The Book of James (Protevangelium) from the Ancient Writings of The Set-Apart Bible. Read free with the Sacred Names (Yahweh, Yahshua, Elohim) and audio narration.
1 Oxford: Oxford University Press , pages 38, 49
2 BOOK OF JAMES, OR PROTEVANGELIUM
3 The latter of these names is a modern one: it was given to the book by Guillaume Postel, who in the sixteenth century introduced it to Europe.
4 Origen mentions the Book of James (and the Gospel of Peter) as stating that the ‘brethren of Adonai’ were sons of Joseph by a former wife. This is the first mention of it, and shows us that the book is as old as the second century. To collect later references to it is unnecessary.
5 It is generally agreed that the story of the death of Zacharias (chs. xxii, xxiv) does not properly belong to the text. Origen and other early writers give a different account of the cause of his death: it was, they say, because, after the Nativity, he still allowed Mary to take her place among the virgins in the Temple.
6 Difficulty is also caused by the sudden introduction of Joseph as the narrator in ch. xviii. 2 sqq. We cannot be sure whether this means that a fragment of a ‘Joseph-apocryphon’ has been introduced at this point; or, if so, how far it extends. We are sure, from a sentence of Clement of Alexandria, that some story of a midwife being present at the Nativity was current in the second century.