Monday, June 1, 2020, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EDT

Vernon K. Robbins, Professor Emeritus of Religion, Winship Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities

“The Birth of Jesus to Virgin Mary in the Infancy Gospel of James (Protevangelium Jacobi)”

The Protevangelium Jacobi (Infancy Gospel of James), written ca. 180 CE, presents Mary, the mother of Jesus, growing up in the holy environment of the Jerusalem temple where she is fed by angels. When her monthly flow is about to begin, the priests take her out of the temple so she will not pollute it. After the priests assign Mary to the care of a widower named Joseph, who already has children, difficulties arise when Mary becomes pregnant while Joseph is away for six months on a carpentry job. The immaculate holiness of Mary, however, leads to the birth of Jesus in a thoroughly surprising manner in a cave alongside the road to Bethlehem.

For centuries, Christians knew this version of the birth of Jesus, also referenced in the Muslim holy book of the Qur’an. Then, with the sixteenth century Reformation, Christians began to privilege the birth stories in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke in the New Testament. Join us on Monday, June 1, for a discussion of this now so little known second century CE version of the story with a scholar who describes it as “breathtaking.”