Everything Christian art knows about the Virgin Mary's own childhood — Anna and Joachim, her birth, her years in the Temple, the midwife at the manger — comes from this second-century book, not the New Testament.
The opening chapter is live as a word-depth beta: every Greek word glossed with its sense and the flowing English beside it. Joachim, exceedingly rich, brings his gifts to the Lord. The book grows chapter by chapter.
❦ Read the Protoevangelium of James now, freeA taste of the format — open the reader above to read all of The Protoevangelium of James word by word.
The words that carry the book. Learn these and most of the text opens up; each links, in the reader, to its full entry. Counts are how often the word appears.
The Protoevangelium of James is the earliest and most influential of the infancy gospels: it gave the tradition the names of Mary's parents, the story of her miraculous birth, and half the scenes painted on church walls for the next fifteen centuries.
Reading it word by word in the original Greek, you meet the source directly — a tender, novelistic Greek that reads easily, telling the story the canonical gospels leave out: how Mary came to be.
Read our finished collection · the library · The Great Library Project
Reading is always free. Patrons and founders are the ones who keep it that way.