Gregor Emmenegger: On Salome’s manual inspection of Mary in the Protevangelium of James

The Protevangelium of James (PJ), usually dated late second or early third century, is in many ways regarded as a special case among the texts of the time. Whilst other apocrypha present a naive Christology with a docetic or adoptianist tinge, the Christology of the PJ seems largely unremarkable, with the result that the text was later generally accepted by Christian writers. Starting from a series of observations on the manual inspection performed by the midwife, I would like to show that its intention was not to prove Mary’s virginity after the birth. Salome is introduced to confirm Jesus’ miraculous arrival: Mary did not deliver the Son of the Most High, rather, he appeared in light. E. Norelli has postulated the working hypothesis that the account in the PJ was formed around a series of Christological testimonies. Those testimonies have been transformed into a narrative as far as possible and with great faithfulness – even in all its contradictions. Especially in the birth narrative in PJ 19-20, there are docetic elements in addition to the incarnational ones: Christ appears in the light, but his mother was previously pregnant through the working of the Holy Spirit. Seen that way, the PJ is not a special case among the Christian texts of the time with regard to its Christological character. The emerging polymorphic and protoorthodox Christology is rather a characteristic that the PJ shares with other texts.