and traditions as being superseded, Vorster finds that the Jewish leadership, people, and institutions are simply not portrayed in that way.63 He writes that Jewish leaders in particular are unexpectedly doing all the right things: they are helpers of the protagonist and the message of the text by offering blessings (17:3, et al.), praying (8:3 et al.), correctly performing rituals and rites (6:2; 8:2, 3; 24:1, et al.), and taking care of the temple and determining proper practices and norms (10:1; 15:3 et al.). Their authority and acts are also legitimized and verified by God as illustrated by the divine responses to questions and advice asked of him (8:3–8; 9:3–6). Vorster argues that even when Jewish leadership aggressively demands the testing of Mary and Joseph via the bitter water test, they still continue to support and contribute to the message of the Protevangelium in that Mary and Joseph are declared unequivocally to be innocent and pure. For all these reasons, Vorster suggests that the author likely had Jewish interests when crafting his story about Mary.
Cothenet also offers a proposal that reconsiders the text’s relationship with Judaism by expanding what constitutes Judaism in the first centuries CE. Describing the Protevangelium as one of the “premier midrash chrétien sur la Nativité de Marie,” Cothenet draws a number of parallels between the traditions depicted in the Protevangelium and the Jewish scriptures and stories found within rabbinic tradition.64 He also proposes that many of the Protevangelium’s motifs were influenced by those found in the Haggadah. Timothy Horner follows suit in this reevaluation by looking into rabbinic literature, but his approach is more careful in that he limits his sources to tannaitic traditions. He writes boldly that the “Prot. Jas. would have been best understood—perhaps only fully understood—within a community that was familiar with concerns and images of contemporary Judaism.”65 Past rejection of the text’s relationship to Judaism, according to Horner, was based on a disconnection between the Protevangelium and elements characteristic of Second Temple Jewish, pre-rabbinic literature.
Horner’s most intriguing proposal is that some of the Protevangelium’s major themes—including childlessness, betrothal, marriage, and virginity—are more fruitfully read in the context of ideas found in the Mishnah.66 For instance, he argues that Mary’s life can be divided into three stages: birth to age three, ages three to twelve, and from twelve to adulthood—corresponding to the life cycle of girls found in the Mishnah. Specifically, m. Nid. 5.4 and m. Ket. 1.1–3 describe the parameters of virginity loss; namely, the virginity of a girl three years and a day or younger can be assured, whereas the virginity of a girl older than three years and a day cannot.67 For Horner, this mishnaic tradition offers insight into why Anna and Joachim decide to dedicate their daughter at the age of three instead of their initial plan to send her to the temple at the age of two. Even more, Horner takes up the highly contested bitter water test scene arguing that the Protevangelium’s version is more aligned with the mishnaic discussion of the Sotah than with Numbers 5:11–31 since the former describes a test to determine fidelity by acting as a sort of truth-telling serum.68 In the Protevangelium, Mary and Joseph are required to take the test because both are being questioned about their actions; additionally, the test is not used to determine an illegitimate pregnancy.
While Horner’s proposal has been criticized given that his approach attempts to connect the text with the Mishnah, an early third-century collection which has no historical evidence of exerting influence in the second century, his point is well taken that the parallels between the Protevangelium and the Mishnah help to reevaluate the text’s relationship with Judaism, even if no direct relationship can be determined. Horner’s study also helps problematize the questions concerning categories. Describing the difficulty of determining the influence of Jewish Scriptures on apocryphal literature more generally, Tobias Nicklas asserts that much of the struggle has to do with the fact that while one can locate intertextual relationships between apocryphal writings and what we now know as the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, “there was no fixed Jewish ‘canon’ (in the sense of a fixed list of writings)—neither in the form of a Tanak nor as ‘the’ Septuagint.”69 Nicklas’s comments generally construed remind us of the fluidity and murkiness of categories and boundaries related to Jewish and Christian literature and identities in the first few centuries of the Common Era, the period in which general consensus holds our text to have been written. These ideas concretely problematize the position that the Protevangelium has no real connections to Judaism.
Genre, Purpose, and Possible Audience
The Protevangelium’s genre, purpose, and even possible audience are closely connected to the text’s overarching goals. Scholarship on the text has proposed a number of reasons for its creation including, “filling in gaps,” “expanding,” and “interpreting” the writings of the New Testament (see also the section on sources below).70 In many ways, the Protevangelium does fill in gaps by providing its readers with rich and detailed descriptions of an incredibly prominent woman in Christian history, but for whom we receive precious little information in the canonical Gospels about her character, history, or background. Some have suggested that the popularity of infancy gospels (cf. the section on title above) inspired interest in creating literature about the early life of Mary, a process that ultimately developed into a need to provide her with her own biography. Many have read the Protevangelium as a vital part of the ancient biographical genre that sought to better understand and to help quench the desire to know more about the lives of the “rich and famous.”
Another popular genre of literature among early Christians, especially prior to Constantine, was apologetics. As a tradition that had not yet gained complete legitimacy throughout the Roman Empire, Christianity felt the need to craft writings that were apologetic in nature or at least had apologetic aims. The Protevangelium’s specific claim that Mary conceived and gave birth as a virgin seems to respond to various Jewish and/or “pagan” polemics against Mary. A number of scholars have argued that the work shows clear signs of being motivated by apologetic concerns.71 Van Stempvoort takes this proposal a step further by suggesting the text is specifically intended to counter Celsus’s attacks on Mary. He views the specific details of Mary’s proven and enduring purity and virginity, the description of her parents as wealthy and respected members of the community (1:1–3), and Mary’s weaving of the temple curtain (12:1) as direct responses to Celsus’s accusations that Mary had a child out of wedlock with a Roman solider, was the daughter of poor and socially insignificant parents, and that she spun for a living.72
Galit Hasan-Rokem traces the roots of Celsus’s polemic to folkloric Jewish tradition that may have begun in the first century.73 Two rabbinic references come to mind that offer some parallels. In the Tosefta (t. Hull. 2.22–24) there is a reference to a “Yeshu ben Panthera” who might be a thinly-veiled Jesus given that various versions of the illegitimate birth of Jesus claimed he was the son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. In the later traditions of b. San. 106a, there is also a reference to an unnamed woman who is described as playing the “harlot with carpenters”—a possible reference to Mary given Joseph’s frequent association with carpentry. That the Protevangelium repeatedly affirms Mary’s virginity by having a number of different and independent witnesses—including the angel (11:5–8), Joseph (14:5), the priest and people of Israel (16:5–8), an unnamed midwife (19:14), and Salome (20:1–2, 10)—attest to her certainly indicates an attempt to refute any slanderous and defamatory remarks made against her character. Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše remind us, too, that doctrinal debates and theological discussions about Mary’s purity and eternal virginity, which occupied various councils from the fourth century and beyond, were rooted in the Protevangelium’s apologetic discourse.74
The incredibly flattering depiction of Mary in the Protevangelium has encouraged Hock to suggest another possible reason for its creation. Namely, Hock reads the consistent praising of Mary as an encomium consistent with the Greco-Roman standards of literature written with the purpose to praise. While he does not deny that the narrative serves apologetic concerns, he asserts that it “hardly needs to be the principal purpose [and] does not explain the gospel as a whole.”75 Indeed, the Protevangelium’s overwhelming focus on Mary’s purity greatly exceeds any proof needed to defend accusations made against her status. To offer support, Hock compares the text with the expectations of Hermogenes’
