By Steve Dunham
April 16, 2026
The Protoevangelium of James is not part of the Bible. The Catholic Church has said that it is not divinely inspired. Yet some people treat it as a historical record of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in her early life. However, it has some bizarre stories and statements, along with elements so similar to actual Bible accounts involving other people that they may have been copied and introduced into the Protoevangelium.
The opening of the Protoevangelium says that there was “Joachim, a man rich exceedingly.” This echoes a phrase in the Book of Daniel: “Joakim was very rich”
Also, the Gospel of Luke describes Mary and Joseph as poor. Catholic Answers quotes https://www.catholic.com/qa/was-the-holy-family-really-poor
“This passage suggests that Mary and Joseph were poor,” says Catholic Answers. “According to the Mosaic law the mother had to purchase and have sacrificed in the Temple a young lamb as a burnt offering and a turtle dove as a sin offering (this being done to expiate ritual impurity related to blood and childbirth, not personal sin). If the parents were too poor to afford the lamb, they were allowed to substitute two turtle doves or pigeons
If Mary’s father had been rich, I think he would have given Joseph a substantial dowry. But as we shall see, in the Protoevangelium Joseph denied having married Mary by the time Jesus was born. So, no marriage, no dowry, perhaps.
Rich Joachim in the Protoevangelium brought double offerings to the Temple but was told by Rubim that he should not bring offerings to the Temple, because Joachim had no children. So, praying that he would have a child, Joachim went to the desert “and fasted forty days and forty nights,” eating and drinking nothing. Three men in the Bible are mentioned as fasting for forty days: Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.
Joachim’s wife, Anna, said that she was driven out of the Temple because she was childless. She said that if she had a child, male or female, she would bring the child as a gift to God. Angels told her and Joachim that she would conceive, and the next day, not yet having any children, Joachim brought gifts to the Temple, and this time they were accepted. Nine months later Anna gave birth to Mary.
Mary began walking at six months, and Anna made a vow that Mary’s feet would not touch the ground again until Mary had been presented to God in the Temple, which took place when she was three. Joachim and Anna left Mary at the Temple, where she was fed by an angel (notice the parallel with Elijah).
At age twelve, when Mary reached puberty, the priests were concerned that she might “defile the sanctuary of the Lord.” Zacharias, the high priest, asked the Lord what to do, and an angel told him to assemble all the widowers, and the Lord would give a sign as to whose wife she would be.
All the widowers of Judea assembled, “taking with them their rods.” A dove emerged from Joseph’s rod and flew and landed on his head, marking him to be the husband of Mary.
But Joseph refused, saying: I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl. I am afraid lest I become a laughing-stock to the sons of Israel. And the priest said to Joseph: Fear the Lord thy God, and remember what the Lord did to Dathan, and Abiram, and Korah; how the earth opened, and they were swallowed up on account of their contradiction. And now fear, O Joseph, lest the same things happen in thy house. And Joseph was afraid, and took her into his keeping. And Joseph said to Mary: Behold, I have received thee from the temple of the Lord; and now I leave thee in my house, and go away to build my buildings.
Then the priests decided to make a veil for the Temple and called for all “the undefiled virgins of the family of David,” and Mary was chosen by lot to make the veil.
While on a trip to the well, she heard “a voice saying: Hail, thou who hast received grace; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women!” When she got home, an angel appeared to her and spoke the rest of what we call the Annunciation.
When she went to visit Elizabeth, “Mary had forgotten the mysteries of which the archangel Gabriel had spoken.” Mary was 16.
“Joseph came back from his building” and found that Mary was pregnant. “Why hast thou done this and forgotten the Lord thy God?” Joseph asked Mary. She replied that she was still a virgin, and he asked her, “Whence then is that which is in thy womb?”
Mary replied: “As the Lord my God liveth, I do not know whence it is to me.” Joseph was “afraid lest that which [was] in her be from an angel.”
Annas the scribe saw that Mary was pregnant, and he told the high priest, and officers brought Mary and Joseph before a tribunal. Mary insisted that she was a virgin, and when asked whether he had married her secretly, Joseph remained silent. As a test, the priest gave them “the water of the ordeal of the Lord” and sent them separately off into the hill country. If they had sinned, God would reveal it to them, but they returned unhurt, which made the people wonder.
When Emperor Augustus ordered a census, Joseph took Mary toward Bethlehem, but three miles from the town, in the desert, Mary went into labor. Joseph found a cave and left Mary there and went toward Bethlehem to seek a midwife. The world stood still. A Hebrew midwife met him. Joseph said that he was betrothed to Mary but not married to her, and he took the midwife to the cave.
Along came Salome. The midwife told her that a virgin had just given birth. “Unless I thrust in my finger, and search the parts, I will not believe that a virgin has brought forth,” said Salome (notice the parallel with Thomas wanting to probe Christ’s wounds). Salome reached into Mary’s birth canal and found that Mary was still physically a virgin, but Salome’s hand burned as if it were on fire. An angel told Salome to pick up the baby Jesus and she would be healed. “Salome was immediately cured.”
Now “Joseph was ready to go into Judaea” (if he was three miles from Bethlehem, he must have been in Judea already).
A star led the Magi to the cave.
When Herod’s men came to kill all boys under two years old, Mary hid Jesus in an ox stall. Elizabeth took her baby, John, to the hill country, and a mountain opened up to provide a hiding place for them. Herod’s officers asked Zacharias, who was in the Temple, where his son was. Zacharias said he didn’t know, and the officers killed him. His body disappeared, and the other priests found that his blood had turned to stone.
The story ends with James, the purported author, saying that he hid in the wilderness until Herod died (which, according to the Gospel, is when the angel told the Holy Family to return home).
My opinion, as an author, editor, and former book editor: the Protoevangelium of James is fiction, a story made up to complement (but sometimes contradicting) the Gospels. It should not be taken as history.
One of the versions I downloaded (the one I quoted here) is on the website Defenders of the Catholic Faith by Steve Ray: https://catholicconvert.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/ProtoevangeliumOfJames.pdf.
