Thom. 6.2d.
50. See Saller, “Corporal Punishment, Authority, and Obedience,” 144–65, and Shaw, “The Family in Late Antiquity,” 3–51, esp. 21–24.
51. Inf. Gos. Thom. 6.2f.
52. Inf. Gos. Thom. 6.2f.
53. Inf. Gos. Thom. 6.3.
54. Inf. Gos. Thom. 6.2.
55. Cf. Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 105.
56. David Frankfurter links this passage to “fascination with the hieroglyph” (“The Magic of Writing,” 189–221, here 211). On the mystical powers of letters, see Davis, Christ Child, 119.
57. Inf. Gos. Thom. 6.4.
58. Inf. Gos. Thom. 13.1.
59. Inf. Gos. Thom. 7.1.
60. Inf. Gos. Thom. 7.1.
61. Inf. Gos. Thom. 7.2.
62. Inf. Gos. Thom. 7.3.
63. Talbert, “Prophecies of Future Greatness,” 129–41. See too Cox, Biography in Late Antiquity, esp. 22–23, 34, and Carp, “Puer senex,” 736–39.
64. Philo, On Moses 1.5.21 (trans. Colson). For discussion, see Perrot, “Les récits d’enfance,” 481–518, esp. 497–504 on Moses.
65. Philo, On Moses 1.5.22 (trans. Colson).
66. Cf. Davis, Christ Child, on agonistic setting. In An Ethiophian Story, the heroine Charicleia fights against a marriage arranged by her father, arguing that the union goes against the paideia he himself taught (2.33.5). For discussion, see Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 93.
67. See Burridge, What Are the Gospels?
68. Inf. Gos. Thom. 7.4.
69. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 287.
70. Inf. Gos. Thom. 10 (water), 15 (baking).
71. Inf. Gos. Thom. 11. On the rural motifs of the Infancy Gospel, see Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 53–72.
72. Inf. Gos. Thom. 12.
73. Inf. Gos. Thom. 13.1.
74. Inf. Gos. Thom. 13.2.
75. Inf. Gos. Thom. 13.2.
76. Inf. Gos. Thom. 13.3.
77. Inf. Gos. Thom. 14.1.
78. Inf. Gos. Thom. 14.2.
79. See Burke, De infantia Iesu, 330 n. 4.
80. Inf. Gos. Thom. 14.2.
81. Inf. Gos. Thom. 14.3.
82. Inf. Gos. Thom. 14.3.
83. Inf. Gos. Thom. 14.4.
84. Foster, “The Education of Jesus,” 333. Foster sees the child Jesus resisting the “inflexible intellectual gymnastics of the classroom,” as described by Cribiore (Gymnastics of the Mind, 161–68).
85. Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 106–7.
86. On the education of girls in antiquity, see Bloomer, “The Ancient Child in School,” 448–50.
87. “Make known” (φανερώσει; Prot. Jas. 7.2, modified).
88. Prot. Jas. 7.3. Beverly Gaventa remarks, “The vivid and enchanting picture of a child dancing in the temple epitomizes Mary’s sacred purity” (Mary: Glimpses, 113).
89. Earlier, an angel promises Anna, “Your offspring will be spoken of throughout the entire world” (Prot. Jas. 4.1).
90. On the temple as a source of divine knowledge and angelic visitation in early Jewish sources, see Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice and the Temple, 111–44.
91. For biblical background, see Smid, Protevangelium Jacobi, 75–80. Megan Nutzman contends that Mary represents three groups of women allowed in the temple: accused adulteresses, girl weavers of the temple curtain, and female Nazirites (“Mary in the Protevangelium,” 551–78). On the Proto-gospel of James, Mary, and the temple veil in Christian tradition, see Constas, Proclus of Constantinople, 325–28.
92. Prot. Jas. 23.1.
93. Samuel’s mother, Hannah, is childless for many years. She prays for a child; finally, after vowing to dedicate her offspring to the service of the Lord, she conceives and bears a son, Samuel. Once he is weaned, she leaves Samuel with the priest Eli. Samuel grows up in the house of the Lord in Shiloh. For discussion, see Smid, Protevangelium Jacobi, 57–58. On Christian “imitative historiography,” see Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian, 65.
94. Prot. Jas. 1.1.
95. Prot. Jas. 1.2–3.
96. Prot. Jas. 1.3. It is unclear what Joachim consults. The term “records” or “book” is not supplied in the Greek text. Smid suggests “Holy Scripture” (Protevangelium Jacobi, 28); Hock suggests a “genealogical register” (Infancy Gospels, 33, n. on Prot. Jas. 1.6).
97. “Until the Lord my God pays me a visit” (ἕως ἐπισκέψηταί με Kύριoς ὁ θεός μoυ; Prot. Jas. 1.4, modified).
98. Prot. Jas. 2.1–4.
99. “Headband” (κεφαλoδέσμιoν; Prot. Jas. 2.2).
100. Judith reproaches Anna for suspecting her of casting an evil eye: “Why would I curse you, just because you haven’t listened to me?” (Prot. Jas. 2.3).
101. Prot. Jas. 4.1.
102. Prot. Jas. 4.2.
103. Cf. Exod 28:1–39.
104. For a discussion of the possibilities, see De Strycker (La forme la plus ancienne, 85). Vuong contends that Reuben is wrong: Joachim is not childless because of unrighteousness; he is instead “childless among the righteous” (Gender and Purity, 72).
105. Prot. Jas. 5.1. Cf. 1 Sam 2:1.
106. Cf. Sarah in Gen. 21:6–7.
107. δῶρoν (Prot. Jas. 4.1). “Entire life” (πάσας τάς ἡμέρας τῆς ζωής αὐτoῦ; Prot. Jas. 4.1).
108. Vuong, Gender and Purity, 80–82, 88–100, 426–29.
109. On family and sacrifice, see Townsend, “Bonds of Flesh and Blood,” 214–31.
110. Prot. Jas. 6.1.
111. Prot. Jas. 7.2.
112. Prot. Jas. 8.1.
113. See Nutzman, “Mary in the Protevangelium,” 563–70.
114. Prot. Jas. 8.2.
115. Prot. Jas. 8.3.
116. “Into his safekeeping” (εἰς τήρησιν ἑαυτῷ; Prot. Jas. 9.1).
117. Prot. Jas. 9.2.
118. Prot. Jas. 9.2.
119. Prot. Jas. 10.1.
120. Prot. Jas. 10.1.
121. Prot. Jas. 10.2.
122. Prot. Jas. 11.1–3.
123. Origen, Against Celsus, 1.28–32. Van Stempvoort makes the case (“The Protevangelium Jacobi,” 414–15). See too Vuong, Gender and Purity, 35–37.
124. Prot. Jas. 12.1–2.
125. Matt 27:51; cf. Mark 15:38, Luke 23:44. On the significance of the temple and its destruction in the Synoptic portrayals of Jesus, see Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, 177–204.
126. Like the earlier gospels, the family gospels tell stories about a temple that no longer exists. On Christian authors blaming the destruction of the temple on the people of Israel, see Shepherdson, “Paschal Politics,” 233–60, esp. 238–40. On Jewish responses, see Kirschner, “Apocalyptic and Rabbinic Response,” 27–46. On place and displacement in the narrative of Luke-Acts, see Burrus, “Gospel of Luke,” 133–55.
1. Prot. Jas. 9.2.
2. Lily Vuong contends that the “extremely ambiguous relationship between Mary and Joseph” is designed to show that Mary “belongs exclusively to the Lord” (Gender and Purity, 191). See too David G. Hunter’s contention that the Proto-gospel of James shows that “theirs was not a true marriage” (Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 178).
3. On irony in biblical stories of bedtrick (Jacob and Leah, Judah and Tamar, Noah), see Jagendorf, “ ‘In the Morning, Behold, It Was Leah,’ ” 187–92. See too Lefkowitz, “The Genesis of Gender Transgression,” 408–19. My thinking is also shaped by Wendy Doniger’s The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade, a massive study of cross-cultural interest in questions of sex, truth, and identity, from the Hebrew Bible to Shakespeare, from an ancient Sanskrit story about a disguised demon to Hollywood films.
4. The Gospel of Luke is vague on the point. Mary is engaged to Joseph, but no information is given about Mary’s home of residence (Luke 1:26–27). Matthew, on the other hand, makes an issue of it. Andrew Lincoln argues for two perspectives on conception in Luke, one virginal and one nonvirginal (Born of a Virgin? 99–124).
5. See Foskett, A Virgin Conceived, 160–61. Cf. Vuong, Gender and Purity, 242.
6. Hebrew: yadah; Greek: γινώσκω; see Gen 4:1 in the Septuagint (Rahlfs).
7. Matt 1:25 (narrator); Luke 1:34 (Mary to angel). The usage is a “Semitism,” according to Brown (Birth of the Messiah, 132).
8. Doniger, Bedtrick, 491.
9. Doniger, Bedtrick, 492.
10. See Doniger, Bedtrick, 267–69.
11. On the similarities and differences between suspense, curiosity, and surprise, see Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 264–320.
12. Smid observes that Joseph feels that “events are unavoidably coming upon him” (Protevangelium Jacobi, 109).
13. Did Mary menstruate, according to the Proto-gospel of James? Glancy says no (Corporal Knowledge, 111); Vuong says yes (Gender and Purity, 125–33).
14. Prot. Jas. 8.2.
15. Prot. Jas. 8.3.
16. Prot. Jas. 9.1–3. Joseph will later “fling” (ῥίπτω) himself to the ground in despair when he sees that Mary is pregnant (Prot. Jas. 13.3).
17. Prot. Jas. 9.1.
18. Prot. Jas. 9.1.
19. Prot. Jas. 9.2.
20. See Num 16:31. “Fear the Lord your God,” the priest warns, “and remember everything that he did to Dathan, Abeira, and Korah, how the earth split open and they were all swallowed up because of their dispute. Now, Joseph, you should be afraid of this happening to your house as well” (Prot. Jas. 9.2).
21. Vuong, Gender and Purity, 225. Cf. Foskett, A Virgin Conceived, 133–34.
22. van der Horst, “Sex, Birth, Purity, and Asceticism,” 62. See too Hock, Infancy Gospels, 24–27.
23. “Defiled” (ἐμίανεν; Prot. Jas. 15.2).
24. Prot. Jas. 9.3.
25. Prot. Jas. 9.3.
26. Prot. Jas. 11.2; cf. Luke 1:28.
27. Prot. Jas. 11.3. “With child by the Holy Spirit” (Matt 1:18); “overshadow” (ἐπισκιάσει; Luke 1:35).
28. Prot. Jas. 12.2.
29. “Forgot the mysteries” (ἐπελάθετo τῶν μυστηρίων; Prot. Jas. 12.2).
30. Smid, Protevangelium Jacobi, 97.
31. Vuong, Gender and Purity, 175.
32. Prot. Jas. 12.3. On textual variants regarding the age of Mary, see Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, 111–12. See too Nutzman, “Mary in the Protevangelium,” 569–70 n. 38. I follow Glancy and Nutzman on the age of Mary as twelve.
33. Prot. Jas. 13.1.
34. Prot. Jas. 13.1.
35. Prot. Jas. 13.1. See Foskett’s remarks: “the narrative deftly underscores Mary’s difference. . . . More than the text needs Mary to redeem Eve, it needs Eve to reveal Mary as the parthenos tou kyriou” (A Virgin Conceived, 155). Glancy sees a “twist on Eve-Mary parallel . . . Mary repeats rather than reverses the sin of Eve” (Corporal Knowledge, 157 n. 54).
36. Prot. Jas. 13.2.
37. Prot. Jas. 13.2.
38. On Adam and Eve in the Apocryphal Acts, see Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride, 45.
39. Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, 27.
40. Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, 86. The Pastoral Epistles suggest that Eve disobeyed God but not Adam (1 Tim 2:14). On gnostic interpretations, see Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, 63–68. See too Dunning, “Virgin Earth, Virgin Birth,” 57–88. On Mary as the new Eve in Justin, see Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin. Cf. Cothenet, “Le Protévangile de Jacques,” 4261–62.
41. Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 83. On Marcion, Tatian, Encratites, and the story of Adam and Eve, see Brown, Body and Society, 82–97. On Adam and Eve, “carnal knowing,” and nakedness in the early Christian tradition, see Miles, Carnal Knowing, 85–116.
42. Note the parallel to Gen 3:13 in Joseph’s question. In that passage, the Lord God asks Eve, “Why have you done this?”
43. “I have not known any man” (ἄνδρα oὐ γινώσκω; Prot. Jas. 13.3, modified).
44. NRSV, modified.
45. “I do not know” (oὐ γινώσκω; Prot. Jas. 13.3, modified).
46. “I have not known any man (ἄνδρα oὐ γινώσκω; Luke 1:34). For a discussion of different translations and interpretive options of the Greek in Luke, see Fitzmyer, Gospel According to Luke I–IX (348–50). Fitzmyer himself favors a “vague” rendering (350). Frederick C. Grant views Luke 1:34 as a later gloss, made under the influence of debates over the virgin birth (“Where Form Criticism,” 11–21, esp. 19–21). On a connection between Luke, the Proto-gospel of James, and the birth of Melchizedek in the difficult to date 2 Enoch 23 (71.1–8), see Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus, 188–90.
47. Prot. Jas. 14.1.
48. Joseph Marohl contends that “honor killing” is a possibility in the Synoptic accounts (Joseph’s Dilemma, 38–61). Since “public disgrace” is a kind of social death, it could be argued that the punishments represent variations on a theme. But the threat of “public disgrace” is gynocentric, while that of a “death sentence” is not, as Joseph soon learns. See too verbatim language of humiliation in Prot. Jas. 13.2, 15.3.
49. Prot. Jas. 14.2.
50. Prot. Jas. 14.2.
51. Did Joseph “rest” as he reports to Annas? Cf. Vuong, Gender and Purity, 176 n. 87.
52. Prot. Jas. 15.1.
53. Prot. Jas. 15.1.
54. Prot. Jas. 15.2.
55. Prot. Jas. 15.3.
56. “I have not known” (oὐ γινώσκω; Prot. Jas. 15.3, modified).
57. Prot. Jas. 15.4.
58. “Kept his silence” (ἐσίγησεν; Prot. Jas. 15.4).
59. See Allen, “ ‘Protevangelium of James’ as an ‘Historia,’ ” 511–12.
60. Foskett contends that Joseph’s “innocence is sought less for its own sake and more as confirmation of Mary’s virtue” (A Virgin Conceived, 156).
61. “The reader’s drama is literally dramatized in and through an analogous ordeal of interpretation undergone by some character . . . with variable success but under the same constraints of human vision” (Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 49). Cf. Lily Vuong’s use of Sternberg in discussing the characterization of Mary (Gender and Purity, 181).
62. Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 266.
63. Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 266.
64. Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 266.
65. Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 267.
66. Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 267.
67. Prot. Jas. 16.2–3. So too we might find evidence of a growing sympathy in Joseph’s nearly verbatim repetition of Mary’s vow and denial in his reply to the priest.
68. Prot. Jas. 16.1.
69. See Martin, “Progymnastic Topic Lists,” 18–41.
70. Andrew Jacobs remarks on the Rome’s “anxious ability to contain and absorb difference” (Christ Circumcised, 8). On the classification and management of Jews in the late antique Christian empire, see Sanzo and Boustan, “Mediterranean Jews in a Christianizing Empire,” 358–75.
71. Richard Horsley sees a “direct opposition between Caesar, the savior, who had supposedly brought peace, and the child proclaimed as savior, whose birth means peace” in the Synoptic accounts (Liberation of Christmas, 155). Brown likewise discerns a challenge to imperial propaganda (Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 45). See too Matthews, Perfect Martyr.
72. Prot. Jas. 17.1.
73. Prot. Jas. 17.2.
74. Prot. Jas. 17.3.
75. Prot. Jas. 19.1.
76. Prot. Jas. 19.1.
77. Prot. Jas. 23.1–3.
78. It may be a scene inspired by Jesus’ condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees: “so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” (Matt 23:35). Cf. Luke 11:51, which leaves out the problematic patronym. There may be here a confusion of two Zachariases: the postexilic prophet, son of Barachiah (Zech 1:1), and Zacharias the martyr (2 Chr 24:20–22), killed by King Joash. See Jacobs, Remains of the Jews, 113 n. 45. My thanks to the Andrew Jacobs for this point.
79. Prot. Jas. 23.1.
80. In this way, the “Massacre of the Innocents” in the Proto-gospel of James becomes, in the words of Cleo McNelly Kearns, “the story of the preservation of the child of the collateral priestly line of the family” (The Virgin Mary, Monotheism, 243).
81. Perkins, The Suffering Self, 104–23. Cf. Matthews, Perfect Martyr, 99–130.
82. On Christian heroes populating Jewish holy sites in late antique Christian travel writing, see Jacobs, Remains of the Jews, 103–38.
83. Although they may not always be conscious of it. See James H. Cone’s incisive critique of the failure of white Protestant theologians to connect the dots between crucifixion and lynching (The Cross and the Lynching Tree, esp. 152–66).
84. See Marcus, “Crucifixion as Parodic Exaltation,” 73–87.
85. See Glancy, “Torture,” 107–36, esp. 114–21. The Johannine episode of the flogging of Jesus (John 19:1–3) is an instance of Roman judicial torture. The surrounding narrative suggests that the “resistant truth of Jesus’ flesh” (135) confounds the claims of empire as the baffled Roman governor Pilate is left to wonder, “What is truth?” (John 18:38).
86. Elizabeth A. Castelli observes, “Roman spectacle could at one and the same time reassuringly reinscribe and dangerously trouble the culture’s prevailing values” (Martyrdom and Memory, 106). L. Stephanie Cobb contends that the ideal of Roman masculinity was recast in martyr accounts as “a central, Christian virtue” (Dying to Be Men, 91).
87. See Bauckham, “Imaginative Literature,” 791–812, esp. 796.
88. Prot. Jas. 22.2.
89. On Augustine’s view of the companionate marriage of Joseph and Mary, see Clark, St. Augustine on Marriage, 6–7.
90. Cooper, Band of Angels, 56–57.
1. “Love of letters” (φιλoγράμματoν; The Life 2 [trans. Thackeray, 5]).
2. See Rajak, Josephus, 12–44.
3. Cf. Billings, “ ‘At the Age of Twelve,’ ” 70–89.
4. Today we think of childhood, from infancy through adolescence, as crucial to the formation of adults. Not so in antiquity, according to Christopher Pelling (“Childhood and Personality in Greek Biography,” 213–44). Cf. Burke, “Depictions of Children,” 388–400.
5. Burke, “Completing the Gospel,” 113–17.
6. See Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 46–47, 116–17.
7. On “justifiable responses,” see Upson-Saia, “Holy Child or Holy Terror?” 31–39. Upson-Saia contends that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas answers critics of Christianity by appropriating and “domesticating” what was originally hostile source material. I think instead that the inspiration for the Infancy Gospel comes from a Christian source, the Gospel of Luke.
8. Luke 2:41–52, NRSV, modified.
9. Or the “Loss in the Temple,” one of the “Sorrows of Mary”; see Gorman, “Sorrows of Mary,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 327–28.
10. “But his parents did not understand” (καί oὐκ ἔγνωσαν oἱ γoνεῖς; Luke 2:43).
11. René Laurentin’s theory that “after three days” foreshadows the Lukan passion and resurrection (Jésus au Temple, 101–2). Cf. Elliott, “Does Luke 2:41–52 Anticipate?” 87–89.
12. “Understanding” (συνέσει; Luke 2:47).
13. “In great anxiety” (ὀδθνώμενoι; Luke 2:48).
14. “Did you not know?” (oὐκ ᾔδειτε; Luke 2:49). It is tempting to hear disappointment. Brown remarks, “The tone of his question is more one of grief that his parents have known him so poorly” (Birth of the Messiah, 490).
15. “But they did not understand what he said to them” (καὶ αὐτoὶ oὐ συνῆκαν τὸ ῥῆμα ὃ ἐλάλησεν αὐτoῖς; Luke 2:50).
16. “Know” and “understand”: γινώσκω, oἶδα, συνίημι. Negative particle: oὐ.
17. The syntax implies that the expected answer agrees with the question (Bovon, Luke 1, 114).
18. My translation follows that of De Jonge, “Sonship, Wisdom, and Infancy,” 317–54. Cf. Dennis D. Sylva’s rendering of “My father’s words” (“The Cryptic Clause,” 132–40).
19. “Treasured” (διετήρει; Luke 2:51). For Raymond Brown, Mary’s silent pondering (Luke 2:19, 51) is the key: she may have not understood Jesus, “but she is not unresponsive to the mystery that surrounds him” (Birth of the Messiah, 494). Joseph Fitzmyer observes, “This is Luke’s way of getting across to his readers the difficulty of understanding who Jesus is or was” (Gospel According to Luke I–IX, 439). See too François Bovon’s salient remarks about the difference between Luke 2:19 and 2:50 (Luke 1, 115).
20. Nils Krückemeier contends that Luke’s purpose was to proclaim the “extraordinary significance” (die außerordentliche Bedeutung) of Jesus (“Der zwölfjährige Jesus im Tempel,” 307–19, at 316). If so, why depict Mary and Joseph as being unable to recognize it? Cf. Fitzmyer, Gospel According to Luke I–IX, 445. François Bovon proposes that the story shows the “obsolete lawful will of earthly parents” (Luke 1, 115).
21. NRSV, modified.
22. On the tricky term θαυμάζω (“amaze”), see Frilingos, Spectacles, 50–53.
23. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 480. The theological payoff, according to Brown, is to show that “the appreciation of Jesus’ divine sonship was post-resurrectional” (Birth of the Messiah, 492). Cf. David P. Moessner’s study, which adopts a Sternbergian approach to the limited knowledge of characters in Luke (“The Ironic Fulfillment,” 35–50).
24. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 480–81, following van Iersel, “The Finding of Jesus in the Temple,” 161–73.
25. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 481.
26. Joseph Fitzmyer contends, “Though Jesus recognizes his relation to his heavenly father is that of an obedient son, he is not prevented thereby from filial respect for his earthly parents” (Gospel According to Luke I–IX, 445). See too Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 493; Bovon, Luke 1, 115; and Horn and Martens, “Let the Little Children Come to Me,” 79.
27. On the link between the Infancy Gospel and the Gospel of Luke, see De Jonge, “Sonship, Wisdom, Infancy,” 347–48, and, with a theory of oral transmission, Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 115–18. Günther Schmahl notes a difference in the smoothness of the integration of the “Finding of Jesus” into the two accounts (“Lk 2,41–52 und die Kindheitserzählung,” 256). Hock conveniently provides the relevant Greek text of Luke 2:41–51 for comparison (Infancy Gospels, 140–42).
28. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 481.
29. Elsewhere, Irenaeus describes the child Jesus as moral exemplar (Haer. 2.21.4); cited in Leyerle, “Children and ‘The Child,’ ” 559–79.
30. Inf. Gos. Thom. 2.1.
31. Inf. Gos. Thom. 2.2–4 (Ga).
32. The Greek term πλάσσω (“fashion”), used here to describe how Jesus creates the clay sparrows (Inf. Gos. Thom. 2.2–3 [Ga]), is also used in the Septuagint translation of Genesis 2:7–8 (Rahlfs).
33. For Boyarin, the “first accent” is halakhic debate, and the “second accent” is the aggada about gigantic rabbis. “It is that incongruity that renders the text so very Menippean, that which asserts while denying but also denies while asserting the value of an intellectual practice, neither the assertion nor the denial being allowed to win the day” (Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis, 235). On Menippean satire generally, see Relihan, Ancient Menippean Satire. See too Halliwell, “Uses of Laughter,” 279–96.
34. Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis, 342.
35. Inf. Gos. Thom. 3.2.
36. Inf. Gos. Thom. 4.1.
37. Inf. Gos. Thom. 4.2.
38. Inf. Gos. Thom. 5.1.
39. Inf. Gos. Thom. 5.2–3, modified.
40. On moral instruction in ancient Jewish households, see Yarbrough, “Parents and Children in the Jewish Family,” 39–59, esp. 43–44 on Tobit 4. See also Williams, “The Jewish Family in Judaea,” 159–82, esp. 170–75.
41. Burke, De infantia Iesu, 305 n. 8.
42. On Zechariah and other conversions in Luke-Acts, see Balch, “METABOΛHΠOΛETEIΩN,” 139–88.
43. See Minear, “Luke’s Use of the Birth Stories,” 111–31, at 117.
44. Inf. Gos. Thom. 7.2.
45. Or, as Meir Sternberg puts it, “the gulf separating human from divine vision” (Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 97).
46. Inf. Gos. Thom. 12.2.
47. Inf. Gos. Thom. 16.3.
48. In addition to Burke and Aasgaard, discussed here, see Upson-Saia, “Holy Child or Holy Terror?” 31–33.
49. Inf. Gos. Thom. 14.3–4.
50. Burke, “Completing the Gospel,” 108–9.
51. Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 46–47, 116–17. On this point, see too Foster, “The Education of Jesus,” 336.
52. Inf. Gos. Thom. 14.3.
53. Inf. Gos. Thom. 17.1.
54. Inf. Gos. Thom. 17.2.
55. “Great anxiety and distress” (ὀδυνώμενoι λυπoύμενoι; Inf. Gos. Thom. 17.3). Burke suggests that the added term betrays the influence of the Western text of Luke (De infantia Iesu, 336 n. 4).
56. Inf. Gos. Thom. 17.3.
57. Inf. Gos. Thom. 17.4.
58. Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, 117.
59. Inf. Gos. Thom. 5.1. We might think of the two questions, one from Joseph and the other from Mary, as forming an inclusio.
60. Inf. Gos. Thom. 17.4.
61. Inf. Gos. Thom. 17.5.
62. Bovon, Luke 1, 113.
63. Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 36–38.
64. See Ando, Matter of the Gods, 149–97.
AFTERWORD
1. Martyrdom of Perpetua (ed. and trans. Musurillo).
2. A different approach would be to examine the way Jesus “passes” as a son in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas or the way that Mary and Joseph “pass” as a married couple in the Proto-gospel of James. For a discussion of theory and “passing” in the early Christian context, see Jacobs, Christ Circumcised (179–89).
3. Not until the sixth century CE is there a record of condemning, along with a host of other extracanonical writings, “the book on the infancy of the savior” and “the book of the nativity of the saviour and of Mary or the midwife.” This may be found in the so-called Decretem Gelasanium, 519–533 CE, anonymous, traditionally and wrongly attributed to council of Gelasius 1, bishop of Rome, 492–96 (Voiçu, “Ways to Survival,” 401–2). The “Decree of Gelasius” did little to stop the transmission of such stories to the medieval Christians who lived after its composition.
4. Two complementary articles describe canon and the possibilities for resistance in fourth-century Christian circles: Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social Conflict,” 395–419, and Jacobs, “The Disorder of Books,” 135–59.
5. Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (trans. Brakke), Athanasius and Asceticism, 326–32, at 329–30.
6. Jacobs, “The Disorder of Books,” 158.
7. See Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 68–69.
8. Panarion 51.20.2–3 (trans. Williams, 45). On the problem of knowing in Epiphanius, see Berzon, “Known Knowns and Known Unknowns,” 75–101.
9. Voiçu, “Ways to Survival,” 408.
10. Hist. Jos. Carp. 11.3 (trans. Ehrman and Pleše, 169).
11. Hist. Jos. Carp. 16.1–15.
12. Hist. Jos. Carp. 17.4 (trans. Ehrman and Pleše, 175).
13. Hist. Jos. Carp. 17.8 (trans. Ehrman and Pleše, 175).
14. Prot. Jas. 19–20.
15. Hist. Jos. Carp. 17.10–13 (trans. Ehrman and Pleše, 177).
16. Hist. Jos. Carp. 17.15 (trans. Ehrman and Pleše, 177).
17. Hist. Jos. Carp. 18.1 (trans. Ehrman and Pleše, 177).
18. Hist. Jos. Carp. 18.3 (trans. Ehrman and Pleše, 177).
19. Voiçu, “Ways to Survival,” 408.
20. David Hunter notes, “Of all the biblical apocrypha, however, it is the Protevangelium of James that is by far the most significant text for its teaching of the perpetual virginity of Mary” (Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 177).
21. Voiçu, “Ways to Survival,” 413. For an overview, see Witakowski, “The Miracles of Jesus,” 279–98.
22. Suras 3:49 and 5:110. For discussion, see Davis, Christ Child, 162–67.
23. See Prot. Jas. 17.3. For discussion about whether to give credit for this tradition to the Proto-gospel of James, see Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin, 81–98.
24. Piacenza Pilgrim 5 (trans. Wilkinson, 131). In addition to these late ancient sources, medieval sources reflect continuing interest in the family life of Jesus. See Dzon, “Joseph and the Amazing Christ-Child,” 135–57, and Couch, “Misbehaving God,” 31–41.
25. Solomon makes this point in a chapter about the Klebolds, the family whose son, Dylan Klebold, was responsible, along with his friend, Eric Harris, for the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado (Far from the Tree, 588).